The marketing and events officer at Peckover House has published her second book into the life and times of the local area and its people.
Diane Calton Smith penned ‘Webbed Feet and Wildfowlers, an Early History of Wisbech and the Fens,’ which takes its readers on a journey through time from the earliest settlement, a tiny Saxon hamlet of wildfowlers, to its prominence as a medieval assize town.
She said: “Writing this book has been a labour of love, with many long hours of research bringing to light so much detail about Wisbech and the Fens.
“The town’s history is as long as it is fascinating.
“How many towns, after all, can claim origins as far back as AD 664 and to have hosted royal visits from three different monarchs before the end of the medieval age?
“Throughout their long history, the Fens have been home to Bronze Age settlers, Iron Age tribes, Roman soldiers, Saxon Christians, Norman nobles, and Wisbech has seen many of them, thriving and developing through the ages to earn its title of the Capital of the Fens.”
It is her second book.
Diane, who has worked for 11 years for the National Trust at Peckover House on North Brink, published her first book two years ago called ‘A Georgian House on the Brink’.
• Her new book is available from Peckover House gift shop, Octavia Hill’s Birthplace House, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum and Etcetera. Also on Amazon and Waterstones Online.
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