The River Meon () is a chalk stream in

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English citi ...

in the south of England. It rises at East Meon then flows in a generally southerly direction to empty into the

Solent The Solent ( ) is a strait between the Isle of Wight and Great Britain. It is about long and varies in width between , although the Hurst Spit which projects into the Solent narrows the sea crossing between Hurst Castle and Colwell Bay ...

at Hill Head near Stubbington.Hampshire County Council (2006).
Activities at Titchfield Haven - River Study
''. Retrieved March 19, 2005. Above Wickham, the river runs through the

South Downs National Park The South Downs National Park is England's newest national park, designated on 31 March 2010. The park, covering an area of in southern England, stretches for from Winchester in the west to Eastbourne in the east through the counties of Ham ...

Course

The River Meon rises one mile (1.6 km) south of the village centre of East Meon. It flows due north, then northwest to West Meon, and southwest to Warnford followed by its characteristic, quite straight, south-southwest course, with many tiny wobbles in short stretches. The river descends through the villages of Exton, Corhampton and Meonstoke,

Droxford Droxford ( Drokensford) is a village in Hampshire, England. Geography The village is clustered with slight ribbon development along its main, north–south, undulating road. It is entirely on the lower half of the western slopes of the Meon v ...

, Wickham, and

Titchfield Titchfield is a village in southern Hampshire, by the River Meon. The village has a history stretching back to the 6th century. During the medieval period, the village operated a small port and market. Near to the village are the ruins of Titc ...

. The river outflows over of estuary through the marshes of the Titchfield Haven National Nature Reserve to enter the

through a small harbour at Hill Head.Ordnance Survey (2005). ''OS Explorer Map 119 - Meon Valley, Portsmouth, Gosport & Fareham''. . Overall the valley forms the shape of that of a shepherd's crook.

Navigation

Above the estuary has never been navigable. Titchfield Haven, on the Solent coast was a minor harbour. In the 17th century, the

Earl of Southampton Earl of Southampton was a title that was created three times in the Peerage of England. The first creation came in 1537 in favour of the courtier William FitzWilliam. He was childless and the title became extinct on his death in 1542. The s ...

caused a sluice (not a

canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface fl ...

) to be built ( Titchfield Canal) to drain the marshes. The reinstated wetlands form the Titchfield Haven National Nature Reserve.

Water quality

The Environment Agency measures 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

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 ...

angiosperm Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. They include all forbs (flowering plants without a woody stem), grasses and grass-like plants, a vast majority of br ...

s and fish. Chemical status, which compares the concentrations of various chemicals against known safe concentrations, is rated good or fail. Text was copied from this source, which is available under a
Open Government Licence v3.0
© Crown copyright. Water quality of the River Meon in 2019:

Gallery

References

External links

Ordnance Survey National Grid The Ordnance Survey National Grid reference system (OSGB) (also known as British National Grid (BNG)) is a system of geographic grid references used in Great Britain, distinct from latitude and longitude. The Ordnance Survey (OS) devised the ...

: (source), (mouth)
Current flood status
for River Meon, from 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 en ...