Large waste areas were brought under cultivation in the 17th century through the drainage of the fen-district, which was brought to completion about 1652 through the labors of Cornelius Vermuyden, a Dutchman.

Although Oliver Cromwell ( who was the Member of Parliament for Cambridge ) handed over his command of the Army's cavalry when the Ordinance was enacted, Fairfax requested his services when another officer ( Colonel Bartholomew Vermuyden ) wished to emigrate.

The first sough, designed by Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, knighted for his work in draining the East Anglian fens, was driven over a twenty year period from a point on Cromford Hill, between Cromford and Wirksworth, into an area called the Dovegang.

Vermuyden was to receive one third of the drained land, most of which had previously been common, as recompense for his investment, and to finance the draining he sold shares in this land to other investors, including some fellow Dutchmen ; some French and Walloon Protestant refugees also settled in the area as landowners or tenants.

The Isle is known for the early influences of the Dutchman, Cornelius Vermuyden who initiated the realignment of several of the highland carriers flowing through the district allowing increased agricultural production.

The leader of one of these syndicates was the Earl of Bedford, who employed Cornelius Vermuyden as engineer.

Blair argues for a date soon after the New Bedford River was built, however, since Welches Dam is named after Edmund Welche, who worked with Vermuyden, and the dam in question was originally built across the Old Bedford River.

In 1630, King Charles I granted a drainage charter to the 4th Earl of Bedford who engaged the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden to construct the two Bedford rivers.

Sir Cornelius Wasterdyk Vermuyden ( Sint-Maartensdijk, 1595 – London, 11 October 1677 ) was a Dutch engineer who introduced Dutch reclamation methods to Britain, and made the first important attempts to drain The Fens of East Anglia.

* In search of the great Dutchman Cornelius Vermuyden, who reclaimed the Fens, including walking tour

In the article she recalls a story, collected in the Ancholme Valley, told to her by an older person who spoke of a curse of pestilence that had been cast upon his village by the Tiddy Mun, who was angered at the draining of the Fens by the Dutch, led by Cornelius Vermuyden, in the seventeenth century.

The idea may have been introduced to the area by Dutch workers who came to Britain with Cornelius Vermuyden who is noted for his drainage schemes in the English Fens and the nearby Isle of Axholme.

The influence of the Dutch who, under the leadership of the engineer Vermuyden, came to drain the Fens, can be seen in several of Over's older houses – The Old Black Horse in the High Street and the Ivy House in Fen End are the most obvious, with their rounded end-walls and angled brick-ties.

Vermuyden sough, named after the Dutch engineer Sir Cornelius Vermuyden who planned it, took twenty years to dig.

A second drainage Act was obtained in 1649, and Vermuyden oversaw the construction of the New Bedford River, parallel to the Old Bedford River, which was completed in 1652.

The Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden was engaged to oversee the work, which included nine major drainage channels, including the Bedford River, which ran from Earith to Salter's Lode.

However, in 1626 the Dutch drainage engineer Cornelius Vermuyden was appointed by King Charles I to drain Hatfield Chase.

* October 11-Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, Dutch-born drainage engineer ( born 1595 ).

Dutch engineers, notably Cornelius Vermuyden, were commissioned to undertake grand schemes which still form the basis of the modern drainage system.

Charles I appointed Vermuyden as his own agent for the draining on 19 September 1639, but it was not until 5 August that Vermuyden received approval for his drainage plan.

In the reign of King Charles I, the Dutch drainage engineer Cornelius Vermuyden set about draining Hatfield Chase, containing some of wetland, in 1626.

From 1629 he was taking an entrepreneurial interest in the lead mines of Derbyshire, engaging Sir Cornelius Vermuyden as partner in a major drainage operation at Wirksworth, at the ore-rich Dovegang Rake.

The adventurers were given for the work that had already been carried out, and further work was again to be overseen by Vermuyden, but little work was done, as the English Civil War intervened.

A relation of Croppenburg's ; the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden present in England at the time of the project on a commission to drain the Fens and involved in repairing the seawall at Dagenham has led to speculation that Vermuyden oversaw the project, but proof appears to be vague, nevertheless the work was completed by around 300 Dutch skilled in the construction of dykes and other sea defences.

Vermuyden and his work are mentioned in a negative context in the Lincolnshire legend of the Tiddy Mun.

Cornelius Vermuyden was the engineer, and a major part of the scheme was the Old Bedford River, a straight cut to carry water from Earith to a new sluice near Salters Lode, which was completed in 1637.

It underwent major changes in the 1620s, when Cornelius Vermuyden closed the channel which crossed Hatfield Chase to reach the River Trent at Adlingfleet, and diverted all of the water northwards to the River Aire.

Vermuyden ’ s was followed by a succession of soughs which by the end of the century had drained enough of the mines in the Wirksworth Wapentake to cause a dramatic rise in production in the whole area.

Contrary to popular belief, Vermuyden was not involved with the draining of the Great Fen in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk in the 1630s, but only became involved with the second phase of construction in the 1650s.

Vermuyden was again the engineer, and the new channel was completed in 1652.

The image used on the currency notes was, however, not that of Van Riebeeck, but of Bartholomeus Vermuyden.

The Isle is so called because, until it was drained by the Dutch engineer Sir Cornelius Vermuyden ( 1627 – 1629 ), it was an inland island surrounded by rivers.

The deed caused repercussions in the reign of King Charles I when Vermuyden was given the task of draining the Isle.

In 1651 the first sluice was built across the river at Denver, by Cornelius Vermuyden, although it had to be rebuilt after bursting in 1713.

In 1633, the Court of Exchequer Chamber of Charles I decreed the rights of the public to two thirds of the lands on the Malvern Hills, and rights of Sir Cornelius Vermuyden and his descendants, and the Crown, to one third ( quoted in the preamble to the Malvern Hills Act of 1884 ).

** Cornelius Vermuyden, Dutch engineer ( d. 1683 )

The 17th century drainers under Cornelius Vermuyden dug the Old Bedford River between the Great Ouse at Earith and what had hitherto been the Little Ouse at Denver.

The Dutch civil engineer Cornelius Vermuyden diverted the River Don northwards to the River Ouse in 1626-1629 to drain the marshland of Hatfield Chase at the behest of King Charles I.

In the 1620s, Vermuyden drained the land, turning a productive marsh-based peasant economy into a less productive arable system.

* Cornelius Vermuyden begins reclamation of Canvey Island in England.

* Cornelius Vermuyden commissioned to drain Hatfield Chase on the Isle of Axholme in Lincolnshire, England.