FEN FOLK

The best thing about having a dog is having to find time to get outside

The worst thing about having a dog is she scares off all the crows I am desperately trying to befriend

Funny how history is full of women using whatever they could find—even cursed money—just to have some say over their own bodies. (7/7)

But corpse coins weren’t just for contraception. If a husband found the coin first, he could take it to the pub, tell the landlord it was corpse money, and maybe get a free pint out of it. (6/7)

Did it work? Absolutely not. But when with limited options, you’d try anything, right? (5/7)

If a woman had enough kids and wanted no more, she could buy the next available corpse coin.

All she had to do was slip it under her pillow at night, and that was supposed to be the end of her baby-making days. (4/7)

The local handywoman (midwife/healer/general fixer of problems) handled the corpse coin. But she didn’t just chuck it away.

She sold it to the next woman who needed it. (3/7)

In the Fens, when someone died, a florin was placed on their mouth.

Why? To pay for their sins and stop the Devil from snatching their soul.

No undertaker would dare shut the coffin until the coin was removed. (2/7)

Ever heard of corpse money? It’s not a dodgy crypto scheme.

It was actual coins placed on the dead. It was a thing for centuries, and somehow, it ended up being used for both birth control and free beer. (1/7)

Ely Cathedral (Payne Jennings, 1900)

This heritage belongs to everyone who walks this land, past and present. I share these stories not to preserve them in amber, but because they’re still alive—shifting, growing, and full of ghosts, grit, and the occasional bit of supernatural vengeance

The Fens have always been a place of change, shaped by water, rebellion, and the people who’ve made a life here, no matter where they came from.

PSA: Fen folk isn’t about borders or bloodlines, it’s about the land and the stories it holds.

Fen Skating in Peterborough (?)

He looks like a stoned botany major. He looks like he didn’t know the portrait was being painted at first and now he’s stuck in an awkward position and he can’t change it. He looks like a dairy farmer named Mazza. He looks like he drives a ute older than he is.

One of the great tragedies of history is that Maarten van Nieuwenhove had a face born to wear an oversized Metallica tshirt that smelled of weed but was forced to live in the 15th century

I heard that eating 12 mince pies before Christmas means you’ll have 12 months of good luck next year, take this as a sign

I fucking love Chris Packham

Incredible

The More You Know™️

In the Norfolk fens, where poverty was prevalent, parsley growth would be restricted, in the attempts to welcome a boy into the family.

It was also said that the amount of parsley growing in your garden will determine the sex of your unborn child. If the parsley was flourishing, you were likely to have a girl

Fun fact: It was a widely-held belief in the Eastern counties that parsley, a notoriously slow-germinating plant, grows best where the wife 'wears the trousers' 🤔🌿