A 'Slubbing Shovel', what a wonderful name for an old Fenland drainage tool but what an awful job to have to carry out.
Now the inland drainage board utilises a special digger to clean the drains and dykes but in those hard to get to places, on go the chest waders and out comes a shovel. Made of ash or oak and faced with steel on the wearing edges it is no doubt, another product from a local blacksmith and we feel pretty sure each blacksmith would have had his own personal signature pattern of steel facing to identify his work.
It must have been extremely uncomfortable, up to your groin in cold water for a seven hour day digging reed roots and liquid mud out and that was after the reeds had been cut back. Today the men working the drains sit in a warm cab with the smooth assisting power of hydraulics to cut the reeds and then a different but just as powerful machine completes the clearing?
They must have been hard men in the 'good old days'.
