artificial river across the fen, the Old Ea. At the edge of the town, it turns away from the now hidden river bed, almost eastwards across the black, humic soil of Bourne North Fen. Here we begin to see The Fens as the region more typically is, a broad, nearly flat, agricultural land. At , the road turns due eastwards at Friar Bar, where to judge by its name, at one stage was a toll bar. The Ordnance Survey does not note it but on the Exeter Estate book, it is called Friers Bar. The road from Bourne to Spalding had been turnpiked in 1822, after the survey had begun. So it looks as though the Ordnance Survey had overlooked it. From here, the road runs , straight to Twenty. The Car Dyke marked the western boundary of the royal forest decreed, by one of the Norman kings. It extended south and east, across the fens to the Welland. There seems to be no precise agreement as to when the land was disafforested. It was somewhere between 1190 and 1230. The obvious occasion was the signing of Magna Carta in 1215 or perhaps, on one of its re-issues. That document mentions King John's afforestations. Roads on the black soils tend to crumble at the edges as the soft humus collapses and oxidises. This road is typical of fen roads, in needing frequent attention to deal with that. It is typical too, in that it rises and falls as it passes over the silt banks left amongst the peat by small to medium marine creeks from the Middle Bronze Age, 3 to 3½ thousand years ago. This was before the peat in the soil was laid down. In the black fens, the buildings are virtually always to be found on these old creeks, known as roddons. The many small roddons in Bourne North Fen merge at Twenty. There, the road uses part of this larger roddon by turning along it towards Guthram. Nowadays, this place is called Guthram Gowt but until the steam drainage engine was erected there, in 184?, it was Guthram Cote. In the late medieval period, people lived on the fen edge and the Townlands but the fens themselves were thinly populated. There were however, a few comparatively grand establishments called Halls, Neslam Hall at , for example. It was a grange of Sempringham Priory on the site