Abstract

Although the importance of waterborne transport in the Middle Ages has recently become more controversial, its significance in the Cambridgeshire fens has received little detailed attention. This study of Isleham, on the north-eastern Cambridgeshire fen-edge, emphasises the primary role of communications by water in this region and takes earlier work a step further by showing how the form of fen-edge settlement is wholly oriented to the availability of waterways for transport, trade and communication.