The Bourne Rivulet is a river in the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

county of

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 ...

. It is a tributary of the

River Test The River Test is a chalk stream in Hampshire in the south of England. It rises at Ashe near Basingstoke and flows southwards for to Southampton Water. Settlements on the Test include the towns of Stockbridge and Romsey. Below the village of ...

. The Bourne Rivulet (known as 'The Bourne' locally) is a winterbourne (a seasonal

chalk stream Chalk streams are rivers that rise from springs in landscapes with chalk bedrock. Since chalk is permeable, water percolates easily through the ground to the water table and chalk streams therefore receive little surface runoff. As a result, t ...

that rises and falls with the water table). It usually rises in January and flows until around August each year. It normally runs from the village of Upton and flows through the villages of

Hurstbourne Tarrant Hurstbourne Tarrant is a village and civil parish in Hampshire, England. It lies to the north of the county in the Test Valley. The Tarrant part of the name originates from 1226, when the village was given to the Cistercian Tarrant nunnery. Th ...

St Mary Bourne St Mary Bourne is a village and civil parish in the Basingstoke and Deane district of Hampshire, England. It lies on the valley of the Bourne Rivulet, a tributary of the River Test, northeast of Andover. Governance The village of St. Mary Bo ...

and

Hurstbourne Priors Hurstbourne Priors is a small village and civil parish in the Basingstoke and Deane district of Hampshire, England. Its nearest town is Whitchurch, which lies approximately 1.8 miles (3.1 km) north-east from the village. The church of St An ...

before joining with the Test near Tufton. Above Hurstbourne Tarrant it is known as the Swift or River Swift.Ordnance Survey of Great Britain Due to water extraction in 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, ...

, the upper flow is more intermittent than naturally. However Vitacress Salads Ltd.'s watercress plant, which is at the perennial headwater point, maintains flow through its pumping of extracted water not needed down into the stream.

In literature

The Bourne was celebrated in a much loved book by Harry Plunket Greene, "Where the Bright Waters Meet", in which he described it as "unquestionably the finest trout stream in the south of England." Fans of this book, which chronicles the author's fishing experiences on the Bourne between 1902 and 1912, still come from all over the world to fish here. Since 1995 the fishing has been managed and let by a private company.

Environmental issues

The river still produces some large wild

brown trout The brown trout (''Salmo trutta'') is a European species of salmonid fish that has been widely introduced into suitable environments globally. It includes purely freshwater populations, referred to as the riverine ecotype, ''Salmo trutta'' morp ...

. In the past there has been an unexplained subtle invertebrate imbalance (source: Environment Agency). Since 2007, Vitacress Salads Ltd. has taken measures which have reversed the imbalance (source: Environment Agency 2008), to the extent that restoration works downstream were recently winners in the Wild Trust Trust 2008 Awards.

References

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Bourne Rivulet The Bourne Rivulet is a river in the English county of Hampshire. It is a tributary of the River Test. The Bourne Rivulet (known as 'The Bourne' locally) is a winterbourne (a seasonal chalk stream that rises and falls with the water table). It ...

1Bourne