 In 1795, John Billingsley advocated enclosure and the digging of rhynes (a local name for drainage channels, pronounced "reens" in the east and rhyne to the west) between plots, and wrote in his "Agriculture of the County of Somerset" that had been enclosed in the last 20 years in Wedmore and Meare, at Nyland, at Blackford, at Mark, in Shapwick and at Westhay.Little attempt was made during the 17th and 18th centuries to pump water, possibly because the coal-driven Newcomen steam engines would have been uneconomical.It is unclear why windmills were not employed, as they were on the Fens of East Anglia, but only two examples have been recorded on the Levels