Bow Back Rivers

Bow Back Rivers or Stratford Back Rivers is a complex of waterways between Bow and Stratford in east London, England, which connect the River Lea to the River Thames. Starting in the twelfth century, works were carried out to drain Stratford Marshes and several of the waterways were constructed to power watermills. Bow Creek provided the final outfall to the Thames, and the other channels were called Abbey Creek, Channelsea River, City Mill River, Prescott Channel, Pudding Mill River, Saint Thomas Creek, Three Mills Back River, Three Mills Wall River and Waterworks River.

The rivers have been subject to change over centuries, with Alfred the Great diverting the river in 896 to create a second channel, and Queen Matilda bridging both channels around 1110 by paying for the construction of Bow Bridge.

Because the river system was tidal as far as Hackney Wick, several of the mills were tide mills, including those at Abbey Mills and those at Three Mills, one of which survives. Construction of the New River in the seventeenth century to supply drinking water to London, with subsequent extraction by waterworks companies, led to a lowering of water levels, and the river was gradually canalised to maintain navigation. Significant changes occurred with the creation of the Lee Navigation in 1767, which resulted in the construction of the Hackney Cut and the Limehouse Cut, allowing barges to bypass most of the back rivers. A major reconstruction of the rivers took place in the 1930s, authorised by the River Lee (Flood Relief) Act 1930 (20 & 21 Geo. 5. c. cxcii), but by the 1960s, commercial usage of the waterways had largely ceased. Deteriorating infrastructure led to the rivers dwindling to little more than tidal creeks, and they were categorised in 1968 as having no economic or long-term future, although in April 1968 barges were still being used to convey massive tree trunks to some canal-side timber yards between Old Ford locks and the Hertford Union junction. (For photos of barge traffic in 1968, see "Waterways World", April 2012 pp. 58-61: "London's Olympic Waterways" , ISSN 0309-1422).

However, British Waterways decided that their full restoration was an important aim in 2002, and the construction of the main stadium for the 2012 Summer Olympics on an island formed by the rivers provided funding to construct a new lock and sluices which stabilised water levels throughout the Olympic site. It was hoped that significant amounts of materials for the construction of the Olympic facilities would be delivered by barge, but this did not happen. Improvements to the channels which form a central feature of the Olympic Park included the largest aquatic planting scheme ever carried out in Britain.

Name

It is unclear when the individually named rivers became known collectively as Bow Back Rivers. Charles Tween, writing on behalf of the Lee Conservancy, referred to them as both the Stratford Back Rivers and the Stratford Back Streams in 1905. The section to the west of the more recent City Mills Lock was labelled Bow Back River on a map of 1895, but had previously been part of Pudding Mill River. Powell, writing in 1973, still referred to them as the Stratford Back Rivers. Boyes and Russell writing in 1977 referred to them as the Bow Back Rivers or Stratford Back Rivers, and by the sixth edition of "Inland Waterways of Great Britain", published in 1985, they were referred to as Bow Back Rivers.

The river which supplies the Bow Back Rivers has been known as the River Lee or River Lea, but modern usage tends to use "Lea" when referring to the natural river, and "Lee" when referring to the navigation, so that the Lee Navigation is a canalisation of the River Lea. The name Bow may derive from either an arched bridge over the River Lea in the 12th century or a bend in the road east of Bow Road station.

History

thumb|900px|centre|City Mill River, Bow Back Rivers (2004)

The Bow Back Rivers cross an area originally known as Stratford Marsh, an area of common Lammas land, where inhabitants had common rights to graze horses and cattle between Lammas Day (1 August) and Lady Day (25 March), but which was used for growing hay for the rest of the year. The Marsh was between Stratford-Langthorne and Stratford-at-Bow. Little remains from pre-history, but the names suggest that the two settlements lay at either end of a stone causeway across the marsh. Remains of a stone causeway have been found, but no traces of an associated road. The ford at Old Ford is of pre-Roman origin, part of a route from London to Essex which crossed Bethnal Green. In the Roman era, a new road was built from London to the ford, which carried the principal road to Colchester. There may also have been a ford further south at Bow, and a further causeway existed between Homerton and Leyton, known as Wanstead Slip. This lowered the tide head to Old Ford, and prevented large boats sailing the river until the 15th century. This was the style of French bridges rather than the Anglo Saxon straight construction, and its design gave it its name.

In 1135, Stratford Langthorne Abbey was founded. The Abbey continued the process of draining Stratford marsh begun in the Middle Ages and creating artificial channels to drive water and tide mills. A small river port developed at Stratford, mentioned in the 15th century, to serve the needs of Stratford Abbey and the mills at Stratford, and there is similar evidence in later centuries. The Abbey took on responsibility to maintain the marsh walls around Bow Creek, to keep the tidal waters out.

Between Bow Bridge and Channelsea Bridge there were three others, said in 1303 to have been built to fill the gaps caused by the cutting of mill streams through Maud's causeway, although there is evidence that the mills pre-dated the causeway. However, the mill owners took responsibility for the bridges, which crossed the mill streams for St Thomas's, Spileman's and Saynes mills. The last two were owned by the City of London, and the bridges were called Pegshole and St Michael's Bridges. An administrative mistake around 1814 resulted in the City of London taking responsibility for St Thomas's Bridge, but the miller did not complain as Pegshole bridge was smaller and therefore less costly to maintain. The names were eventually swapped, and all three were replaced by Groves Bridge in 1933, which crossed the widened Three Mills Wall River, the two branches of the Waterworks River having been combined into Three Mills Wall River, while Three Mills Wall Back River was filled in. Today, the route of the embankment that encloses the sewer from Bow to Beckton is followed by a public footpath, The Greenway.

Public water supply

Water was extracted from the rivers to provide a public water supply. The opening of the New River in 1633, a channel built to bring water to London from Amwell springs, and soon afterwards from the River Lea near Ware, had a detrimental effect on both navigation and milling by reducing water levels. Around 1745, the West Ham Waterworks Company built a waterworks at Saynes Mill in Stratford, the river on which it was located later being known as Waterworks River. Much of the work was carried out by the contractor William Hoof, who had gained a reputation as a specialist tunnelling contractor, after working on Strood Tunnel for the Thames and Medway Canal and Harecastle Tunnel on the Trent and Mersey Canal. He worked on the waterworks project from 1829 until 1834. Where there had been a reservoir to the south of the Middlesex Filter Beds weir in 1850, maps from 1870 show the site occupied by a waterworks, and the canal which supplied the Old Ford works running beside the Hackney Cut. Another large reservoir, triangular in shape, was located between the old river and the Hackney Cut at Old Ford, with two connections to the old river. The water supply canal passed under the old river to feed two compensation reservoirs to the north of the Great Eastern Railway tracks. A covered reservoir was situated on the west bank of the old river.

The Waterworks River underwent considerable change over the years. In 1850, it left the channel of the Old River Lee much further to the north, to the south-west of Temple Mills railway depot. It was called Lead Mills Stream at this point. Near Temple Mills bridge, now on the A12 road, Channelsea River split off. The two channels ran parallel to the Old River Lee, before Channelsea River turned to the south-east. There was another small connection between the Old River Lee and the Waterworks River called Bully Fence, where the northern Channelsea River is shown on modern maps. Twenty years later, the northern Waterworks River rejoined the Lee at Bully Fence, and the section between there and Carpenters Road had been filled in. At some point, the connection at Bully Fence became the main source for the Channelsea River, although the 1953/66 map still shows it connected to the remnants of the system to the north, for drainage. Administrative boundaries still follow the northern course of the Waterworks River.

Although the River Lee was navigable up to Hertford, this had been achieved by the use of flash locks, where a single gate created a channel through a weir. These caused conflict between the bargemen and the millers, since operation of the lock lowered the water level above it, hindering the operation of the mill. In 1765, the engineer John Smeaton was asked to survey the river, with a view to improving it "for the good of the public". His report of September 1766 highlighted the need to replace the flash locks with the more modern pound locks or pen sluices, each with two sets of gates. Significantly for the Bow Back Rivers, he suggested a new cut from Lea Bridge to Old Ford, and another from Bow Tidal Gates to a basin at Limehouse. The first became known as the Hackney Cut, and the second as the Limehouse Cut. An act of Parliament, the River Lee Navigation Act 1767 (7 Geo. 3. c. 51), was obtained on 29 June 1767, and work began.

The Limehouse Cut would give direct access to the River Thames, avoiding the tidal Bow Creek. It was expected to open in July 1770, but some of the brickwork collapsed, and had to be repaired before the cut opened on 17 September 1770. It closed again briefly in December, when a bridge collapsed into it, and it was soon decided that it was too narrow, and so was widened to allow barges to pass each other along its complete length. This work was finished on 1 September 1777. The contract for the Hackney Cut was given to Jeremiah Ilsley on 18 January 1768, and a bricklayer called Henry Holland was asked to build two locks on the cut on 23 April 1768. A millwright from Bromley called Mr Cooper was given the job of building Bromley Lock (close to Bow tidal gates). Work progressed quickly, and the cut was opened for traffic on 7 August 1769.

The River Lee Navigation Act 1767 had specified points on the river at which tolls could be collected, but had made no mention of tolls for use of Bow Creek, Bow Back Rivers, or the section of the navigation between Bow tidal gates and Old Ford, and these had remained toll-free. An act of Parliament, the Lee Navigation Improvement Act 1850 (13 & 14 Vict. c. cix), obtained on 14 August 1850 allowed the trustees to build a pound lock at Bow tidal gates. To prevent opposition from the bargees, the act had formalised the freedom from tolls on the Bow River section. Once the lock was built, however, the trustees charged a toll for using it. This was unpopular, but there was still the option of using the tidal gates at certain states of the tide, which did not incur a toll. A clause to authorise the lock toll was deleted by Parliament from a subsequent act, the Lee Conservancy Act 1868 (31 & 32 Vict. c. cliv), and it was still the case in 1977 that a charge was made for using the lock but not for using the gates.

By 1821, Stratford was served by a number of wharves, some located on the Lea and others on the Channelsea River or other branches. In addition to wharves for general goods, some specifically handled timber, chalk, stone, coal, or wheat. Several of the factories and mills had private wharves. By this date, a dock had been built near Bow Bridge to the south of the High Street. It was about , and was connected to the river by its own channel. It was initially called Stratford Dock, later becoming Meggs Dock and was probably constructed by the Middlesex and Essex Turnpike Trust. Half of it had been filled in by 1896, and the rest by 1920.

In the 1860s, the income from the navigation had dropped, as a result of attempts to compete against the railways, but economies were made, and capital works continued. The lock at Lea Bridge was removed, and replaced by Old Ford Lock further to the south, which was built to take 100-ton barges, rather than the 40-ton barges specified by the Lee Navigation Improvement Act 1805 (45 Geo. 3. c. lxix). Although the original Lee trustees, and after 1868 the Conservators of the River Lee, were officially responsible for the Bow Back Rivers, there was little incentive to maintain them, since they did not generate any revenue. Nor could they be closed, since they allowed surplus water from the upper river to reach the Thames, without causing flooding.

Regeneration

The rivers were run down by the 1920s and, with high unemployment in the area, West Ham Corporation and the Lee Conservancy Board applied for a government unemployment relief grant, with which to fund major improvements. In addition to work on the channels, Bow Tidal Lock was duplicated, Marshgate Lock was rebuilt further east as City Mill Lock, and a second new lock at Carpenters Road was constructed. It used up-and-over radial gates operated by winches, rather than the traditional mitre gates used at City Mill Lock. The gates were quadrant-shaped, and were raised out of the river to allow boats to enter or leave the lock. An act of Parliament was obtained to authorise the work, called the River Lee (Flood Relief, &c.) Act 1930 (20 & 21 Geo. 5. c. cxcii), and work began the following year. The project was completed in 1935. Before the work, there had been a floodgate on the Waterworks River above its junction with the Three Mills Wall River, and a large pool, the City Mill Pool, connecting to the City Mills River and Saint Thomas Creek. Marshgate Lock was situated to the west of the junction between the Pudding Mill River and Saint Thomas Creek. It was originally built in 1864, by adding a second set of gates to Hunters Gates, a floodgate which had been built around 1847. The reconstructed lock was built on the site of the City Mill Pool, and had two sets of gates at its eastern end, to prevent high tidal levels in Waterworks River flooding the waterways to the west. It was labelled Marshgate Lane Lock on the 1948 map, but was called Ward Lock, after a local councillor, and is now known as City Mills Lock. The course of the Saint Thomas Creek was then straightened, and the original Marshgate Lock was bypassed. Pudding Mill River became a dead end when the lower section was filled in, as was most of the Three Mills Back River, and the floodgate on Waterworks River was also removed. Reconstruction of the channels included widening City Mill River to , while Three Mills Wall River and Waterworks River were made twice that width. In 2005, the lock was partially restored as part of the planning gain required from the developers of the adjacent Bellamy Homes housing scheme.

The 1930s improvements included the construction of the Prescott Channel, designed to allow flood water to bypass the Three Mills tide mills. The channel included sluices to regulate water levels above it, but these became redundant once the tide mills ceased to operate, and eventually seized up.

By the 1960s, only the Saint Thomas Creek, the City Mills River and the Channelsea River were still being used for commercial traffic. A section of the Channelsea River between Stratford High Street and Lett Road was culverted between 1957 and 1958. and the final cost was £23 million, which included a sluice on the Three Mills Wall River. Work began in March 2007, and the project lasted for just over two years. Despite hopes that it would transport 1.75 million tonnes while the stadium was being built, very little commercial traffic used the new lock.

With water levels above the structure remaining fairly constant, £400,000 was spent on refurbishing City Mills Lock. Although some work had been carried out in 2006, including the fitting of new metal gates, it was not operational, and had not been used for around 40 years. The second phase of restoration included fitting the equipment to automate its operation. The first public use of the lock occurred on 31 July 2010. British Waterways hoped to restore the Carpenters Road Lock soon afterwards, but the project was postponed until after the completion of the Olympic games, as temporary 'Land Bridges' were erected over the site of the lock to enable pedestrians to reach the stadium, some of which will be removed after the event. Following the Olympic games, it is hoped the waterways will continue to be used by both commercial and leisure craft.

Locks

The locks on the Bow Back Rivers are not built to a single standard, and sizes vary.

{| class="wikitable"

! Lock !! configuration !! length !! width !! notes

| Bow Tidal || twin || || || Built 1900 and 1931

| Carpenters Road || single || || || Built 1933, rising radial gates, reopened 2017

| City Mills || single || || || Built 1933, reopened 2010

| Marshgate || single || || || Built 1864, removed 1935

| Old Ford || twin || || || Built 1902 and 1935

| Three Mills || single || || || Built 2009, hydraulic sector gates

Points of interest

References

Bibliography