The Romans built some embankments along the Wash, and an ancient tradition holds that these were part of a scheme to drain the Fens. Comprising about a half-million acres, it was mostly reedy, uninhabited swamp during historical times, although the last glacier left islands of higher ground. The Fens district of England lies south of the Wash, a silted-up bay of the North Sea. No one could deny that Manea Fen looks flat. Armed with this experimental evidence and a long list of scriptures, Rowbotham had attempted to impose upon the colony the doctrine that the earth is flat. In their spare time, Secretary Rowbotham and some like-minded colonists performed experiments on this stretch of the canal to determine the curvature of the waters. To Welney Bridge, a distance of about six miles. The canal runs perfectly straight and unobstructed from Welche’s Dam The headquarters of the Cambridgeshire Community stood on the east bank of the Old Bedford Canal, just north of Welche’s Dam.
Now, less than a year later, it was torn by dissension, and most of the colonists were assembled to forcibly expel Rowbotham from office. Founded in 1838, the colony was supposed to exemplify the New Moral World envisioned by Robert Owen, England’s leading socialist. Rowbotham was Secretary of the Cambridgeshire Community, a socialist colony at Manea Fen in central England. Brewed in Paradise, and 21-year-old Samuel Birley Rowbotham faced the challenge pistol in hand.
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