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Lost Rivers And Cuts


Ray

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23 minutes ago, SteveO said:

I believe that our enterprising friends the Victorians had a scheme to link the River Waveney to the Little Ouse.  Now that would have been something. 

The broads with a connection to the canal network, trust me you'd hate it, narrowboats would soon clog the available moorings.

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Guest Jayfire
1 minute ago, FairTmiddlin said:

Or is that Totally against Tea:default_biggrin:

Well it is true that I don't drink tea, but that is purely coincidental. Oh and whilst we are on about tee's I hate golf too, ruins a good walk :default_biggrin:

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7 hours ago, TheQ said:

One definitely missing is the Hundred stream which at one point would have been navigable from just below Ludham Bridge across to the Thurne below Womack.

Can we do the other Hundred stream while we’re aboat it and establish a northern relief link to the sea? Saves bypassing ‘that bridge’ eh albeit the rise and fall would probably be an issue... on second thoughts keep it the way it is.

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8 hours ago, TheQ said:

One definitely missing is the Hundred stream which at one point would have been navigable from just below Ludham Bridge across to the Thurne below Womack.

That was the original course of the River Ant, the section between the Bridge and River Bure is a "new cut", as is the section of the River Bure by the St Bennet's moorings which was cut to avoid a large southerly loop the eastern half of which is still used to access The Weirs and South Walsham Broad.

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I have used S Walsham Broad for almost 65 years nonstop, lived around it, and had boats in and around and never have I heard of it being called "The Weirs"!!! Or not until Mr Google came along!! Or is it just me?

I am sure someone will now produce a map showing it as such dating from 1875 or earlier but to me using it and living nearby,  its always been the Inner and Outer Broad. Not even the OS recognise The Weirs!!

If the Inner was called the Pits might understand it because there were old ponds near the entrance.

Can someone put me right or just write to Google and stop perpetuating something that doesn't exist.

Or perhaps it does? And if it does explain why?

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I meant to add there might be some evidence that the channel between the two could have been referred to as the Weir, but thats only because I believe some artist did call a picture of " The Weir " but we know that artists can apply a little license to their pictures.

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11 minutes ago, marshman said:

i am sure someone will now produce a map showing it as such dating from 1875 or earlier but to me using it and living nearby,  its always been the Inner and Outer Broad. Not even the OS recognise The Weirs!!

I usad to the term The Weirs on here and got an absolute rinsing for it :8_laughing: I have a bang up-to-date OL40 that annotates "The Weirs" only as the small channel that links the "inner" broad to the "outer". I believe Google maps annotates it differently (which was the cause of the disagreement when I previously used that term) and calls the entire outer broad The Weirs. Personally, I'd never heard the term until I saw it on Google and my OS map.

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Here's a bit of conjecture, but as the two broads are the remains of peat workings, which flooded after they were dug, is it possible that there was a barrier there, to keep water in one of them, from flooding the other?

Only trouble with that is that a weir, as I understand the word, is a barrier used to maintain the level in a section of navigable river, so that the river flows downstream in a series of steps.  In other words it is used to contain water, not to keep it out.  If there had been a barrier between the two peat pits, perhaps a sluice would be a better word, such as they have in rice fields.

I have always understood that Pleasure Island, on Barton Broad, was such a division between peat workings, which may also have formed the boundary between two parishes.

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We have talked about this somewhere else on the forum, but there was a very old navigation which went over Daisy Broad in Hoveton, into Hudson's Bay, crossed the Bure at the downstream end of Gt Hoveton Broad and then went over the open marshes to the south of Horning, to join the river again just at the upstream side of Horning Ferry, beside the Woodbastwick road.

So a wherry could sail from Wroxham bridge to Horning Ferry without going on the main river and only crossing the river once.  The wherrymen preferred this route as they were sailing all the way in open water, instead of all the bends in the river.  Wherries don't like bendy rivers!

There was, again, a serious scheme by Blakes in the 60s, to re-open this navigation and by doing so, create a one-way system between Horning and Wroxham, to ease the traffic congestion.

Unfortunately this met the usual resistance from landowners and I still have the correspondence between my father, as chairman of Blakes and Mr Blofeld, about re-opening access to Great Hoveton.

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If you know the marshes well enough you can still come across evidence of peat diggings and they are quite interesting because they did not dig out a whole Broad and paddle about in the bottom - what they did was dig out an area and then leave a strip or baulk on which they could walk and barrow the stuff to "dry" land. Logically you can see the point - they were not going to to cut a "turve" and then wander half a mile to the bank through what would soon get very muddy.

I guess, depending on the circumstances, they either stacked them on the baulk to dry a little or barrowed them off straight away and stacked them on dry land.

When they dredged Barton under the Clearwater programme , they took a lot of these baulks out as I believe many were still around. My O/S map does not show a boundary through Pleasure Island but of course over time things change.

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12 minutes ago, marshman said:

When they dredged Barton under the Clearwater programme , they took a lot of these baulks out as I believe many were still around.

So that's why I always ran aground outside the clubhouse, at the start of the cruiser race in Barton Regatta!

Yachts like Evening Flight, Ladybird and Maidie all draw 4' 6" and we were dragging the bottom all the way round the course.  You could only do it in a fresh breeze, so that the boat heeled over.  In light airs, you made no forward progress at all!

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On 05/01/2021 at 10:41, Smoggy said:

The broads with a connection to the canal network, trust me you'd hate it, narrowboats would soon clog the available moorings.

Not sure I agree 100%. If canal boats had been present in the early days, the broads would have evolved quite differently to what we have today. Towpaths, wharves rather than staithes, Maybe a different type of boat would have evolved to meet the challenges imposed by e.g. Breydon, but still compatible with the canals. Maybe other navigations would have been cut to avoid  Breydon. The broads are only what they are because they are cut off from the rest of the system. It is all speculation but we love what we've got only because it is what we are used to.

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I m almost positive the Waxham Cut never went to Calthorpe - thinking about it why would it? It was a largely agricultural  canal but how far it went is difficult to tell these days - it probably went either the Hickling Road or the Palling Road but aerial photos these days don't help up there as there are many very deep drainage dykes around now as the water table has been lowered a lot. It would have gone to a staithe and not a Broad.

Calthorpe now a reserve is an interesting place - its kept very secluded and "secret" for a variety of reasons. It also has an interesting connection with coypus where the Min of Ag and Fish were monitoring them sometime in the '50's. A place a bit like Big Bog at Sutton Fen.

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2 hours ago, SteveO said:

Not sure I agree 100%. If canal boats had been present in the early days, the broads would have evolved quite differently to what we have today. Towpaths, wharves rather than staithes, Maybe a different type of boat would have evolved to meet the challenges imposed by e.g. Breydon, but still compatible with the canals. Maybe other navigations would have been cut to avoid  Breydon. The broads are only what they are because they are cut off from the rest of the system. It is all speculation but we love what we've got only because it is what we are used to.

Absolutely right!

Transport was always by sail, so no need of towpaths. The Broads are a waterway system unique to anything I have seen, either in England or Europe.

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