'One of the four outlying 'new' villages closest to The Wash, though the sea could be miles away. The atmosphere is lonely and quiet. The village is attractive in its neatness. Gedney Dawsmere, including Drove End, became an ecclesiastical parish in 1855. The village is almost entirely plain estate cottages of c.1855, simple, and spaced apart with ample gardens.' {1} Until 1850 there was only one centre of population in Gedney Marsh, which was called Drove End. In 1855 the prominent politician Edward Cardwell (later Viscount Cardwell) and is brother Charles bought some 3,000 acres of land in Gedney Marsh. The Marsh had a creek running through it, named Daws Mere Creek, probably after Sir Abraham Dawes who undertook the reclamation of the land from the sea in 1660. The Cardwell brothers set about building a new village at Dawsmere, some one and a quarter miles from Drove End. The cottages were built in pairs, and there was a smithy, a joiners shop, a school, a shop and a parsonage. There was also a site for a church, along with half the money to build it. The ecclesiastical district of Drove End was created in 1855. {2}