A History of Collecting at Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire.
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A History of Collecting Lepidoptera at Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire, England.
Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire was once a famous collecting locality for British entomologists. Only the Hampshire New Forest could compare with Wicken Fen, as regards the number of visiting collectors in search of rare insects. The authors of The Aurelian's Fireside Companion: An Entomological Anthology (2005) gave an account of collecting in Wicken Fen. However, there is still a wealth of interesting material and where possible I have included information and images that are not included in that informative book.
William Farren junior (1926) stated that Wicken Fen was first visited by collectors about 1820 and Emmett (1972) added that before that date, they would have gone there in search of Papilio machaon and other rare insects. Barge loads of sedge were bought from Wicken and other fens along the River Cam to the quay at Cambridge. When James Charles Dale (1791-1872) was an undergraduate at Sidney Sussex College, he took a specimen of P. machaon at Cambridge quay on 24th July 1817 that can still be seen in his collection today. Attending Christ's College between 1828 & 1831, Charles Darwin hunted beetles in the sedge stacks and empty barges at Cambridge quay. Farren (1926) recorded that when his father was a boy, he often examined the large sedge heaps at the quay for pupae of the Swallowtail and that it was not uncommon to see the butterflies flying there.
John Stevens Henlow (1796–1861) bought his undergraduates from Cambridge to Wicken Fen during the late 1820s-1830s, to collect the plants and insects and among them was his protegee Charles Darwin who came in search of Coleoptera (Friday 1997, Davies, 2015). It was not until the early 1850s through the discoveries of Frederick Bond (1811-1889) that news spread among the entomological community of the Lepidoptera rarities to be found at Wicken Fen (Emmet, 1972).
Figure 1. A sketch of Wicken Fen by Mr E. Wheeler, from The Fenland Past and Present by Samuel H. Miller and Sydney B.J. Skertchly, published in 1878.
Wicken Fen is situated between the villages of Upware and Soham and is just under 12 miles (19 kilometers) north of the University City of Cambridge in Eastern England. As a collecting locality for rare moths and other insects, Wicken Fen reached its peak during the latter part of the 19th century. This surviving area of fenland was so popular with visiting collectors that in Wicken village close to the fen, there was a thriving industry in entomology. At Wicken lived a number of forgotten professional collectors and guides, Albert Houghton, Solomon Bailey, John Clark and Tom Rowlinson. John Clark took visiting entomologists by horse and cart from Wicken on day trips to other famous collecting localities, such as Chippenham Fen or those lying in the Breckland, an area of sandy grasslands. Accommodation was provided at Wicken by villagers such as Mrs Philips of Sycamores cottage and by the local Wicken village inns, the Red Lion and Maid's Head, all of which were popular with visiting collectors. The fen itself was but a short walk from the centre of the village, along Lode Lane with its rows of old turf cutters thatched cottages.
Those entomologists that choose to stay at the village of Upware to the south of Wicken fen, having arrived in a gig from the station at Waterbeach, would have noticed the large writing on one of the white gable ends of the Inn there, "No Hurry Five Miles from Anywhere ". Before 1860 the Inn was known as the Lord Nelson.
If you could afford it, you would have hired one of Wicken's professional collectors in advance who would meet you at one of the railway stations. Your guide knew every part of the fen and when and where the best insects flew. Each of these professional collectors had erected their own sugar posts to attract nocturnal moths, for there were no trees in the fen. To their sugar posts they attached bark for their mixture of Sugar, treacle and beer. The sugar posts would be ready for the arrival of their clients for the nights collecting.
The Wicken professional collectors also had their own prime spots for their Eddystone Lighthouse. A moth collector's Eddystone Lighthouse consisted of a five feet stout pole with a kind of aquarium on top that had three sides of glass and one of metal that usually had between two to four powerful paraffin lamps within. The mirror was adjusted to focus the light upon a vertical sheet stretched between two poles to create a chamber of light, to stop the moths blundering about in the beams. On dark humid nights, moths might be attracted to the lights in their hundreds, keeping the local collectors and their clients busy. The name "Eddystone Lighthouse" was taken from the lighthouse which was built on the dangerous Eddystone rocks, ten miles due south of Rame Head in Devon in south-west England. There were many biting mosquitoes in Wicken Fen and the entomologists would light their pipes, hoping the tobacco smoke would keep the plague away. At intervals, a round of the sugar posts would be made. Occasionally the sugar out did the lights in attracting rare moths. Often the lights attracted the best and most sought after species.
One came imagine the nocturnal collectors gathering together in the Wicken village public houses in the late afternoon. Here over a meal and glass or two of ale, they would discuss the previous nights collecting and with mounting excitement set forth into the fen at dusk for their collecting in the coming hours of darkness. Those interested in collecting Microlepidoptera would be out in the fen until the corncrakes started calling at dawn, for many of the smaller moth species were not on the wing until then.
William Farren : Memories of Collecting in Wicken Fen.
As a teenager, William Farren (1866-1952) became interested in collecting Lepidoptera. His father William Farren senior (1836-1887) had been a well known Cambridge collector and dealer up to the end of the 1860s but surprisingly did little encourage his sons interest. William Farren senior had given up collecting for horticulture and had established a business growing roses.
In 1883 William Farren senior decided to give up growing roses for another business, where he had more leisure time. One summer's evening out walking with his son, they had a chance encounter with a Laothoe populi (Poplar Hawk Moth) and their talk turned to moths. The father agreed to help his son in his collecting if he would take it seriously. During their excursions the following summer, they visited Wicken Fen where young Farren chased worn second-brood Swallowtails, while his father set about investigating the seeds of Thalictrium flavum (Meadow rue) to look for the larvae of the Gagitodes sagittata (Marsh Carpet Moth), an attractively marked species of the Geometridae family.
Figure 2. Gagitodes sagittata (Marsh Carpet Moth), Wicken Fen, 1890. OUMNH coll.
While they were collecting that day in Wicken Fen, the Farrens met Solomon Bailey, the professional guide and collector. Bailey told Farren senior of some changes in the Wicken Fen insects. Farren senior was disappointed to learn that both the pretty Callimorpha dominula (Scarlet Tiger) and the rare Laelia coenosa (Reed Tussock) had gone from the Fen. However, Bailey told the Farrens it was not all bad news, with the increased use of light, many formerly rare moths could be now taken comparatively easy. It was during that day that William Farren junior noticed there was an alteration in his collecting relations with his father. It was no longer just a case of his father helping his son in his collecting, all of William Farren senior's interest in Lepidoptera was revived, with the zest that had seen him share in the discovery of rare and local species in the New Forest and Isle of Wight during the 1850s and 1860s.
Close to the entrance of Wicken Fen by the main drove there were some old ponds made by the brick makers who lived in a few small thatched cottages. Opposite the brick makers cottages, stood another old thatched building that had been part of a small farm with an orchard. The Farrens rented the farm cottage for two years between 1886 & 1887. Every other week from April to October including all the weekends the Farrens, father and son, were in residence at their cottage in the Fen. They named their cottage " Catch em all", a witty reference to their collecting and to the old small farmhouses of the fens that known to the locals as Halls.
During the day, the Farrens often worked the Breckland district and Chippenham Fen returning for their nocturnal collecting at Wicken. William Farren junior with his fathers experience, soon became very knowledgeable of the moths that he collected and one of the great advantages to him was that with the influence of his father, he did not confine his collecting to the larger lepidoptera which many moth collectors did, but became fascinated with the Microlepidoptera which soon became his chief interest.
William Farren junior (1926) wrote " Often I left the cottage at 5 o'clock in the afternoon and, if the night proved good, returned to it soaked with dew from the fen vegetation when the sun was well up. We did not regularly stay out to sunrise. Usually we finished the night's work soon after midnight. But in a good night certain moths, more especially the rarer fen micros, come to light, until its rays become very pale and yellow in the dawn, and sunrise is even better for some micros than sunset. Successful Macro collecting ends with dawn, with the exception of such species as the beautiful little Idaea muricata (Purple-bordered Gold) ".
Figue 3. Idaea muricata (Purple-bordered Gold). OUMNH coll.
William Farren (1926) recalled that " his father was one of the most indefatigable collectors of insects he had ever known. The only man I have worked with who could fill more boxes in a day and night than he, was the late James William Tutt (1858–1911) with whom in two nights on Wicken Fen in 1891 collected over 800 specimens. Tutt boxed many common fen moths and Farren added" although he was a glutton for specimens, he made good scientific use of them".
1887 saw the end of the Farren's wonderful summer sojourn at their cottage " Catch em all". They chartered a barge with a man and a donkey for a safe transference to Cambridge for all of their breeding cages containing their precious larvae, rather than risk them by horse and cart along the bad fenland roads. On board the barge were the artists R.W. Macbeth and Robert Farren, William senior's brother. The artists had been staying at Catch em all cottage, painting and etching the fenland folk and scenery. The foursome set out early one morning from Wicken Lode to Reach Lode and then through the lock to the River Cam and onto the quay at Cambridge. At that time the River Cam had busy barge traffic.
1887 was to end badly for the Farrens. William Farren senior died aged just 51 through illness. During the years between 1884 & 1887, the Farrens through their collecting and exchange had 1400 species in their cabinet drawers. William Farren mentioned that he was able to add a further 300 species to the collection in the following six years by more specialized collecting.
By 1896 William Farren had given up collecting Lepidoptera except as a professional collector. He continued to be an acknowledged authority on the moths of Wicken Fen especially the Microlepidoptera. He opened a shop at 23 Regent Street in Cambridge, where he sold Natural History specimens. William Farren was a very good taxidermist and photographer, producing work of a high quality.
There are no known portraits of William Farren junior in the literature. Professor William Homan Thorpe (1955) of Cambridge University wrote the following in an obituary of William Farren " he was an attractive and impressive person with his pointed beard, his white tie and his infectious delight and enthusiasm for everything connected with natural history. Business at his Naturalist-Furrier's shop in Regent Street always seemed secondary to naturalist gossip. He was a first rate Lepidopterist with a special knowledge of the "micros" which not many people in the country could rival; and he was a good field botanist. But it is as an ornithologist that he will be remembered . He was a well known member of the pioneer band of nature photographers which followed the Keartons and which included such people as E.L. Turner, Douglas English, Riley Fortune etc. He travelled extensively and was always ready to give beautifully illustrated lectures on the birds of the Spanish Marismas, the Highlands, or the Dutch Meres". (Walters 1994).
The Sale of the Farren collection.
William Farren's extensive collection was sold in different lots over two days at the J.C. Stevens rooms in Covent Garden in London during 1896. Richard South (1896) gave details of the Sale. The great entomologist said that although the collection had been rather neglected of late and their was mold in the drawers, the insects on a whole were in good order. He commented that Farren's collection contained the greatest selection of fenland Lepidoptera sold at Stevens for a long while. The different lots of the Farren collection realized some good prices and the dealers Janson and Watkins & Donaster were among the bidders.
In the Farren collection there was a fine series of Papilio machaon varieties and a pair of Lycaena dispar set as undersides that had been collected by none other than the famous entomologist John Curtis (1791-1862). There was a unique specimen of Gagitodes sagittata without the forewing band. Richard South recorded that two aberrations of the White Ermine (Arctia menthastri= Spilosoma lubricipeda) were very special and he had not seen them before ; one was shot with purple and another had unusual dark forewings. Newman added the collection contained the best series he had seen of a form of the usually coastal Marbled Green, Bryophila impar, which is now known as Nyctobrya muralis form impar Warren. The rare N. muralis f. impar was confined to Cambridge and the Farrens had found the moth resting on the walls around the City.
Albert Houghton and Solomon Bailey, the Wicken Fen professional collectors.
The most sought after Wicken professional collectors were Albert Houghton and Solomon Bailey. During the day, Albert Houghton was hard at work as the village boot maker. He was kept busy as all the local folk wore stout leather working boots that were always in a constant state of repair. Solomon Bailey was a small holder and both he and Albert Houghton lived in small thatched cottages within the village. For a time, Albert Houghton also served the village as a postman. Day (1995) recalled Houghton had a large personal collection of fenland Lepidoptera that had vanished without trace. Houghton married a local girl Jemima and they had seven children.
The late Anthony Day grew up in Wicken village and his father knew both Albert Houghton and Solomon Bailey. Day (1995) wrote " the night moth catches were abundant in my childhood, fitting up their ghostly sheets in the open spaces, becoming as reluctant as keen fisherman to go home while there was still a chance of a big catch". Day recalled that Houghton bred a unique Swallowtail that was purchased by Lord Rothschild. Albert Houghton died in 1896 aged just 56. In a later Book, published in 2005, Day added " so familiar during my childhood were the white sheets and lamps at dusk, attracting the moths, sometimes with the aid of an aromatic mixture that included beer, sugar black treacle, rum and essence of pear".
A remarkable late 19th century photograph was found by J.M. Chalmers Hunt in the possession of a Wicken Fen keeper. It shows the professional collector Albert Houghton with an unknown Client during 1892 who is holding a kite net next to an Eddystone Lighthouse.
Chalmers Hunt (1966) remarked how open Wicken Fen was, when the photograph (Fig 4) showing Albert Houghton at his light was taken, compared to the 1960s, by then it was all dense Sedge and Reed. In the background of the photograph beyond Houghton you can see two stacks of sedge. The reed cutters would have kept areas of the fen open and free of scrub invasion. The reed cutting benefited a number of insects of the fen such as the now extinct Wicken Fen specialty Papilio machaon. Wicken Fen at that time was mainly dry ground during the summer months.
Figure 4. Albert Houghton right with a client next to his Eddystone Lighthouse in Wicken Fen.
In the first book of Wicken, A Fen Village in old photographs by Anthony Day (1990) there is a late 19th century photograph of the professional collector Solomon Bailey with his version of the Eddystone Lighthouse that has a single light. The original image was in the photographic collection of Anthony Day. Solomon Bailey who lived in Chapel Lane is holding a short handled butterfly net that would have been ideal for sheet and light work. This image was also used by Salmon and Edwards (2005) but the image is cropped in their book. The photographs of Houghton and Bailey appear to be the earliest known examples, showing collectors using lights to attract moths.
Wicken Fen : A Reserve for Entomologists and The National Trust.
Herbert Gross in 1899 made a plea in the Science Gossip Magazine that Wicken Fen, the last remnant of true Fenland in Cambridgeshire should be saved. He wrote that the drainage of the adjacent Burwell Fen had already seen the lost of Laelia coenosa and by the drainage of Wicken, many rare plants and insects such as Papilio machaon would disappear.
The parcels of land within Wicken Fen were privately owned and when a few acres of land came up for sale in 1899 the National Trust bought them. As other areas were sold, George Henry Verrall the president of the Entomological Society with other colleagues purchased them. Charles Rothschild the banker and entomologist aged just 22, bought the remaining area of the fen in 1910. These entomologists were visionary pioneers conversationalists who secured the future of the fen from drainage and agricultural improvement. However, it must be said that these wealthy collectors prime motive was to save the insects of the fen for visiting Entomologists.
Both Verrall and Rothschild and others gave their parts of Wicken Fen to the National Trust and the old fenland became Britain's first nature reserve. During the same period, Charles Rothschild also bought Woodwalton Fen, a survivor of the vast Great Fen of Huntingdonshire. The National Trust declined Rothschilds offer of Woodwalton Fen and for many years it was his own private reserve.
Figure 5. Charles Rothschild (1877–1923) with a butterfly net. His wife Rózsika is in the background.
The idea of a nature reserve during those early days was to leave it to its own devices. According to Farren (1926) there was a decline in sedge cutting at Wicken Fen from 1885 onward. When the National Trust acquired the reserve, Farren noted it was becoming overgrown and that the Fenland plants upon which the larvae of insects fed upon were becoming stifled and could not compete with the new vigorous growth. Farren went to see Charles Rothschild who instigated a new regime of cutting and bush clearing until his tragic death during 1923.
Collecting certainly continued unabated at Wicken Fen up until the Second War World. The professionals may have departed but collectors continued to come. It was the keeper's job, Bill Barnes (Figure 13) to provide for these collectors. Ronald Demuth gave an interesting account of these later moth hunters activities at Wicken Fen in the Entomologist's Gazette that was also published in the Aurelians Fireside Companion (2005). Collectors first had to visit Bill Barnes cottage by the entrance to the fen and pay their 10 shillings collecting fee.
According to Ronald Demuth if you were an Edward Cockayne or a Hubert Edelsen you got a prime spot in the main drove for you light and sugar and if like Demuth you were an unknown Cambridge undergraduate you got a 'bit of the rest'. Athetis pallustris (The Marsh Moth) Hübner,1808 is to anybody but a moth hunter an exceedingly drab brown moth, but such was its rarity, in its season the drove at Wicken was fully booked. Today this moth is extinct in the fens. There was one part of the reserve across a wide lode that collectors were not allowed to go, except that is for Edelsen who specialized in the Wainscots moths of the Noctuinae family. Perhaps understandably, this made young collectors like Demuth jealous who imagined Edelsen taking all sorts of rarities in his private preserve.
Day (1995) in his personal reminiscences wrote "Once the whole of Wicken Fen was in the hands of the National Trust the harvesting of the sedge was suspended. The scientists were intrigued to discover what else nature would provide there but it was soon evident that scrub would alter the fen beyond recognition- a character largely man made by the systematic taking of the sedge. Before preservation measures were introduced, nature took a hand with the help of a carelessly discarded cigarette, the sedge Fen at Wicken became an inferno. Yet a year later, the fen was fresh and green again and well populated by birds and insects while the flowers needed a little longer. Therefore, the scrub was allowed to return, but constant attention centers on preserving the old character of the fen"..
This period of neglect of Wicken Fen continued and during the Second War the adjacent and privately owned Adventures Fen was burnt and then drained for cultivation (Day 1995). As a direct result of the draining of Adventures Fen, a cessation of reed cutting and scrub encroachment, the foodplant of Papilio machaon britannicus, the Milk Parsley (Peucedanum palustre) had become rare at Wicken, resulting in the loss of a butterfly during the 1950s. The Swallowtail in its last remaining fenland locality outside of the Norfolk Broads, should have been very embodiment Wicken Fen as a nature reserve. It ironic that when the National Trust acquired the fen they prohibited the locals from entering the Fen to collect the Papilio machaon larvae and pupae.
Farren (1926) wrote of Papilio machaon, "The one species collecting might exterminate or render very rare is the Swallowtail butterfly. It has its good and bad years, and during the last years has appeared to be plentiful enough, but I doubt if it is as numerous as it was in the eighties, when it is no exaggeration to say the larvae were collected by local professionals in their thousands". However, the extinction of the Swallowtail butterfly was not bought about by the local fen workers or collectors but by precisely the reasons that Farren had mentioned to Rothschild, a cession of reed cutting which directly led to the habitat becoming unsuitable. Due to these changes of habitat at Wicken Fen, all the attempts to reintroduce Papilio machaon there have failed.
Figure 6. A Pair of Papilio machaon from Wicken Fen.
Emmet writing in 1972 observed that "if you look at the Houghton' photograph with his light trap (Fig 4), you see can acres of open Fen but now a dense carr of Sallow, Buckthorn, Hawthorn and other dominated the landscape with just small areas of sedge in between".
More recently Wicken Fen has seen better management and some scrub has been cleared and there are still large reed beds that attract a wide variety of wildlife. A number of special fenland moths are still found at Wicken including the pretty little, Deltote bankiana (Silver Barred) Fabricius, 1775 and the Phragmataecia castaneae (Reed Leopard) Hübner, 1790. During 2001, the National Trust bought the agricultural land that was once Burwell Fen, and are in the process of habitat restoration, created reed beds and marshes. In 1999 the National Trust launched the Wicken Fen Vision, a 100 year plan to extend the wetlands from Wicken to the outskirts of Cambridge, covering an area of 5300 sq hectares. However, sadly many of the special plants, birds, insects and Fenland people will be missing.
Figure 7. Deltote bankiana (Silver Barred) Wicken Fen.
Figure 8 & 9. Phragmataecia castaneae (Reed Leopard) Wicken Fen. Top, male, bottom female.
References.
Chalmers-Hunt, J.M. 1966. Early photograph taken at Wicken Fen, Cambs, with notes on its
associations. Entomologists' Record and Journal of Variation, 78: 298.
Day A, 1990. Wicken A Fen Village in old Photographs. S.B. Publications.
Day A, 1995. Wicken a Fen Village : A second selection of old photographs : S.B. Publications Sussex.
Day A, 2005. Wicken a Fen Village : A third selection of old photographs : John Nickalls Publications.
Davies D. 2015. Cuckoo cheating Nature. Boomsbury Publishing.
Emmet A.M. 1972. Proceedings and transactions of the British Entomological and Natural History. Wicken Fen with a special reference to its Microlepidoptera. Vol 5, pp : 44-74.
Farren W. 1926. Memories of Wicken Fen : The Natural History of Wicken Fen, ed. by J.S. Gardiner : Cambridge, Bowes & Bowes.
Friday L. 1997. Wicken Fen: the making of a wetland nature reserve. Harley Books.
Gardiner J.S. 1923. The Natural History of Wicken Fen. Vol 1. : Cambridge,
Bowes & Bowes.
Gross H. 1899. The Preservation of Wicken Fen, Science Gossip. Vol 5, pp 291-292.
Salmon M. A. & Edwards P.J. 2005. Aurelian's Fireside Companion : Paphia Publishing.
South R. 1896. Notes and Observations. William Farren sale. Entomologist. Vol 29, pp 57-58.
Tutt J.W. 1891. Notes on Collecting : Wicken Fen. The Entomologist's Record and Journal of Variation. Vol 2, pp 176-179.
Tutt J. W. 1892. Notes on Collecting : Wicken Fen. The Entomologist's Record and Journal of Variation. Vol 3, pp 196-202.
Tutt J.W. 1895. Random Recollections of Woodland Fen and Hill : London.
Miller, S. H. & Skertchly B.J.S. 1878. The Fenland Past and Present. London : Longmans, Green & Co.
Walters M. 1994. Nature in Cambridgeshire, Vol 36.
Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire was once a famous collecting locality for British entomologists. Only the Hampshire New Forest could compare with Wicken Fen, as regards the number of visiting collectors in search of rare insects. The authors of The Aurelian's Fireside Companion: An Entomological Anthology (2005) gave an account of collecting in Wicken Fen. However, there is still a wealth of interesting material and where possible I have included information and images that are not included in that informative book.
William Farren junior (1926) stated that Wicken Fen was first visited by collectors about 1820 and Emmett (1972) added that before that date, they would have gone there in search of Papilio machaon and other rare insects. Barge loads of sedge were bought from Wicken and other fens along the River Cam to the quay at Cambridge. When James Charles Dale (1791-1872) was an undergraduate at Sidney Sussex College, he took a specimen of P. machaon at Cambridge quay on 24th July 1817 that can still be seen in his collection today. Attending Christ's College between 1828 & 1831, Charles Darwin hunted beetles in the sedge stacks and empty barges at Cambridge quay. Farren (1926) recorded that when his father was a boy, he often examined the large sedge heaps at the quay for pupae of the Swallowtail and that it was not uncommon to see the butterflies flying there.
John Stevens Henlow (1796–1861) bought his undergraduates from Cambridge to Wicken Fen during the late 1820s-1830s, to collect the plants and insects and among them was his protegee Charles Darwin who came in search of Coleoptera (Friday 1997, Davies, 2015). It was not until the early 1850s through the discoveries of Frederick Bond (1811-1889) that news spread among the entomological community of the Lepidoptera rarities to be found at Wicken Fen (Emmet, 1972).
Figure 1. A sketch of Wicken Fen by Mr E. Wheeler, from The Fenland Past and Present by Samuel H. Miller and Sydney B.J. Skertchly, published in 1878.
Wicken Fen is situated between the villages of Upware and Soham and is just under 12 miles (19 kilometers) north of the University City of Cambridge in Eastern England. As a collecting locality for rare moths and other insects, Wicken Fen reached its peak during the latter part of the 19th century. This surviving area of fenland was so popular with visiting collectors that in Wicken village close to the fen, there was a thriving industry in entomology. At Wicken lived a number of forgotten professional collectors and guides, Albert Houghton, Solomon Bailey, John Clark and Tom Rowlinson. John Clark took visiting entomologists by horse and cart from Wicken on day trips to other famous collecting localities, such as Chippenham Fen or those lying in the Breckland, an area of sandy grasslands. Accommodation was provided at Wicken by villagers such as Mrs Philips of Sycamores cottage and by the local Wicken village inns, the Red Lion and Maid's Head, all of which were popular with visiting collectors. The fen itself was but a short walk from the centre of the village, along Lode Lane with its rows of old turf cutters thatched cottages.
Those entomologists that choose to stay at the village of Upware to the south of Wicken fen, having arrived in a gig from the station at Waterbeach, would have noticed the large writing on one of the white gable ends of the Inn there, "No Hurry Five Miles from Anywhere ". Before 1860 the Inn was known as the Lord Nelson.
If you could afford it, you would have hired one of Wicken's professional collectors in advance who would meet you at one of the railway stations. Your guide knew every part of the fen and when and where the best insects flew. Each of these professional collectors had erected their own sugar posts to attract nocturnal moths, for there were no trees in the fen. To their sugar posts they attached bark for their mixture of Sugar, treacle and beer. The sugar posts would be ready for the arrival of their clients for the nights collecting.
The Wicken professional collectors also had their own prime spots for their Eddystone Lighthouse. A moth collector's Eddystone Lighthouse consisted of a five feet stout pole with a kind of aquarium on top that had three sides of glass and one of metal that usually had between two to four powerful paraffin lamps within. The mirror was adjusted to focus the light upon a vertical sheet stretched between two poles to create a chamber of light, to stop the moths blundering about in the beams. On dark humid nights, moths might be attracted to the lights in their hundreds, keeping the local collectors and their clients busy. The name "Eddystone Lighthouse" was taken from the lighthouse which was built on the dangerous Eddystone rocks, ten miles due south of Rame Head in Devon in south-west England. There were many biting mosquitoes in Wicken Fen and the entomologists would light their pipes, hoping the tobacco smoke would keep the plague away. At intervals, a round of the sugar posts would be made. Occasionally the sugar out did the lights in attracting rare moths. Often the lights attracted the best and most sought after species.
One came imagine the nocturnal collectors gathering together in the Wicken village public houses in the late afternoon. Here over a meal and glass or two of ale, they would discuss the previous nights collecting and with mounting excitement set forth into the fen at dusk for their collecting in the coming hours of darkness. Those interested in collecting Microlepidoptera would be out in the fen until the corncrakes started calling at dawn, for many of the smaller moth species were not on the wing until then.
William Farren : Memories of Collecting in Wicken Fen.
As a teenager, William Farren (1866-1952) became interested in collecting Lepidoptera. His father William Farren senior (1836-1887) had been a well known Cambridge collector and dealer up to the end of the 1860s but surprisingly did little encourage his sons interest. William Farren senior had given up collecting for horticulture and had established a business growing roses.
In 1883 William Farren senior decided to give up growing roses for another business, where he had more leisure time. One summer's evening out walking with his son, they had a chance encounter with a Laothoe populi (Poplar Hawk Moth) and their talk turned to moths. The father agreed to help his son in his collecting if he would take it seriously. During their excursions the following summer, they visited Wicken Fen where young Farren chased worn second-brood Swallowtails, while his father set about investigating the seeds of Thalictrium flavum (Meadow rue) to look for the larvae of the Gagitodes sagittata (Marsh Carpet Moth), an attractively marked species of the Geometridae family.
Figure 2. Gagitodes sagittata (Marsh Carpet Moth), Wicken Fen, 1890. OUMNH coll.
While they were collecting that day in Wicken Fen, the Farrens met Solomon Bailey, the professional guide and collector. Bailey told Farren senior of some changes in the Wicken Fen insects. Farren senior was disappointed to learn that both the pretty Callimorpha dominula (Scarlet Tiger) and the rare Laelia coenosa (Reed Tussock) had gone from the Fen. However, Bailey told the Farrens it was not all bad news, with the increased use of light, many formerly rare moths could be now taken comparatively easy. It was during that day that William Farren junior noticed there was an alteration in his collecting relations with his father. It was no longer just a case of his father helping his son in his collecting, all of William Farren senior's interest in Lepidoptera was revived, with the zest that had seen him share in the discovery of rare and local species in the New Forest and Isle of Wight during the 1850s and 1860s.
Close to the entrance of Wicken Fen by the main drove there were some old ponds made by the brick makers who lived in a few small thatched cottages. Opposite the brick makers cottages, stood another old thatched building that had been part of a small farm with an orchard. The Farrens rented the farm cottage for two years between 1886 & 1887. Every other week from April to October including all the weekends the Farrens, father and son, were in residence at their cottage in the Fen. They named their cottage " Catch em all", a witty reference to their collecting and to the old small farmhouses of the fens that known to the locals as Halls.
During the day, the Farrens often worked the Breckland district and Chippenham Fen returning for their nocturnal collecting at Wicken. William Farren junior with his fathers experience, soon became very knowledgeable of the moths that he collected and one of the great advantages to him was that with the influence of his father, he did not confine his collecting to the larger lepidoptera which many moth collectors did, but became fascinated with the Microlepidoptera which soon became his chief interest.
William Farren junior (1926) wrote " Often I left the cottage at 5 o'clock in the afternoon and, if the night proved good, returned to it soaked with dew from the fen vegetation when the sun was well up. We did not regularly stay out to sunrise. Usually we finished the night's work soon after midnight. But in a good night certain moths, more especially the rarer fen micros, come to light, until its rays become very pale and yellow in the dawn, and sunrise is even better for some micros than sunset. Successful Macro collecting ends with dawn, with the exception of such species as the beautiful little Idaea muricata (Purple-bordered Gold) ".
Figue 3. Idaea muricata (Purple-bordered Gold). OUMNH coll.
William Farren (1926) recalled that " his father was one of the most indefatigable collectors of insects he had ever known. The only man I have worked with who could fill more boxes in a day and night than he, was the late James William Tutt (1858–1911) with whom in two nights on Wicken Fen in 1891 collected over 800 specimens. Tutt boxed many common fen moths and Farren added" although he was a glutton for specimens, he made good scientific use of them".
1887 saw the end of the Farren's wonderful summer sojourn at their cottage " Catch em all". They chartered a barge with a man and a donkey for a safe transference to Cambridge for all of their breeding cages containing their precious larvae, rather than risk them by horse and cart along the bad fenland roads. On board the barge were the artists R.W. Macbeth and Robert Farren, William senior's brother. The artists had been staying at Catch em all cottage, painting and etching the fenland folk and scenery. The foursome set out early one morning from Wicken Lode to Reach Lode and then through the lock to the River Cam and onto the quay at Cambridge. At that time the River Cam had busy barge traffic.
1887 was to end badly for the Farrens. William Farren senior died aged just 51 through illness. During the years between 1884 & 1887, the Farrens through their collecting and exchange had 1400 species in their cabinet drawers. William Farren mentioned that he was able to add a further 300 species to the collection in the following six years by more specialized collecting.
By 1896 William Farren had given up collecting Lepidoptera except as a professional collector. He continued to be an acknowledged authority on the moths of Wicken Fen especially the Microlepidoptera. He opened a shop at 23 Regent Street in Cambridge, where he sold Natural History specimens. William Farren was a very good taxidermist and photographer, producing work of a high quality.
There are no known portraits of William Farren junior in the literature. Professor William Homan Thorpe (1955) of Cambridge University wrote the following in an obituary of William Farren " he was an attractive and impressive person with his pointed beard, his white tie and his infectious delight and enthusiasm for everything connected with natural history. Business at his Naturalist-Furrier's shop in Regent Street always seemed secondary to naturalist gossip. He was a first rate Lepidopterist with a special knowledge of the "micros" which not many people in the country could rival; and he was a good field botanist. But it is as an ornithologist that he will be remembered . He was a well known member of the pioneer band of nature photographers which followed the Keartons and which included such people as E.L. Turner, Douglas English, Riley Fortune etc. He travelled extensively and was always ready to give beautifully illustrated lectures on the birds of the Spanish Marismas, the Highlands, or the Dutch Meres". (Walters 1994).
The Sale of the Farren collection.
William Farren's extensive collection was sold in different lots over two days at the J.C. Stevens rooms in Covent Garden in London during 1896. Richard South (1896) gave details of the Sale. The great entomologist said that although the collection had been rather neglected of late and their was mold in the drawers, the insects on a whole were in good order. He commented that Farren's collection contained the greatest selection of fenland Lepidoptera sold at Stevens for a long while. The different lots of the Farren collection realized some good prices and the dealers Janson and Watkins & Donaster were among the bidders.
In the Farren collection there was a fine series of Papilio machaon varieties and a pair of Lycaena dispar set as undersides that had been collected by none other than the famous entomologist John Curtis (1791-1862). There was a unique specimen of Gagitodes sagittata without the forewing band. Richard South recorded that two aberrations of the White Ermine (Arctia menthastri= Spilosoma lubricipeda) were very special and he had not seen them before ; one was shot with purple and another had unusual dark forewings. Newman added the collection contained the best series he had seen of a form of the usually coastal Marbled Green, Bryophila impar, which is now known as Nyctobrya muralis form impar Warren. The rare N. muralis f. impar was confined to Cambridge and the Farrens had found the moth resting on the walls around the City.
Albert Houghton and Solomon Bailey, the Wicken Fen professional collectors.
The most sought after Wicken professional collectors were Albert Houghton and Solomon Bailey. During the day, Albert Houghton was hard at work as the village boot maker. He was kept busy as all the local folk wore stout leather working boots that were always in a constant state of repair. Solomon Bailey was a small holder and both he and Albert Houghton lived in small thatched cottages within the village. For a time, Albert Houghton also served the village as a postman. Day (1995) recalled Houghton had a large personal collection of fenland Lepidoptera that had vanished without trace. Houghton married a local girl Jemima and they had seven children.
The late Anthony Day grew up in Wicken village and his father knew both Albert Houghton and Solomon Bailey. Day (1995) wrote " the night moth catches were abundant in my childhood, fitting up their ghostly sheets in the open spaces, becoming as reluctant as keen fisherman to go home while there was still a chance of a big catch". Day recalled that Houghton bred a unique Swallowtail that was purchased by Lord Rothschild. Albert Houghton died in 1896 aged just 56. In a later Book, published in 2005, Day added " so familiar during my childhood were the white sheets and lamps at dusk, attracting the moths, sometimes with the aid of an aromatic mixture that included beer, sugar black treacle, rum and essence of pear".
A remarkable late 19th century photograph was found by J.M. Chalmers Hunt in the possession of a Wicken Fen keeper. It shows the professional collector Albert Houghton with an unknown Client during 1892 who is holding a kite net next to an Eddystone Lighthouse.
Chalmers Hunt (1966) remarked how open Wicken Fen was, when the photograph (Fig 4) showing Albert Houghton at his light was taken, compared to the 1960s, by then it was all dense Sedge and Reed. In the background of the photograph beyond Houghton you can see two stacks of sedge. The reed cutters would have kept areas of the fen open and free of scrub invasion. The reed cutting benefited a number of insects of the fen such as the now extinct Wicken Fen specialty Papilio machaon. Wicken Fen at that time was mainly dry ground during the summer months.
Figure 4. Albert Houghton right with a client next to his Eddystone Lighthouse in Wicken Fen.
In the first book of Wicken, A Fen Village in old photographs by Anthony Day (1990) there is a late 19th century photograph of the professional collector Solomon Bailey with his version of the Eddystone Lighthouse that has a single light. The original image was in the photographic collection of Anthony Day. Solomon Bailey who lived in Chapel Lane is holding a short handled butterfly net that would have been ideal for sheet and light work. This image was also used by Salmon and Edwards (2005) but the image is cropped in their book. The photographs of Houghton and Bailey appear to be the earliest known examples, showing collectors using lights to attract moths.
Wicken Fen : A Reserve for Entomologists and The National Trust.
Herbert Gross in 1899 made a plea in the Science Gossip Magazine that Wicken Fen, the last remnant of true Fenland in Cambridgeshire should be saved. He wrote that the drainage of the adjacent Burwell Fen had already seen the lost of Laelia coenosa and by the drainage of Wicken, many rare plants and insects such as Papilio machaon would disappear.
The parcels of land within Wicken Fen were privately owned and when a few acres of land came up for sale in 1899 the National Trust bought them. As other areas were sold, George Henry Verrall the president of the Entomological Society with other colleagues purchased them. Charles Rothschild the banker and entomologist aged just 22, bought the remaining area of the fen in 1910. These entomologists were visionary pioneers conversationalists who secured the future of the fen from drainage and agricultural improvement. However, it must be said that these wealthy collectors prime motive was to save the insects of the fen for visiting Entomologists.
Both Verrall and Rothschild and others gave their parts of Wicken Fen to the National Trust and the old fenland became Britain's first nature reserve. During the same period, Charles Rothschild also bought Woodwalton Fen, a survivor of the vast Great Fen of Huntingdonshire. The National Trust declined Rothschilds offer of Woodwalton Fen and for many years it was his own private reserve.
Figure 5. Charles Rothschild (1877–1923) with a butterfly net. His wife Rózsika is in the background.
The idea of a nature reserve during those early days was to leave it to its own devices. According to Farren (1926) there was a decline in sedge cutting at Wicken Fen from 1885 onward. When the National Trust acquired the reserve, Farren noted it was becoming overgrown and that the Fenland plants upon which the larvae of insects fed upon were becoming stifled and could not compete with the new vigorous growth. Farren went to see Charles Rothschild who instigated a new regime of cutting and bush clearing until his tragic death during 1923.
Collecting certainly continued unabated at Wicken Fen up until the Second War World. The professionals may have departed but collectors continued to come. It was the keeper's job, Bill Barnes (Figure 13) to provide for these collectors. Ronald Demuth gave an interesting account of these later moth hunters activities at Wicken Fen in the Entomologist's Gazette that was also published in the Aurelians Fireside Companion (2005). Collectors first had to visit Bill Barnes cottage by the entrance to the fen and pay their 10 shillings collecting fee.
According to Ronald Demuth if you were an Edward Cockayne or a Hubert Edelsen you got a prime spot in the main drove for you light and sugar and if like Demuth you were an unknown Cambridge undergraduate you got a 'bit of the rest'. Athetis pallustris (The Marsh Moth) Hübner,1808 is to anybody but a moth hunter an exceedingly drab brown moth, but such was its rarity, in its season the drove at Wicken was fully booked. Today this moth is extinct in the fens. There was one part of the reserve across a wide lode that collectors were not allowed to go, except that is for Edelsen who specialized in the Wainscots moths of the Noctuinae family. Perhaps understandably, this made young collectors like Demuth jealous who imagined Edelsen taking all sorts of rarities in his private preserve.
Day (1995) in his personal reminiscences wrote "Once the whole of Wicken Fen was in the hands of the National Trust the harvesting of the sedge was suspended. The scientists were intrigued to discover what else nature would provide there but it was soon evident that scrub would alter the fen beyond recognition- a character largely man made by the systematic taking of the sedge. Before preservation measures were introduced, nature took a hand with the help of a carelessly discarded cigarette, the sedge Fen at Wicken became an inferno. Yet a year later, the fen was fresh and green again and well populated by birds and insects while the flowers needed a little longer. Therefore, the scrub was allowed to return, but constant attention centers on preserving the old character of the fen"..
This period of neglect of Wicken Fen continued and during the Second War the adjacent and privately owned Adventures Fen was burnt and then drained for cultivation (Day 1995). As a direct result of the draining of Adventures Fen, a cessation of reed cutting and scrub encroachment, the foodplant of Papilio machaon britannicus, the Milk Parsley (Peucedanum palustre) had become rare at Wicken, resulting in the loss of a butterfly during the 1950s. The Swallowtail in its last remaining fenland locality outside of the Norfolk Broads, should have been very embodiment Wicken Fen as a nature reserve. It ironic that when the National Trust acquired the fen they prohibited the locals from entering the Fen to collect the Papilio machaon larvae and pupae.
Farren (1926) wrote of Papilio machaon, "The one species collecting might exterminate or render very rare is the Swallowtail butterfly. It has its good and bad years, and during the last years has appeared to be plentiful enough, but I doubt if it is as numerous as it was in the eighties, when it is no exaggeration to say the larvae were collected by local professionals in their thousands". However, the extinction of the Swallowtail butterfly was not bought about by the local fen workers or collectors but by precisely the reasons that Farren had mentioned to Rothschild, a cession of reed cutting which directly led to the habitat becoming unsuitable. Due to these changes of habitat at Wicken Fen, all the attempts to reintroduce Papilio machaon there have failed.
Figure 6. A Pair of Papilio machaon from Wicken Fen.
Emmet writing in 1972 observed that "if you look at the Houghton' photograph with his light trap (Fig 4), you see can acres of open Fen but now a dense carr of Sallow, Buckthorn, Hawthorn and other dominated the landscape with just small areas of sedge in between".
More recently Wicken Fen has seen better management and some scrub has been cleared and there are still large reed beds that attract a wide variety of wildlife. A number of special fenland moths are still found at Wicken including the pretty little, Deltote bankiana (Silver Barred) Fabricius, 1775 and the Phragmataecia castaneae (Reed Leopard) Hübner, 1790. During 2001, the National Trust bought the agricultural land that was once Burwell Fen, and are in the process of habitat restoration, created reed beds and marshes. In 1999 the National Trust launched the Wicken Fen Vision, a 100 year plan to extend the wetlands from Wicken to the outskirts of Cambridge, covering an area of 5300 sq hectares. However, sadly many of the special plants, birds, insects and Fenland people will be missing.
Figure 7. Deltote bankiana (Silver Barred) Wicken Fen.
Figure 8 & 9. Phragmataecia castaneae (Reed Leopard) Wicken Fen. Top, male, bottom female.
References.
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