About
Prickwillow Museum occupies the village's former land drainage pumping station on the bank of the River Lark, four miles from Ely, and it exists to explain something most visitors to the Fens never think about: that this landscape is entirely artificial, that it lies below the level of the rivers running through it, and that it stays dry only because machinery pumps water uphill every day of the year. Stop the pumps and within a season much of the Great Level would return to marsh.
The problem is self-inflicted and getting worse. When the seventeenth-century drainage schemes associated with Cornelius Vermuyden and the Adventurers first took the water off the peat, the peat began to dry, oxidise and shrink, so that the land surface fell — in places by several metres over three centuries — while the embanked rivers stayed where they were. Each drop made pumping more necessary and more difficult. Windmills gave way to steam engines, steam to internal combustion, and internal combustion eventually to electric pumps in remotely monitored stations, and the museum tells that sequence from inside a building that lived through most of it.
What makes the visit memorable is the machinery. The collection is of large stationary engines built for land drainage, several of them installed here or at neighbouring stations, and they are kept in working order rather than merely polished. The centrepiece is a substantial multi-cylinder Mirrlees, Bickerton and Day diesel of the 1920s, and around it stand other makes from the great age of British heavy oil and diesel engineering. On the museum's regular engine days these machines are started and run, which in a building of this size is an experience closer to weather than to exhibition.
The museum is volunteer-run, opens weekends and Mondays through the summer half of the year, and charges a modest admission with accompanied children admitted free. Prickwillow itself, built along a silt ridge standing proud of the shrunken peat around it, illustrates the museum's argument before you have even gone inside.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Time your visit for the second Sunday of the month between April and October, when the engines are run.
- The museum opens Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays only, from Easter to late September; it is shut for the winter.
- Accompanied children under 16 go free, so a family visit costs no more than the adult tickets.
- If you drive a vehicle built before 1990, you get in free on engine Sundays between April and September.
- Running engines are loud in an enclosed hall; consider ear protection for young children.
- Look at the village itself on the way in — Prickwillow sits on a silt ridge above land that has shrunk around it.
- Parking at the museum is free, which matters because public transport to Prickwillow is very limited.
- Combine the visit with Ely, six kilometres away, or with Wicken Fen for the undrained version of the same landscape.
Highlights
The Mirrlees, Bickerton and Day Diesel
The museum's principal exhibit is a large multi-cylinder Mirrlees, Bickerton and Day diesel of the 1920s, installed to drive the drainage pumps at this station and left in place when the site was converted to a museum.
Engines of this class were built for continuous heavy duty over decades rather than for efficiency in the modern sense, and their scale is startling: enormous flywheels, exposed valve gear, individually audible firing strokes and a working speed measured in a few hundred revolutions a minute. Seeing it turn under load is the single best reason to time a visit for an engine day.
Engine Days
On the second Sunday of each month from April to October the volunteers start the engines and run them from noon until four. A large slow-speed diesel in an enclosed brick hall produces a physical experience rather than a visual one — the floor transmits the beat, the air fills with the smell of hot oil and exhaust, and conversation becomes difficult.
It also makes plain what the machinery was for in a way no static display achieves.
Between April and September the driver of any vehicle built before 1990 is admitted free on these days.
Why the Fens Need Pumping
The central argument of the museum is that the Fenland landscape is manufactured and precarious. Drainage from the seventeenth century onwards dried the peat, and dry peat oxidises and shrinks, so the land surface has fallen — in places by several metres — while the embanked rivers running across it have not.
Water therefore has to be lifted from the fields into the rivers continuously, and the more successful the drainage, the greater the lift required.
Displays lay out this self-defeating cycle clearly, and it is the key to understanding everything else on the site.
From Windmills to Electricity
The technology of Fen drainage ran through four generations in three hundred years: scoop wheels driven by windmills, then steam engines and their beam and centrifugal pumps, then heavy oil and diesel engines like those in this building, and finally electric pumps in unstaffed, remotely monitored stations.
The museum sets out the sequence with models, drawings, photographs and surviving equipment, and explains why each change happened — usually because the previous technology could no longer lift water high enough or fast enough as the peat continued to shrink beneath it.
Collections
Prickwillow Museum occupies the village's former land drainage pumping station beside the River Lark and holds a collection of large stationary engines built for Fenland drainage, kept in working order and run on regular engine days. The principal exhibit is a multi-cylinder Mirrlees, Bickerton and Day diesel of the 1920s installed at this station, shown alongside other engines from the period of British heavy oil and diesel manufacture, together with pumps, engine beds, pump wells and ancillary equipment retained in situ.
Interpretation covers the seventeenth-century drainage of the Great Level associated with Cornelius Vermuyden and the Adventurers, the peat shrinkage that followed and continues, and the technological sequence from wind-driven scoop wheels through steam and internal combustion to modern electric pumping.
The museum is run by volunteers and opens weekends and Mondays through the summer half of the year.
The Engine Hall
Land drainage engines in working order, led by the station's own Mirrlees, Bickerton and Day diesel.
Draining the Great Level
Vermuyden, the Adventurers, peat shrinkage and the continuing need to pump water uphill.
Wind, Steam, Oil and Electricity
Three centuries of drainage technology and the reasons for each successive change.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.