Spalding Gentlemen’s Society’s first What’s The Story? column explores the history of eels and their importance in our area
Welcome to a new series of features from Spalding Gentlemen’s Society exploring the stories behind items from the museum collection. Today “What’s The Story” looks at Lincolnshire’s slimiest-ever currency - eels!
They look like snakes with their long, sinewy bodies, but have a coating of the slipperiest slime and are hard to love.
But Medieval Englanders loved them, ate eels in their hundreds of thousands and Lincolnshire was eel-capture county.
Eels have attracted the interest of naturalists, biologists and scientists and the admiration of anglers for centuries. And for a long time, in this area, they were a currency as good as money.
Eels in the marshy fens were used to pay rent to land-owning clergy, lords and even kings.
They were so numerous that those seeking them used specially-fashioned spears to catch them.
Spalding Gentlemen’s Society has two such “weapons” currently on display at Ayscoughfee Hall - Wednesday to Sunday, 10.30am to 4pm. One is a five-tined implement called a gleave, the other has three serrated tines and is called a pilger.
Unsuspecting eels would be speared and caught between the tines, secured by the serrated edges and removed from their muddy habitat.
Any angler who has caught an eel will tell how they are almost impossible to hold. The tighter the grip the more the super-slippery eels slide loose - like trying to get a firm hold on jelly.
In medieval England eel rents were commonplace . At that time eels accounted for as much as half of all fish in our rivers.The 1086 Domesday survey has more records for rents of eels than of corn.
The single largest Domesday rent came from Harmston in Lincolnshire - 75,000 eels each year paid by residents to Earl Hugh of Chester.
At the end of the 11th century more than 540,000 eels were paid as rent every year in England, a practice which continued for 400 years. Eels were caught in their hundreds of thousands and paid to Crowland Abbey, Peterborough Cathedral, Thorney Abbey, Ely Monastery, Ramsey Monastery and religious houses throughout the land.
The Abbot of Ramsey paid 4,000 eels each spring to Peterborough Abbey in order to take stone from Barnack quarry.
Ely's name is said to mean island of eels. The monks at Ely are reported to have exchanged eels for the stone to build the cathedral.
All eels found in Lincolnshire’s waterways have made their way from the Sargasso Sea, an area of the Atlantic. Closest landfall is Bermuda, so a long way from the River Welland; more than 3,000 miles.
European eels breed in the depths of the Sargasso Sea, although the actual breeding process has never been observed.
For centuries biologists looked in vain for eels’ reproductive organs before discovering that they only develop just before they spawn.
It was once thought they spontaneously sprang from mud. Convinced that eels were asexual made them popular as they were considered less likely to generate sexual desire during periods of abstinence such as Lent, when eating meat was prohibited in the belief that meat, the product of sexual union, was linked with lust.
Eel babies make a three-year journey from the Sargasso Sea to UK inland waters where they arrive as glass eels, feed and grow to become elvers, then yellow eels and, at maturity, silver eels before making their way back to the Sargasso to breed and then die after as much as a decade in the rivers, although some can live for 70 years. It is believed they keep a mind map of the route they travelled and use magnetic lines beneath the sea bed to find their way. As well as making one of nature’s most incredible migrations, eels are among very few lifeforms which can adapt from a salt water environment to freshwater and back again.
European eels are critically endangered, their numbers declining rapidly in recent years, as much as 95 percent since the 1980s.
The mystery item from the final Cabinet of Curiosities published just before Christmas was a Victorian lyre-form horse gag used by vets when examining horses’ teeth and carrying out dental work. There were no correct identifications.
Book sales take place every first and third Saturday, 10am to noon, next door to the museum in Broad Street, Spalding.
History Hunters, a new club for children in key stages 1 and 2, ages 5 to 11, continues at Ayscoughfee Hall every second Sunday, 1.30pm to 3pm. Fun and interesting facts, learn new skills, puzzles, activities and history hunting challenges. Entry is free, but due to popularity please contact activities@sgsoc.org to be added to a waiting list.
The Spalding Gentlemen's Society museum is now closed for major building work, but a changing exhibition can be seen at Ayscoughfee Hall.