The River Loddon is a tributary of the
River Thames
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the The Isis, River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, se ...
in southern England. It rises at
Basingstoke
Basingstoke ( ) is the largest town in the county of Hampshire. It is situated in south-central England and lies across a valley at the source of the River Loddon, at the far western edge of The North Downs. It is located north-east of Southa ...
in
Hampshire
Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire ...
and flows northwards for to meet the Thames at
Wargrave in
Berkshire
Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Ber ...
. Together, the Loddon and its tributaries drain an area of .
The river had many active
mills, and has many remnants of flow modifications by the building up of mill pond reaches with weirs and sluices and the adjacent
mill races (also called leats). Most of these used wheels to generate their power – two used water turbines. One was a silk mill for a short period, and one was a paper mill, with the rest milling corn or producing flour. Several have been converted to become homes or hotels, but Longbridge Mill has been restored and still operates occasionally. The river has been used for recreational and possibly minor commercial navigation and in drier spells it can be safely canoed in some places.
The Loddon is a habitat for diverse wildlife. Former gravel workings have become
Loddon Nature Reserve and
Dinton Pastures Country Park. A section of it is a designated
Site of Special Scientific Interest
A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle ...
due to rare populations of bulbs and pondweed. Improvements made to the river under the
Water Framework Directive, have included the installation of a fish bypass at Arborfield Mill for migratory species including salmon.
Course
The Loddon rises at West Ham Farm, and two springs north of Bramblys Drive, in Basingstoke, and in its first mile flows under the
Festival Place shopping centre of the town centre. The main bus station takes up where the wharf stood by what is no longer the
Basingstoke Canal
The Basingstoke Canal is an English canal, completed in 1794, built to connect Basingstoke with the River Thames at Weybridge via the Wey Navigation.
From Basingstoke, the canal passes through or near Greywell, North Warnborough, Odiham, ...
, its westernmost three miles having been filled in. The river emerges again in
Eastrop Park, where it runs alongside Eastrop Way which supersedes the disused canal reach, on the park stood Basingstoke Corn Mill in 1873,
[Ordnance Survey, 1:2500 map, 1873] but by 1932 it was called Vince's Farm, mill buildings still spanning the river.
[Ordnance Survey, 1:2500 map, 1932] The river then passes through
water-meadows where it is joined by small streams from the springs and reduced ponds of the north of Black Dam. These had to drain under a wide bend of canal embankment. Basingstoke Upper Mill stood south, 14 metres west of Redbridge Lane, still a corn mill in 1873,
fields by 1932, now woodland by a multi-lane roundabout.[
Where the flows meet is woodland that was ''the'' peat moor,][ at this point watercress was latterly grown such as in 1961.][Ordnance Survey, 1:10,560 map, 1961] The Basingstoke Union Workhouse and added workhouse infirmary Workhouse infirmaries were established in the nineteenth century in England. They developed from the Workhouse and were run under the Poor law regime.
The 1832 Royal Commission into the Operation of the Poor Laws recommended separate workhouses ...
, stood where the Hampshire Clinic stands, a private hospital.[ East is the older third of ]Old Basing
Old Basing is a village in Hampshire, England, just east of Basingstoke. It was called ''Basengum'' in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and ''Basinges'' in the Domesday Book.
Etymology
The root ''Bas'' derives from the Latin word '' basilīa'' - the ...
and the ruins of medieval Basing House
Basing House was a Tudor palace and castle in the village of Old Basing in the English county of Hampshire. It once rivalled Hampton Court Palace in its size and opulence. Today only parts of the basement or lower ground floor, plus the founda ...
(and Tudor/Jacobean house, north) below an old citadel with remnant ramparts and defensive walls.[Explorer Map 144 - Basingstoke, Alton & Whitchurch. Ordnance Survey (2005). .]
A brick railway viaduct of four arches crosses – the South West Main Line
The South West Main Line (SWML) is a 143-mile (230 km) major railway line between Waterloo station in central London and Weymouth on the south coast of England. A predominantly passenger line, it serves many commuter areas including south we ...
. The house that was Old Basing Mill, a corn mill in 1932,[ Barton's Mill, is 95 metres north. Early 20th century watercress beds continued just north.][ A suburban hill road with access to an wooded east Basingstoke neighbourhood and key roads of Old Basing are linked by a brick, three-arch bridge of three arches over the Loddon; funded by public subscription, it opened in 1826.][ Immediately below, the river widens, as it formed a head of water (mill pond) for the Lower Mill, a corn mill in 1872,][Ordnance Survey, 1:2500 map, 1872] disused by 1932.[
The river ]curves
A curve is a geometrical object in mathematics.
Curve(s) may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Music
* Curve (band), an English alternative rock music group
* ''Curve'' (album), a 2012 album by Our Lady Peace
* "Curve" (song), a ...
northward in a series of bends, past north Hampshire farms and a woodland-set golf course on the west bank in the south. Geodesically for two channels co-exist, often the northern being considered "upper". Petty's Brook (next to the town's main sewage works) joins, then after just under double that distance the Lyde joins, flowing from east of Old Basing. At Sherfield on Loddon
Sherfield on Loddon—formerly ''Sherfield upon Loddon''—is a village and civil parish in the English county of Hampshire. It is located at , approximately south of Reading and north of Basingstoke.
At the 2001 census it had a pop ...
, Longbridge Mill stands above Long Bridge of the main road to Reading, Berkshire
Reading ( ) is a town and borough in Berkshire, southeast England. Located in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the rivers Thames and Kennet, the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 motorway serve the town. Reading is east ...
. North, the river is joined the Bow Brook
The Bow Brook is a substantial brook that flows for through Worcestershire, England. It is a lower tributary of the River Avon which it joins near Defford downstream of Eckington Bridge. Its principal tributaries include the Stoulton, Dea ...
. The two flows sandwich the north half of Sherfield. Bow Brook rises about the same distance as the Loddon's source, but west, as four streams around Pamber End. The Loddon then passes: Lilly Mill, Lilly Mill Farm; fields; Broadford Bridge for a lane; rectory gardens/fields; Stratfield Saye church; and the ornamental grounds of Stratfield Saye House, the home of every Duke of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was an Anglo-Irish soldier and Tory statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, serving twice as prime minister ...
since the first received that highest ennoblement in 1817 for leading in the Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815, near Waterloo (at that time in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, now in Belgium). A French army under the command of Napoleon was defeated by two of the armies of the Sevent ...
. In the park is a cast iron
Cast iron is a class of iron– carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impuri ...
grade II* listed
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...
bridge of Thomas Wilson, 1802, design. Two-arch, thick-buttressed, Stanfordend Bridge – under which the Loddon enters its second and last county, Berkshire – marks the northern end of the park, against a skirting of woodland and is likewise listed
Listed may refer to:
* Listed, Bornholm, a fishing village on the Danish island of Bornholm
* Listed (MMM program), a television show on MuchMoreMusic
* Endangered species in biology
* Listed building, in architecture, designation of a historicall ...
. It bears the date 1787. Its namesake flour mill lay north, disused by 1961.[
Past fields and scattered copses the river undershoots: the ]A33 road
The A33 is a major road in the counties of Berkshire and Hampshire in southern England. The road currently runs in three disjoint sections.
Route
Reading–Basingstoke
The first stretch of the A33 is a relatively new road, built as the A33 re ...
(bypassing Swallowfield), the lane borne by King's Bridge, then the bridge of Basingstoke Road next to Sheepbridge Mill (a corn mill in 1872,[ a hotel since 1968).][Ordnance Survey, 1:2500 map, 1968-1976] Two fields north, the flow is more than doubled by the Blackwater.
After many fields and a little woodland the A327 takes Arborfield Bridge on which sits that house that served as Arborfield Paper Mill, out of production by 1899. To left are meadows and woodland, to right fields. The M4 bridge follows. After of meadows (and the main outlet of Barkham Brook having meandered north from Barkham
Barkham is a village and civil parish in the borough of Wokingham in Berkshire, England, located around southwest of the town of Wokingham.
Geography
The old part of Barkham is the small settlement by the parish church and is close to Barkha ...
), Mill Lane crosses by Sindlesham Mill, extended to north to make a many-roomed hotel – in centuries past milling grain into flour.[ The meadows and those below abut the eastern suburbs of ]Berkshire
Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Ber ...
: Earley and, downstream, Woodley, between which places and Winnersh five road bridges and a rail bridge stand.[Explorer Map 159 - Reading. Ordnance Survey (2006). .]
The largest bridge carries the A3290, and has a construction defect, of 1972, see A329(M) motorway.
The course is then in the west part of Dinton Pastures Country Park. To east are vast lakes, from gravel and sand extraction, started modestly in the 19th century, ramped up in the 1960s and 70s. The near, long resultant lake is White Swan Lake. By the late 1970s, these were exhausted and left stopped up to flood, so Wokingham Borough Council could take ownership and create the country park.
Shortly after Dinton Pastures is Sandford Mill, a corn mill in 1873[ which was disused by the 1960s. In fields west of Hurst:
*the river is joined by the Emm Brook.
*the river splits into two, the west channel being labelled "Old River" on most maps since 1894,][ both unmoved since at least 1873.][
After the lakes the flows are crossed by the ]Great Western Main Line
The Great Western Main Line (GWML) is a main line railway in England that runs westwards from London Paddington to . It connects to other main lines such as those from Reading to Penzance and Swindon to Swansea. Opened in 1841, it was the o ...
railway. Northwest is Charvil Country Park, amid the flows is Loddon Nature Reserve and northeast is Twyford, its Flour Mill at Silk Lane replaced by commercial blocks above which it received the Broadwater or Twyford Brook, the outlet of The Cut, until diverted east to Bray Lock
Bray Lock is a lock and weir on the River Thames in England near Bray and Dorney Reach, and is just above the M4 Bridge across the Thames. The lock is on the Buckinghamshire side of the river on the opposite bank from Bray itself and Maidenh ...
around 1820. The A3032 crossing follows, then the A4. Half of St Patrick's Stream, a backwater of the River Thames
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the The Isis, River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, se ...
, joins; north is junction with the Thames, just downstream of Shiplake Lock
Shiplake Lock is a lock and weir situated on the River Thames in England between the villages of Shiplake and Lower Shiplake, Oxfordshire. It is just above the points where the River Loddon joins the Thames and Shiplake Railway Bridge cross ...
, on the southern limit of Wargrave.
Milling
The river has powered more water mills than the many mentioned above. At Twyford, there have been mills since at least 1365, and a silk mill was built in 1810. Silk worms thrive on mulberry trees. Queen Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen".
Eli ...
encouraged planting of them in her reign.
The Wokingham area was known for its production of silk stockings, and the turn-of-the 19th century brothers, Thomas and George Billing from Macclesfield
Macclesfield is a market town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. It is located on the River Bollin in the east of the county, on the edge of the Cheshire Plain, with Macclesfield Forest to its eas ...
sought out a profitable business of processing. The spun silk was woven on looms set up in cottages, and for a while they were reasonably successful with labour costs kept down, employing children who should have been at Polehampton School. The law liberalised to allow silk to be imported more freely from France, and only mills equipped with up-to-date equipment could compete. Thomas died in 1824. The mill was sold to become a flour mill soon after. The wooden building was burnt down in a fire in 1891. A new mill was built, and in 1927 was bought by Berks, Bucks and Oxon Farmers Ltd, a farmers' co-operative, milling animal feed. The mill was powered by water wheels bolstered by diesel (and from the 1960s, electric) motors. A distribution warehouse was added in 1969, but a fire destroyed the mill in 1976, and construction of a new mill was completed in 1979.[ The new building was much larger than the old, and a section of Twyford Brook was culverted, to allow the buildings to extend onto land between the brook and the Loddon (ex-marsh). The owners became bankrupt] in the 1990s, and in 2001 the site was redeveloped for housing.[ Much of the building has four storeys, as did the pre-1976 building with cosmetic features to hark back to the forerunners.
Sandford Mill was used for milling feed for animals until the 1950s, and was powered by two waterwheels. It is known to have existed during the ]English Civil War
The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (" Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of re ...
, as it was mentioned in reports. Following a period of disuse, it has been converted into a residence. The main structure of Sindlesham Mill dates from the late 1800s, but it may incorporate part of an earlier structure, as some of the timbers are much older than that. It used a turbine rather than a water wheel to generate its power, and was owned by the Reading-based Simmonds family, who were involved in banking and brewing. Later, it was acquired by Garfield Weston, and produced flour for the biscuit manufacturer Huntley & Palmers
Huntley & Palmers is a British company of biscuit makers originally based in Reading, Berkshire. Formed by Joseph Huntley in 1822, the company became one of the world's first global brands (chiefly led by George Palmer who joined in 1841) and r ...
until the 1960s. It is now part of a hotel.[
Milling had been performed at Arborfield since at least 1500, as foundations dating to that time were discovered in 1953. The mill was originally a ]grist mill
A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and Wheat middlings, middlings. The term can refer to either the Mill (grinding), grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist i ...
, used for grinding corn or flour, but George Dawson converted it to a paper mill. A Mr. Hodgson was the paper maker in 1787, and in 1794 the business was auctioned as a going concern. In 1826, the large water wheel powered a paper making machine. Three years later there was a fire at the mill, and another in 1861. Output from the mill included fine brown paper. Mrs Hargreaves, the owner of Arborfield Hall
Arborfield Hall was a large country house on the banks of the River Loddon near the village of Arborfield in Berkshire.
History
The manor house, which originally stood on the site, was occupied by the Bullock family from the early 13th century. ...
, is thought to have demolished part of the mill some time after 1861, but it was offered for sale again in 1919, and at the time included a water wheel and a turbine. Pumps and a dynamo supplied water and electricity to the hall, and powered the machinery on the farm. In the 1840s or 1850s, an engine house was built near the mill, which housed a steam engine manufactured in Reading by Barrett, Exall & Andrews. Two steam engines later powered the paper mill. The mill was owned by Guthrie Allsebrook from the 1920s, who hoped to supply water to the local authority, because he also owned the water rights. The ground floor of the building still exists, and was in use by Thames Water in 2004.
Records show that milling was taking place near Sherfield on Loddon in 1274, when the miller was called John. There is also reference to a water mill in 1316, and a document recording holdings passed to the Manor in 1601 listed two water mills, a fulling mill and another mill. By 1819, there were two water wheels at the Longbridge mill, which powered four pairs of grinding wheels. By the end of the Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, the mill was producing animal feed, and continued to use water power until 1950. Commercial operation of the mill ceased in 1977, and it was damaged by fire in 1991. Restoration of the damaged building began soon afterwards, and was completed in 1997. Since then the mill has been operated on an occasional basis by the Hampshire Mills Group, and is used to grind flour on open days. The building dates from the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries, and is a listed building.
The mill at Stanfordend, to the north of Stratfield Saye Park, has been disused since the 1930s. Power was generated by the use of three turbines, rather than a water wheel. It is owned by the Duke of Wellington's estate, who had plans in 2000 to restore it to working condition.
Hartley Mill, on the Lyde just above its junction with the Loddon, is now a residence, but the water wheel has been retained, and can be seen from the dining room.[
The Lower Mill at Old Basing is a four-storey building dating from the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and is grade II listed.
Old Basing mill is another four-storey building, which still contained much of the original machinery in 2000, although it was not operational.][
]
Hydrology
Whilst chalk
Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Chalk ...
underlies much of the drainage basin
A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, t ...
, it only appears at the bed near Wargrave and Basingstoke. For the rest of its course the chalk lies beneath the Reading Beds
The Reading Formation is a geologic formation in southern England. It dates to the Paleocene period, and is part of the Lambeth Group. It overlies the London Basin and is below the Harwich Formation. The formation is composed of "a series of lent ...
and London Clay
The London Clay Formation is a marine geological formation of Ypresian (early Eocene Epoch, c. 56–49 million years ago) age which crops out in the southeast of England. The London Clay is well known for its fossil content. The fossils from t ...
. The terrace gravels and sand of the valley have been partly extracted, as stated above.
The basin has large, quite dense population centres in Basingstoke and eastern Reading, plus the Farnborough/Aldershot Built-up Area
Farnborough/Aldershot built-up area and Aldershot Urban Area are names used by the ONS to refer to a conurbation spanning the borders of Surrey, Berkshire and Hampshire in England. The ONS found a population of 252,937 in 2011 (up 4%, rounded, fro ...
so the Loddon takes treated sewage effluent from nine main plants, Basingstoke's (see above), seven of the Blackwater and one at Wargrave.
Water quality
The Environment Agency measure 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 invertebrate
Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...
s, angiosperm
Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...
s 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 Loddon was as follows in 2019.
Water quality improved after 2009, when the ecological status of the middle two sections was poor, and the chemical status of the lower Loddon to the Thames was fail. From 2015–16 the upper section improved to moderate, but the lower section was worse, moving from moderate to poor. Reasons for the water quality being less than good include the discharge of sewage effluent, physical barriers to the movement of fish caused by modifications to the channel, and dominant, disease-carrier North American signal crayfish
The signal crayfish (''Pacifastacus leniusculus'') is a North American species of crayfish. It was introduced to Europe in the 1960s to supplement the North European ''Astacus astacus'' fisheries, which were being damaged by crayfish plague, but ...
. Like many rivers in the UK, the chemical status changed from good to fail in 2019, due to the presence of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) and perfluorooctane sulphonate (PFOS), neither of which had previously been included in the assessment.
Flora and fauna
The Loddon lily
Named for the river Loddon is the Loddon lily, ''Leucojum aestivum
''Leucojum aestivum'', commonly called summer snowflake or Loddon lily (see ), is a plant species widely cultivated as an ornamental. It is native to most of Europe from Spain and Ireland to Ukraine, with the exception of Scandinavia, Russia, Bel ...
'', a member, not of the lily family, but of the daffodil family Amaryllidaceae
The Amaryllidaceae are a family of herbaceous, mainly perennial and bulbous (rarely rhizomatous) flowering plants in the monocot order Asparagales. The family takes its name from the genus ''Amaryllis'' and is commonly known as the amaryllis fa ...
and known also as summer snowflake. A bulb
In botany, a bulb is structurally a short stem with fleshy leaves or leaf basesBell, A.D. 1997. ''Plant form: an illustrated guide to flowering plant morphology''. Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K. that function as food storage organs duri ...
ous plant, which increases well on heavy clay soils, it is somewhat similar in appearance to a large snowdrop
''Galanthus'' (from Ancient Greek , (, "milk") + (, "flower")), or snowdrop, is a small genus of approximately 20 species of bulbous perennial herbaceous plants in the family Amaryllidaceae. The plants have two linear leaves and a single sm ...
and thrives in wet meadows and willow thickets, being also prolific along the river banks and islands. Although less abundant than they used to be, Loddon lilies can still be found along the river Loddon, mainly in the vicinity of Sandford Mill.
SSSI
A stretch of the Loddon near Stanford End Mill, together with the adjacent hay meadows, which are periodically waterlogged, is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest
A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle ...
(SSSI). The Loddon has been part of the SSSI since 1986. The meadows are cut for hay in July then grazed by cattle until the end of the year. This cycle has resulted in an increase in numbers of the snake's head fritillary (''Fritillaria meleagris
''Fritillaria meleagris'' is a Eurasian species of flowering plant in the lily family Liliaceae. Its common names include snake's head fritillary, snake's head (the original English name), chess flower, frog-cup, guinea-hen flower, guinea flower, ...
''), another flowering bulb, which thrives in damp meadows when not regularly cut short by cutting. The river is included for its mainstay population of Loddon pondweed (''Potamogeton nodosus
''Potamogeton nodosus'' is a species of aquatic plant known by the common names longleaf pondweed and Loddon pondweed. It is native to Eurasia and the Americas, where it is widespread and can be found in water bodies such as ponds, lakes, ditch ...
'').
Fish
The River Loddon has an identifiable array of fish, differing from the mainstream Thames locally including shoals of bream
Bream ( ) are species of freshwater and marine fish belonging to a variety of genera including ''Abramis'' (e.g., ''A. brama'', the common bream), ''Acanthopagrus'', '' Argyrops'', ''Blicca'', '' Brama'', ''Chilotilapia'', '' Etelis'', ''Lepo ...
, chub, roach
Roach may refer to:
Animals
* Cockroach, various insect species of the order Blattodea
* Common roach (''Rutilus rutilus''), a fresh and brackish water fish of the family Cyprinidae
** ''Rutilus'' or roaches, a genus of fishes
* California roach ...
, rudd
''Scardinius'' is a genus of ray-finned fish in the family Cyprinidae commonly called rudds. Locally, the name "rudd" without any further qualifiers is also used for individual species, particularly the common rudd (''S. erythrophthalmus''). Th ...
and large barbel Barbel may refer to:
*Barbel (anatomy), a whisker-like organ near the mouth found in some fish (notably catfish, loaches and cyprinids) and turtles
*Barbel (fish), a common name for certain species of fish
**''Barbus barbus'', a species of cyprinid ...
. The record for the largest barbel caught on the river stands at , caught in 2008. Other records include a pike
Pike, Pikes or The Pike may refer to:
Fish
* Blue pike or blue walleye, an extinct color morph of the yellow walleye ''Sander vitreus''
* Ctenoluciidae, the "pike characins", some species of which are commonly known as pikes
* ''Esox'', genus of ...
caught in 1995 and same-weight carp
Carp are various species of oily freshwater fish from the family Cyprinidae, a very large group of fish native to Europe and Asia. While carp is consumed in many parts of the world, they are generally considered an invasive species in parts of ...
caught in 2002.
To facilitate migrating fish, £485,000 was spent creating a bypass around weirs at Arborfield in 2010 – a project of the Environment Agency
The Environment Agency (EA) is a non-departmental public body, established in 1996 and sponsored by the United Kingdom government's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with responsibilities relating to the protection and enha ...
, Thames Water
Thames Water Utilities Ltd, known as Thames Water, is a large private utility company responsible for the public water supply and waste water treatment in most of Greater London, Luton, the Thames Valley, Surrey, Gloucestershire, north Wiltshir ...
, the University of Reading
The University of Reading is a public university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as University College, Reading, a University of Oxford extension college. The institution received the power to grant its own degrees in 192 ...
, Farley Estate and Arborfield Angling Society, meeting the public spending commitment directed by the Water Framework Directive. This provided:
*new habitats, including suitable for fish to spawn, expected to be of benefit to salmon
Salmon () is the common name for several list of commercially important fish species, commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family (biology), family Salmonidae, which are native to tributary, tributaries of the ...
, sea trout
Sea trout is the common name usually applied to anadromous (sea-run) forms of brown trout (''Salmo trutta''), and is often referred to as ''Salmo trutta'' morpha ''trutta''. Other names for anadromous brown trout are sewin (Wales), peel or peal ...
, eel
Eels are ray-finned fish belonging to the order Anguilliformes (), which consists of eight suborders, 19 families, 111 genera, and about 800 species. Eels undergo considerable development from the early larval stage to the eventual adult stage ...
s and barbel.
*repairs to four of the five weirs at Arborfield, to lower water on the section above, to reduce the flood profile.
Cain Bio-Engineering carried out the construction work and have claimed that the project constitutes a benchmark for such schemes.
In 2018, the first phase of a scheme to improve the river near Sandford Mill for fish was completed. Over the years, dredging of the river led to water flowing slowly through the enlarged channel, particularly in summer so the bed silted. Thames Water, Twyford and District Fishing Club, the Angling Trust, the Environment Agency and Wokingham Council thus felled trees to improve light, used the wood as flow deflectors as meanders, 80 tonnes of gravel were added and the faster flow prevent silting. Fast-flowing shallow riffles make spawning grounds for dace, chub and barbel. Means to prevent young fish from being washed downstream, in flood, exists in the dug-out Redlands backwater.
Navigation
The lower Loddon was used for at least recreational navigation. On many reaches of the river, boat houses are marked on old maps, including two on the Arborfield estate, one of which still exists, one near Mill Lane at Sindlesham, and another at Woodley, near to Colmansmoor Lane. Other evidence includes postcards in the collection at Reading Local Studies Library, which show a punt at Twyford and rowing boats at Sindlesham Mill and Arborfield Hall. Old postcards also show that ''The George'' public house at Winnersh used to have rowing boats on the river available for hire. There was a boathouse on the opposite bank to the public house, one of eleven on the river around the 1900s.
Lady Constance Russell, writing in 1901 recorded that Sir Henry Russell, who owned Swallowfield Park and died in 1852, spent his latter years "improving" that, which included filling in the canal which "ran from the Lock Pool near the church to the Bow Bridge". The canal is clearly shown on a map produced in 1790 by Thomas Pride, and on an Enclosure Map for Swallowfield, produced in 1817 and held at the Berkshire Record Office
The Berkshire Record Office is the county record office for Berkshire, England. It is located in Reading
Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of Letter (alphabet), letters, symbols, etc., especially by Visual perception, s ...
. Further evidence for the use of the river was the death of John Alfred Dymott in 1917, who drowned after falling out of a punt, moving materials. He often performed such duties, here assisting the estate carpenter to erect fencing near the river and remove timber from it.
Points of interest
Cultural influence
Characterised generally as slow, swampy and tree-girt, the Loddon has inspired more than one work in verse.
In his lengthy and politically charged poem ''Windsor Forest'' Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...
invents a nymph
A nymph ( grc, νύμφη, nýmphē, el, script=Latn, nímfi, label=Modern Greek; , ) in ancient Greek folklore is a minor female nature deity. Different from Greek goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as personifications of nature, are ty ...
of the Loddon named Lodona, giving her a form of the name of the river Ládōn in Arcadia
Arcadia may refer to:
Places Australia
* Arcadia, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney
* Arcadia, Queensland
* Arcadia, Victoria
Greece
* Arcadia (region), a region in the central Peloponnese
* Arcadia (regional unit), a modern administrative un ...
where the nymph Syrinx
In classical Greek mythology, Syrinx (Greek Σύριγξ) was a nymph and a follower of Artemis, known for her chastity. Pursued by the amorous god Pan, she ran to a river's edge and asked for assistance from the river nymphs. In answer, sh ...
was transformed into a reed
Reed or Reeds may refer to:
Science, technology, biology, and medicine
* Reed bird (disambiguation)
* Reed pen, writing implement in use since ancient times
* Reed (plant), one of several tall, grass-like wetland plants of the order Poales
* ...
, as recounted in Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
's ''Metamorphoses
The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the wo ...
'' - from which work he also draws the familiar plot device of the chaste female delivered from the unwelcome attentions of a lustful god by her prayed-for transformation into a plant or watercourse. He chose a variant of the name of this mythological river for its obvious similarity to that of the Loddon, which ran for part of its course through Windsor Forest (the much-reduced remnant of which is now known as Windsor Great Park
Windsor Great Park is a Royal Park of , including a deer park, to the south of the town of Windsor on the border of Berkshire and Surrey in England. It is adjacent to the private Home Park, which is nearer the castle. The park was, for many ...
).
He makes a further connection between the then royal protectress of Windsor, Queen Anne, and the goddess Diana, protectress of the Arcadian woods and the nymphs who dwelt in them. The personal, yet classically inspired mythology that Pope creates for his poem fables that Diana and her attendant nymphs once roamed the 'Windsor shade':
Here, as old Bard
In Celtic cultures, a bard is a professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's ancestors and to praise t ...
s have sung, Diana stray'd
Bath'd in the Springs, or sought the cooling Shade;
Here arm'd with Silver Bows, in early Dawn,
Her buskin
A buskin is a knee- or calf-length boot made of leather or cloth, enclosed by material, and laced, from above the toes to the top of the boot, and open across the toes. A high-heeled version was worn by Athenian tragic actors (to make them loo ...
'd Virgins trac'd the Dewy Lawn.
Above the rest a rural nymph was fam'd,
Thy Offspring, Thames! the fair Lodona nam'd...
Pan saw and lov'd, and furious with Desire
Desires are states of mind that are expressed by terms like "wanting", "wishing", "longing" or "craving". A great variety of features is commonly associated with desires. They are seen as propositional attitudes towards conceivable states of aff ...
Pursu'd her Flight; her Flight increas'd his Fire
Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material (the fuel) in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction Product (chemistry), products.
At a certain point in the combustion reaction, called the ignition ...
...
Let me, O let me, to the Shades repair,
"My native Shades — there weep, and murmur there.
She said, and melting as in Tears she lay,
In a soft, silver Stream dissolv'd away.
The silver Stream her Virgin Coldness keeps,
For ever murmurs, and for ever weeps;
Still bears the Name the hapless Virgin
Virginity is the state of a person who has never engaged in sexual intercourse. The term ''virgin'' originally only referred to sexually inexperienced women, but has evolved to encompass a range of definitions, as found in traditional, modern ...
bore,
And bathes the Forest where she rang'd before...
The watry Landskip of the pendant Woods,
And absent Trees that tremble in the Floods...
The Loddon slow, with verdant alders crown'd...
Extracts from ''Windsor Forest''
by Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...
The amiable and erudite Thomas Warton
Thomas Warton (9 January 172821 May 1790) was an English literary historian, critic, and poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1785, following the death of William Whitehead.
He is sometimes called ''Thomas Warton the younger'' to disti ...
, negligent clergyman but diligent poet, spent much of his childhood beside the Loddon, near its sources in Basingstoke, for the infant Loddon then flowed through the grounds of the Parsonage House that belonged the living of the Vicar of Basingstoke, an incumbency filled by his father, Thomas Warton the elder
Thomas Warton, the elder (c. 168810 September 1745), was an English clergyman and schoolmaster, known as the second professor of poetry at Oxford, a position he owed to Jacobite sympathies.
Life
He was born about 1688, son of Antony Warton (1650 ...
from 1723 until his death in 1745. The 300-line poem ''The Pleasures of Melancholy'', written by the precocious younger Warton at the age of just seventeen, contains the following lines concerning a poet lost in reverie by a shady, wooded stream at eventide that convey the strong impression of inspiration by the slow and drowsy Loddon:
...in embowering woods
By darksome brook to muse, and there forget
The solemn dulness of the tedious world,
While Fancy
Fancy may refer to:
Places
* Fancy, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, a settlement
* Fancy River, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Music Albums
* ''Fancy'' (Bobbie Gentry album), 1970
* ''Fancy'' (Idiot Flesh album), 1997
* ''Fancy'' (video ...
grasps the visionary fair:
And now no more th' abstracted ear attends
The water's murmuring lapse, th' entranced eye
Pierces no longer through th' extended rows
Of thick-ranged trees; till haply from the depth
The woodman's stroke, or distant tinkling team
Or heifers rustling through the brake
A brake is a mechanical device that inhibits motion by absorbing energy from a moving system. It is used for slowing or stopping a moving vehicle, wheel, axle, or to prevent its motion, most often accomplished by means of friction.
Background ...
, alarms
Th' illuded sense, and mars the golden dream.
To the River Lodon (1777)
Ah! what a weary race my feet have run
Since first I trod thy banks with alders crowned,
And thought my way was all thro' fairy ground,
Beneath thy azure sky and golden sun;
Where first my muse to lisp her notes begun!
While pensive Memory traces back the round,
Which fills the varied interval between;
Much pleasure, more of sorrow, marks the scene.
Sweet native stream! those skies and suns so pure
No more return, to cheer my evening road!
Yet still one joy remains, that, not obscure,
Nor useless, all my vacant days have flowed,
From youth's gay dawn to manhood's prime mature;
Nor with the muse's laurel unbestowed.[ Chambers' Book of Daysbr>21 May]
/ref>
the ninth sonnet
A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...
of Thomas Warton
(8th Poet laureate
A poet laureate (plural: poets laureate) is a poet officially appointed by a government or conferring institution, typically expected to compose poems for special events and occasions. Albertino Mussato of Padua and Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) ...
, 20 April 1785 – 21 May 1790)
See also
* Tributaries of the River Thames
This article lists the tributaries of the River Thames from the sea to the source, in England. There are also secondary lists of backwaters of the river itself and the waterways branching off.
Note: the River Medway shares the saline lower Tha ...
* List of rivers in England
This is a list of rivers of England, organised geographically and taken anti-clockwise around the English coast where the various rivers discharge into the surrounding seas, from the Solway Firth on the Scottish border to the Welsh Dee on the Wel ...
Bibliography
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References
External links
{{authority control
Loddon, River
Loddon, River
Basingstoke
Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Berkshire