• Circa 1851 the Victorians started to drain the Fens.
• In 1852, William Wells the local landowner at the time, asked John Lawrence an engineer, to sink the iron column into the ground.
• Over the next 150 years it monitored the peat shrinkage after the drainage of the Fens.
• It is now circa 4m (13.12ft) above ground level

Architecture:

It is a green cast-iron post that is now 4 metres tall. It is thought to have come from the Crystal Palace Exhibition hall and is now a grade II listed structure.

Social history:

The post was sunk into the ground so that the top of the pillar was flush with the peat surface, and the rest was buried and fixed to timber piles driven into the underlying clay.

Over the 150 years since the post was positioned in the Fens, the peat has vanished due to a gradual, steady process of water loss and oxidation. Holme Fen is now the lowest point in Britain.

The Fenlands were drained during the 17th century to make way for more profitable farming but this met much opposition from the locals.

The Holme Fen Nature Reserve, where the post is situated, contains one of the finest pure birch woodlands in lowland Britain. It also contains 5 hectares (12.36 acres) of rare acid grassland and heath; a similar habitat to that which would have dominated the area centuries ago.

Whittlesey Mere was once said to be the second-largest lake in Britain before it was drained in 1851. (see info stand at post)