Qualla: Wicken Fen

Wicken Fen: Introduction

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Keith Edkins, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1899, the National Trust purchased two acres of Cambridgeshire fenland for £10. That transaction — modest enough to record in a single ledger line — marked the beginning of something that has grown for over a century into one of Britain's most remarkable conservation stories. Wicken Fen was the first property the National Trust ever cared for. Today it encompasses more than 800 acres of fen, reedbed, and marsh, and is home to over 10,000 recorded species. Of those, more than 125 appear in the national Red Data Book of rare invertebrates. The place was extraordinary before anyone called it a nature reserve. It remains extraordinary now.

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Image: Keith Edkins | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wicken Fen: A Fragment of a Lost World

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dr Paul G Tuli, CC BY-SA 3.0. The fens of East Anglia were once enormous — a vast, waterlogged basin covering much of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk. Agriculture drained nearly all of it. Today, only four wild fens remain in the Great Fen Basin area, and Wicken is one of them. The difference between the fen and i...

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Image: Dr Paul G Tuli | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wicken Fen: Cut Since 1414

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Keith Edkins, CC BY-SA 2.0. What makes Wicken Fen unusual among nature reserves is that it requires active management to stay wild. The sedge plant, Cladium mariscus, has been harvested here every year since at least 1414, when the first recorded sedge cutting took place. That harvest continues today, and t...

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Image: Keith Edkins | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wicken Fen: Darwin's Beetles, Tansley's Ecology

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sunil060902, CC BY-SA 3.0. Charles Darwin collected beetles here in the 1820s, before he sailed on the Beagle. He was a Cambridge student at the time, drawn to the fen as naturalists had been for generations. In the twentieth century, Sir Arthur Tansley and Sir Harry Godwin — the founders of modern ecology...

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Image: Sunil060902 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wicken Fen: A Hundred-Year Vision

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit EricITOworld, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1999, marking the centenary of that first two-acre purchase, the National Trust launched the Wicken Fen Vision: a plan to expand the protected area to 56 square kilometres over one hundred years. New acquisitions have since added thousands of acres of former farmland, includin...

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Image: EricITOworld | CC BY-SA 3.0