- Joyce Lambert
Joyce Lambert (born
Herne Hill ,London ,23 June 1916 , died4 May 2005 ), was an Englishbotanist and stratigrapher. She showed that theNorfolk Broads are man-made and did not occur naturally.Early life
Lambert grew up at
Brundall ,Norfolk , and was educated atNorwich High School for Girls and theUniversity College of Wales, Aberystwyth , graduating inbotany in 1939.Career
Her first job was as a schoolteacher in
Norwich , then in 1942 she was appointed a botany lecturer at theUniversity of London 'sWestfield College (now part ofQueen Mary, University of London ). She began a study of the ecology of theFens around theRiver Yare . In 1948, she moved to theUniversity of Cambridge and concentrated on the Fens near theRiver Bure , working withJ. N. Jennings .In 1946, she began to publish academic papers on her work.
In 1952, Jennings's book, "The Origin Of The Broads", was published by the
Royal Geographical Society . In it the stratigrapher concluded that most, if not all, of theNorfolk Broads had been formed by natural processes. But Jennings's apparently definitive interpretation was about to be spectacularly challenged.His colleague, botanist and fellow stratigrapher Joyce Lambert, had also been investigating the Bure and Yare valley broads and fens. And she demonstrated that the lakes of the Norfolk Broads were not formed by nature, but had been created by our ancestors.
Using a smaller
peat borer than the one employed by Jennings, Lambert obtained a series of closely spaced cores around the broads, and discovered - to her amazement - that what had been thought to be natural lakes had near-perpendicular walls; moreover, their floors, some three metres or so below the surface, were almost flat. Clearly, they had originated as peat diggings, whose angular shape had been concealed by the overgrowth of vegetation once they had filled up with water.In 1952, Joyce gave the presidential address at the
Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society , and when editing that speech for publication, she inserted into it her new findings. These, together with a follow-up article in theGeographical Journal , caused a sensation by showing that the current features of theNorfolk Broads were created by extensive excavations dug by hand long ago; that were now within areas of aflood plain subject to regular inundation, resulting in the typical Broads landscape of today, with its reed beds, grazing marshes and wet woodland.References
* [http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/5-27-2005-70625.asp Obituary] at buzzle.com (accessed 25 July 2007)
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.