River Witham - WikiHQ

The River Witham is a river almost entirely in the county of Lincolnshire in eastern England. It rises south of Grantham close to South Witham at , passes through the centre of Grantham (where it may be closely followed using the Riverside Walk through Wyndham Park and Queen Elizabeth Park), passes Lincoln at and at Boston, , flows into The Haven, a tidal arm of The Wash, near RSPB Frampton Marsh. The mouth of the river moved in 1014 following severe flooding, and Boston became important as a port.

Archaeological and documentary evidence shows the importance of the Witham as a navigable river from the Iron Age onwards. From Roman times it was navigable to the Brayford Pool in Lincoln, from where the Fossdyke was constructed to link it to the River Trent.

From 1142 onwards, sluices were constructed to prevent flooding by the sea, and this culminated in the Great Sluice, which was constructed in 1766. It maintained river levels above Boston, and helped to scour the channel below it. The land through which the lower river runs has been the subject of much land drainage, and many drains are connected to the Witham by flood doors, which block them off if river levels rise rapidly. The river is navigable from Brayford Pool in Lincoln to Boston. Its locks are at Lincoln, Bardney and the Grand/Great Sluice. Passage through the latter is restricted typically to 4-hour intervals during daylight when the tidal levels are suitable. The river provides access for boaters to the Witham Navigable Drains, to the north of Boston, and to the South Forty-Foot Drain to the south, which was reopened as part of the Fens Waterways Link, a project to link the river to the Nene flowing through the city of Peterborough.

The name "Witham" seems to be extremely old and of unknown origin.

Route

thumb|left|River Witham at Saltersford Bridge 1 mile south of [[Grantham. This part of the Witham is home to one of the last viable white clawed crayfish populations in the UK.<br />(Credit: Mark A. O'Neill)]]

thumb|right|River Witham at New Somerby, [[Grantham ]]

The Witham's course, which flows to the north and then to the south-east may be the result of glaciation (and possibly isostatic rebound) redirecting older rivers. The source of the river is on high ground near South Witham, Lincolnshire, at around above ordnance datum (AOD). After briefly flowing to the east to reach South Witham, it flows generally north, passing through Colsterworth where it is crossed by the A1 road, which largely follows the line of the river to Newark on Trent. At Great Ponton, it is joined by the Cringle Brook on its left bank, and continues through Grantham, where it has already descended to AOD. After Barkston it turns to the west to pass through Marston. Foston Beck joins on the left bank, and at Long Bennington it resumes its northerly course. Beyond Claypole and near Barnby in the Willows it forms the border between Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire for about , before passing through an Army training area near Beckingham. The River Brant joins on the right bank, before it passes through North Hykeham to reach Lincoln, where it is only AOD. They include Lincoln longwool sheep at Stixwould, Lincoln Red cows at Washingborough, and Lincoln curly pigs, which became extinct in 1972, at Southrey.

History

thumb|left|100px|The [[Witham Shield, normally kept at the British Museum photographed during its visit to The Collection in 2013]]

The name "Witham" seems to be extremely old, apparently predating Anglo-Saxon, Roman, and even Celtic influence. and the Fiskerton Boat, a log boat found near Fiskerton during flood defence work in 2001 have been recovered and are on display at the British Museum in London or The Collection in Lincoln.

The Witham was an important navigation in Roman times. Lincoln (Lindum)—the meeting point of Ermine Street, joining London to York, and Fosse Way, leading to Leicester and Bath—was an important Roman fort that became one of only four colonia in Britain. Most important Roman cities were situated near navigable water, which enabled goods to be transported in bulk, but Lincoln did not possess this advantage, and so the Romans constructed the Fossdyke from Lincoln to Torksey on the River Trent, improved the River Witham from Lincoln to The Wash, and built the Car Dyke from Lincoln to the River Cam near Cambridge. The Witham thus gave Lincoln access to the east coast, while the Fossdyke gave access to the Trent and further on to the Humber.

There have been claims that the Witham was originally tidal up to Lincoln, but that seems unlikely. Prior to the construction of the Grand Sluice, the lower river was affected by tides, but the highest they normally reached was Dogdyke or Chapel Hill, and Lincoln is considerably higher than these locations, by some . Wheeler argues that it "would not have been possible for the tide to flow up to Lincoln," given the present geological conditions.

Trading continued throughout the medieval period evidenced by the importance of Torksey, which was then a flourishing town, now only a small village. However, the Fossdyke needed much maintenance to keep it clear of silt. Henry I had overseen the scouring of its channel, and there were inquiries in 1335, 1365 and 1518 to consider the state of the Fossdyke and to compel the inhabitants of the region to maintain it. Lincoln was a centre for the collection of business taxes, but this came at the cost of maintaining the waterways, and having finally decided it was too large a cost, James I presented the Fossdyke to the City of Lincoln.

The Witham originally flowed into The Wash at Bicker Haven, where the port of Drayton was established in the Welland estuary, and it was only as a result of massive flooding in 1014 that it diverted itself to flow into The Haven at Boston. This gave rise to the growth of Boston as a port in the 12th and 13th centuries, exporting wool and salt to the Hanseatic League, though Boston only received its charter in 1545.

thumb|left|[[Kirkstead Bridge (B1191 road)]]

The river was affected by silting which restricted trade despite the construction of various sluices and barriers from 1142 onwards, when the first sluice was built below Boston. Other sluices were erected at Boston in 1500 and at Langrick in 1543, but navigation was again difficult on both the river and the Fossdyke by 1660. In 1671 an Act of Parliament was obtained for the improvement of the Navigation. In 1743, John Grundy, Sr. and his son John Grundy, Jr. were commissioned to produce a detailed survey of the river. They produced an engraved map in 1743 and a printed report, running to 48 pages, in the following year. The main recommendation was a new cut to eliminate the "prodigious meandering course" of the channel above Boston. Although the estimated cost of £16,200 dissuaded the landowners from taking action at the time, the report formed the basis for improvements in the 1760s.

Canalisation

Following meetings of Landowners held in 1752 and 1753, they asked John Grundy Jr, as his father had died in 1748, to re-evaluate his plans from 1744 and consider a plan for a "Grand Sluice" that had been produced by Daniel Coppin in 1745. Grundy suggested that the 1744 cut should be extended by a further into Boston, and that the sluice could then be built on the extension. The landowners moved the location of the sluice nearer to Boston, but otherwise approved his report, although no action was taken. John Grundy was again consulted in 1757, and Langley Edwards of King's Lynn was asked to review the positioning of the sluice in 1760. The landowners then asked John Smeaton to liaise with Grundy and Edwards, and the three engineers produced a joint report in 1761, with estimates of £38,000 for drainage works and £7,400 for improvements to navigation. The report was approved, although a meeting held in January 1762 decided that the new cut should revert to the alignment suggested by Grundy in 1753. The location of the Grand Sluice would be as suggested by Edwards in 1760. Grundy produced another engraved map, and parliamentary approval for the works was obtained in June 1762.

Once the Act of Parliament was obtained, Edwards became the engineer for the project, and drew up the detailed plans, which Grundy and Smeaton checked and altered slightly, after which they had no further involvement with the scheme. Construction was started in April 1763, and the drainage element of the project, which included the sluice, was finished in 1768, having cost £42,000. Work on three locks and other work connected with navigation cost £6,000 and continued until 1771. and was effective in scouring the Haven below it and increasing silting of the river above it.

The 1762 act created the Witham Navigation Commissioners and the Witham Drainage General Commissioners, who continued to promote drainage schemes actively, creating a drainage network known as the Witham Navigable Drains that transformed much of northern Lincolnshire from fen to farming land. Today many of these channels are managed by the Witham First, Third and Fourth District Internal Drainage Boards and Upper Witham Internal Drainage Board. These four internal drainage boards reduce the flood risk to the surrounding properties, land and environment.

In 1791, as part of the campaign to promote the construction of the Horncastle Canal, the Commissioners of the River Witham asked the engineer William Jessop to assess the state of the Fossdyke Navigation and the Witham, with particular reference to the problems of navigating through Lincoln, where the channel was restricted by a medieval bridge. He proposed two solutions; the first avoided the route through the city entirely, by utilising the course of the Sincil Dyke to the south, while the second involved lowering the bottom of the channel through the Glory Hole bridge, which was only deep at normal water levels. The Commissioners had imposed a toll on all traffic passing under the bridge, but decided that a channel bypassing the city would have grave financial consequences. They opted for improving the existing channel and the work to remove the wooden floor, to lower the river bed under the bridge and to underpin its foundations was completed in 1795. The Commissioners dropped the collection of tolls at the bridge, but the amount they received from traffic passing through the locks increased as the volume of traffic grew in response to the easier passage through the bridge. in 1881. The pointed doors on the non-tidal side of the sluice were replaced by steel guillotine gates between 1979 and 1982.

The Witham is navigable from Brayford Wharf in Lincoln to Boston. There are two locks between Boston and Lincoln – one at Bardney and the other in Lincoln itself, the Stamp End Lock which is unusually a guillotine lock. The main obstruction to navigation is the High Bridge or Glory Hole in Lincoln, a medieval structure which is only about wide and high at normal river levels. In times of flood it is unnavigable. The bridge spans the river for , and consists of an arch built in c1160, with extensions added in 1235, 1540 to 1550 and 1762/3. It is the only British bridge which still has secular medieval buildings standing on it, and is believed to be the second oldest masonry arch bridge in the country. It is currently a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Grade I Listed Building.

Connecting waterways

There are a number of drains that connect to the River Witham and that are protected by flood doors. These consist of a single pair of mitre gates that are designed to close if the level in the river rises above the level in the drain. Several of these are navigable to the more adventurous boater. The river is also joined by the Kyme Eau, which connects to the Sleaford Navigation on which navigation will eventually be restored to Sleaford. At Antons Gowt, a lock drops down into the Witham Navigable Drains, a system of drainage ditches which are used to prevent flooding of the fens to the north of Boston. Since November 2008 there has been an active campaign by the Billinghay Skirth Regeneration Society to restore navigation on the River Skirth, and the project has won the support of Billinghay and other parish councils, the Inland Waterways Association, the Environment Agency, Lincolnshire County Council and the Lincolnshire Waterways Partnership.

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 Witham system was as follows in 2019.

{| class="wikitable"

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

| heavily modified

The reasons for the quality being less than good include sewage discharge affecting most of the river, physical modification of the channel for land drainage, and run-off from agricultural and rural land. 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.

In March 2018, the river suffered the worst incidence of pollution ever recorded in Lincolnshire, when Omex Agriculture released ammonia into the water. It resulted in over 100,000 fish dying between Bardney and the Wash, for which the company was given a remediation notice as defined by the Environmental Damage (Prevention and Remediation) Regulations 2015. They must carry out a range of improvements to the river to ensure that its habitat is restored. Once the ammonia had been flushed out, 1.5 million fish larvae and 70,000 roach and bream were released into the river. The remediation notice was only the second to be issued since the legislation was introduced.

Points of interest

Tributaries

Foston Beck
River Brant
Fossdyke Navigation, a canalisation of the lower River Till
Barlings Eau
River Bain
Kyme Eau, the fenland part of the River Slea

The following flow into The Haven:

South Forty-Foot Drain
Maud Foster Drain (part of Witham Navigable Drains)
Hobhole Drain (part of Witham Navigable Drains)

References

Bibliography

Historical descriptions

ibid. First edition (1868)

External links

Photographs of the River Witham
Navigation information, Inland Waterways Association
Real-time water level data, Environment Agency