River Glen, Lincolnshire

The River Glen is a river in Lincolnshire, England with a short stretch passing through Rutland near Essendine.

The river's name appears to derive from a Brythonic Celtic language but there is a strong early English connection.

Naming

In the language of the Ancient Britons, which survives today as Welsh, Cornish and Breton, the neighbouring rivers, the Glen and the Welland seem to have been given contrasting names. The Welland flowed from the area underlain by the Northampton Sands which in many places are bound together by iron oxide to form ironstone. In the Roman period, the sands were easily worked as arable land and the ironstone was dug for smelting. In both cases, the ground was exposed to erosion which meant that silt was carried down to The Fens by the river. In modern Welsh, gwaelod (from Late Proto-British *Woelǫd-) means bottom and its plural, gwaelodion means sediment. Among the medieval forms of the name 'Welland' is Weolod; the river could have thus been named from its silty nature. In contrast, the Glen flowed from clays and limestone. Areas with clay-based soils tended to remain as woodland whilst the limestone areas provided grassland for pasture. Consequently, the River Glen did not carry much sediment. The modern Welsh for clean is glân. The relative amounts of silt deposited in the fens around Maxey and around Thurlby respectively, by the two rivers, support this view.

Course

thumb|left|140px|The East Glen river between Edenham and Lound

The river has two sources, both in the low ridge of Jurassic rocks in the west of the county. The East Glen rises as a number of small streams near to Ropsley and Humby, close to the contour. It flows in a southerly direction, passing to the east of Ingoldsby and to the west of Bulby, to arrive at Edenham. The East Glen is sometimes called the River Eden, derived as a back-formation from its passing through the parish of Edenham. It continues south through Toft, where a Grade II listed bridge built in the early 1800s crosses, and Manthorpe, where there is another listed bridge with a single elliptical arch built in 1813, before turning east to join the West Glen at Wilsthorpe, Lincolnshire. The West Glen also has a number of sources, near to the contour at Old Somerby and Boothby Pagnall. It flows more or less parallel to the East Glen, passing through Bitchfield, Burton-le-Coggles, Corby Glen and Creeton to reach Essendine, where it turns east towards Greatford. In the village, a two-arched stone bridge built in the late 1700s carries Church Lane over the river.

Most of the water from the West Glen river no longer joins that from the East Glen, as it now flows along the Greatford Cut to join the River Welland upstream of Market Deeping. The re-routing was devised by E. G. Taverner, the chief engineer for the Welland and Deepings Drainage Board, towards the end of the Second World War, and was part of a much larger project which involved the digging of the Coronation Channel, a flood relief channel to divert the Welland around the south-eastern edge of Spalding, and the construction of Fulney lock, to exclude tidal water from the upper Welland. The whole scheme cost £723,000, and the Coronation Channel, which was completed in 1953, was named to commemorate the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II in the same year.

By the time the East and West rivers join, they are only just above the contour. and Kate's Bridge weir, where a modern bridge carries the A15 road over it. This bypasses a single-arched bridge built in the late 1700s, which has a female head carved on the keystone of the western face, presumed to be the Kate after whom the bridge is named. Beyond the bridges, the river becomes a typical Fens high level carrier, embanked on both sides and partially straightened, with counter drains on both sides of the channel, to collect seepage through the banks, as the normal water levels are higher than the surrounding land. At Tongue End the waters of the Bourne Eau join. The river below here is navigable for its last , and there was once a navigable connection to the Bourne Eau, but the Tongue End pumping station now sits between the two rivers, to aid drainage of the land to the west. The Weir Dyke drain runs along the north bank of the Bourne Eau and then the west bank of the Glen, to join the South Forty-Foot Drain near Guthram Gowt. For some distance either side of Tongue End, the Counter Drain runs a considerable distance to the east of the channel, Thomas Green presents a case for the Glein being the Glen, based on the identification of Linnuis, the district for four subsequent battles, being Lindsey, although he acknowledges that other locations, including the River Glen, Northumberland for example, have been suggested. This aerial photo shows the River Glen at Guthram, halfway between Twenty and West Pinchbeck. To the south, the Roman road across the fen lies hidden, buried in Baston Fen and Pinchbeck Common. In Arthur's time, around the year 500, the north-flowing section of the Glen entered tidal flats lying in Pinchbeck North Fen, to the north-east of Guthram. The line of the river to the east of Guthram appears to have originated as a sea bank but when sedimentation and fen enclosure caused the sea no longer to reach it, the river was led away along the bank so that the sea bank became one of river's banks instead. The section of the A151 road on the 'seaward' side of the Glen was not built until 1822.

Close to the year 500, the spread of Anglian settlement had recently reached Baston, at the other end of this Roman road, on the landward side of this fen but burial at the Urns Farm cemetery alongside King Street then stopped abruptly.

thumb|right|Surfleet Sluice, built in 1879, where the Glen meets the River Welland

thumb|"The Map of the Lindsey Level" from "The history of imbanking and drayning" by [[William Dugdale (1662).]]

Compared to its neighbour, the Welland, there are few records of the history of the Glen. Dugdale, writing his book The History of Imbanking and Drayning of divers Fenns and Marshes in 1662, which was based on personal observations he made during a trip to the Fens in May 1657, and the records of the Fens Office, most of which were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, thought it was the least of the rivers he had seen, and recorded that it "serveth almost to none other use, but to carry away so much of its own water, with the rill descending from Burne, as can be kept between two defensible banks." The embanking of the lower river had thus already been done by the time of his account.

Once the route to Bourne was closed off, there was little trade on the river, although a short section of about was used by barges until the 1920s. Although the present head of navigation is at Tongue End, there is evidence that lighters capable of carrying 15 tons used to navigate to Kate's Bridge, where the Lincoln to Peterborough turnpike road crossed the river, and there are the remains of moorings at Greatford Hall, although navigation to there must have ceased after Kate's Bridge was rebuilt. The present sluice was erected by the trustees of the Deeping Fen Drainage Act 1856. The first stone was laid by Lord Kesteven on 17th February 1879 and the sluice opened in November 1879 at a total cost of £15,000.

Development

thumb|left|The bend in the river at Guthram Gowt, where the junction with the proposed Fens Link will probably be located.

The Environment Agency are the navigation authority responsible for the river. They issue licences for its use, and operate Surfleet sluice when required. While the river is navigable for to Tongue End, the upper reaches above Pinchbeck Bars are only suitable for smaller boats, as there are no locations where it is possible to turn a boat which is over long. However, the section of the river from its source to Guthram Gowt forms part of the proposed Fens Waterways Link, which will ultimately link the River Witham to the River Nene, via the South Forty-Foot Drain, the River Glen, the River Welland and some upgraded drains near Peterborough. Phase One, the connection of the South Forty-Foot Drain to The Haven at Boston by a new lock, was completed by December 2008, and was officially opened on 20 March 2009.

Construction of the second phase of the project, which will involve making the South Forty-Foot Drain navigable from Donington to Guthram Gowt, where a connection with the River Glen will be made, has been delayed by the change in the economic climate, and the complexity of the task.

Water quality

The Environment Agency measure the water quality of the river systems in England. Each is given an overall ecological status, which may be one of five levels: high, good, moderate, poor and bad. There are several components that are used to determine this, including biological status, which looks at the quantity and varieties of invertebrates, angiosperms and fish. Chemical status, which compares the concentrations of various chemicals against known safe concentrations, is rated good or fail.

The water quality of the River Glen system was as follows in 2019.

{| class="wikitable"

! Section !! Ecological Status !! Chemical Status !! Length !! Catchment !! Channel

| artificial

The reasons for the quality being less than good include sewage discharge affecting most of the river, physical modification of channels, ground water abstraction, and poor management of agricultural and rural land adjacent to the river system. Like most rivers in the UK, the chemical status changed from good to fail in 2019, due to the presence of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE), perfluorooctane sulphonate (PFOS) and mercury compounds, none of which had previously been included in the assessment.

River Glen, Lincolnshire

Naming

Course

Development

Water quality

Points of interest

See also

References

Bibliography

External links