34
ON SOME ANCIENT LAKE REMAINS AT FEL-
STEAD, WITH NOTICES OF OTHER SIMI-
LAR REMAINS IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD.
By J. FRENCH.
[Read November 28th, 1891.]
ABOUT a mile north of Felstead village there is a brook running
in an east and west direction. The brook has worn a consid-
erable valley in geological time and consequently presented advan-
tages for the formation of a lake by means of a dam stretched across
the valley. At one place where the sides are somewhat steeper
there exists such a dam, and the meadow in which the dam is found
has been called from time immemorial the "Mill Lands." The dam
is certainly suggestive of a mill and hence probably its name.
There is, however, no evidence that a mill ever stood there, and a
brief examination with a short process of reasoning will prove almost
conclusively that the site has never been thus occupied. But the
arguments for or against may be omitted, as we have only now to
consider the antiquity of the dam and the original purpose for which
it was raised.
The suggestion that the dam must be referred to times of tribal
occupation and consequently of great antiquity, is entire due to the
Rev. J. W. Kenworthy, the vicar of Braintree, who on a previous oc-
casion was instrumental in discovering a Neolithic lake in Cumber-
land. Working on his suggestion some difficulties and observations
which had long been made have been found to receive a solution ;
and there can be no doubt that we have in these ancient dams, which
may be numerous, relics of a time equivalent to or preceding the
Roman occupation.
The evidences of age for the "Mill Lands" dam are purely
geological, and must be stated in detail and then collated in order to
give a sufficient demonstration.
When the Great Eastern Railway Company constructed their
branch line from Braintree to Bishop's Stortford, they had occasion to
make an embankment along part of the bed of the brook and
through the dam in its middle (which had been previously breached
at that place). The effect of making this embankment was to divert
the course of the stream, and a new channel was cut for it partly on
the south side of the railway embankment and partly on the north,
the stream crossing the embankment by means of a culvert. The