The Rivers and Streams of England

by A. G. Bradley

THE DERWENT, BORROWDALE, CUMBERLAND

blood and etymology is everywhere in striking evidence; whereas on the east of them the Saxon is held to be almost untouched with Norse blood. We there walked by “burns” and “forces” and beneath “laws.” Of “becks” and “ghylls” there were none, nor scarcely any “fells,” till the spine of the dividing range was almost reached. Many of the Lakeland streams run under their original name to the sea; the Kent, rising behind Mardale and flowing by Kendal to Morecambe Bay; the Leven, carrying the waters of Windermere under Newby bridge by a short course to the same destination; the Esk, rising under Scafell and pursuing its own delightful dale to Ravenglass on the coast of Cumberland. The Irt bears the burden of Wastwater to the same destination, while the Ehen carries the waters of Ennerdale to the coast upon its own account. The Duddon, which Wordsworth invoked so freely, rising near Langdale Pikes, runs a long course, dividing Cumberland from Lancashire to Broughton-in-Furness and its own well-known estuary. But these streams themselves, save while nameless becks, are not so familiar to Lakers—to use an obsolete term—as the Derwent, which, gathering size above Rossthwaite within a very short space, races down Borrowdale into Derwentwater, a beautiful and lusty river. Indeed, the head of the Lake knows Derwent well: when raging down in flood from the rainiest watershed in England, to lift its surface over field and roadway. Every one, too, knows the Derwent during its three-mile run through the meadows by Portinscale into Bassenthwaite. Thence it leaves the rather circumscribed bounds of the Lake tourist, and, running a rapid picturesque course to Cockermouth, where the Cocker brings down to it the waters of Buttermere and Crummock, soon afterwards passes into the sea at Workington amid much signs of coal smoke, of which there was little enough when Mary Queen of Scots made the landing here which sealed her fate. But amid such a maze of spouting rivers, a score of which will leap to the memory of those who know and love this glorious bit of England, it will be seen at once how futile it would be to single out any one or two of them merely to dwell in ineffective prose upon their natural charms.

CHAPTER V
TWO AVONS

TWO Avons join the Severn, if that of Bristol may be accounted a tributary at so late a period of its entry. Such hair-splitting, however, matters nothing, for, as the other Wiltshire Avon has claimed so much notice in our chapter on Chalk Streams, no process of selection would quite justify another pilgrimage by what is, on the whole, a less seductive stream.

If the tidal reaches of a river count for aught, however, the North Wilts Avon should rank with the Thames, the Mersey, and the Tyne; for all the world knows it is the life-blood of the great port of Bristol, and that Ocean liners load and unload within its mouth. The harbourage aspect of rivers, however, as already stated, does not come within our survey. Even eliminating this, it may fairly be said that the Bristol Avon, as the world usually designates it, is no mean river above its tidal ways, and washes no mean cities. Indeed, from the beautiful old town of Bradford, where the river leaves its native county—a town that boasts at once the most perfect Saxon church, and in the eyes at any rate of an International Exhibition Committee the most perfect Tudor mansion in England—on to Bath and by Keynsham to Brislington above Bristol, the Avon winds through singularly gracious scenery with all the distinction natural to a region of lofty hills.

Below Bristol, too, on its tidal way to the Severn, all the world knows personally or by illustration the striking gorge over which nearly half-a-century ago was flung the famous suspension bridge of Clifton. Nor would it be fair to omit that, before leaving its native county, this more sluggish Avon has gathered into its bosom all the waters of North-West Wilts. Obscure streams most of them, one or two bursting from the Chalk of the Marlborough Downs, but, heading the wrong way, soon to lose their qualities and efface themselves in sluggish partners which draw nourishment from the clays and greensands. Beside these waters, however, of the Avon or its immediate feeders, rises on its rocky seat the noble half-ruinous pile

THE BRATHAY, LANGDALE, WESTMORELAND

of Malmesbury. On the main river, too, are the Abbey and village of Lacock, which, taken together as a survival of fifteenth and sixteenth century England, have no match within my knowledge in the whole of Wessex. Calne, Chippenham, Trowbridge, and Westbury are all upon the Avon or its tributaries; and, if these run sluggishly and gather mud after the manner of those in the Midlands, they have their moments of inspiration. It can be said, too, for the Wiltshire basin of the Avon, that it is not only rich in village architecture, both of the Bath or Cotswold stone, as well as the half-timbered and thatched type, but excels by comparison even more in its profusion of fine country houses of great traditions, from the Tudor to the Georgian age. Nor is this a mere accident, but for a good reason which stands out for those who know anything of Old England. It is worth noting, too, of this North Wilts Avon, that it is from all these accessories, and from its association with such scenes and memories, rather than from any particular charms of its own beyond such as are inseparable from any combination of water, meadow, and woodland, that its merit arises. Further, that almost at the moment it leaves Wiltshire it leaves the purely arcadian behind it; and, as it drops down through scenes beyond measure more naturally beautiful, civilisation of another and denser sort, industrial or residential, takes at the same time something from it. A river, however, that is concerned with almost everything which makes North-West Wilts a region of more than common interest, that washes Bradford, and flows through two places so famous and in such different ways as Bristol and Bath, might well claim to be the Avon of Avons. In any such dispute its sister of South Wilts might fare badly, even with a cathedral town and Stonehenge to its credit. But then it belongs in itself to the order of chalk stream, and consequently ranks among the aristocracy of rivers.