More than half of Britain’s ponds have disappeared

The 20th century was not kind to ponds in Britain. Many were drained to create more farmland or filled in to make room for new developments. Some ponds went to waste and others were stuffed full of it.The traffic was not all one-way: in 1940 Marlow, a town in Buckinghamshire, suddenly acquired 43 ponds as craters left behind by the Luftwaffe filled with water and welcomed moss, molluscs and mallards. Britain still has 500,000 ponds in rural areas, according to the Wildlife Trusts, a group of charities (the country is also home to 3m private garden ponds). But more than half of those recorded in the late 19th century have since vanished.