The Dark Water is a river in south-west

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 ...

, England. It flows south from a source a few metres north-east of the

New Forest The New Forest is one of the largest remaining tracts of unenclosed pasture land, heathland and forest in Southern England, covering southwest Hampshire and southeast Wiltshire. It was proclaimed a royal forest by William the Conqueror, fea ...

, reaching the sea through the end of the

Beaulieu River The Beaulieu River ( ), formerly known as the River Exe, is a small river draining much of the central New Forest in Hampshire, southern England. The river has many small upper branches and its farthest source is from its -long tidal estuary. ...

estuary, next to 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 t ...

, at Lepe, part of the national park. Its

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, ...

reduces towards its mouth. It drains (with its main tributary, Stock Water) most of the largely heathland forest's "Beaulieu Heath". It then drains smaller Blackwell Common (the south of which was called Blackfield Common after neighbouring

Blackfield Blackfield is a collaborative music project by the English musician and founder of Porcupine Tree, Steven Wilson, and Israeli rock singer Aviv Geffen. Together, six albums have been released under the moniker. The first two records, ''Black ...

).OS Map of Hampshire and Isle of Wight LXXXI.7, Revised: 1895, Published: 1897 Then it drains the similar combined area: Horsemoor Copse, West Common (a meadow) and Chale Wood, below which narrow woods line one or both of the banks, beyond an inner marshy zone.

References

{{authority control New Forest

Dark Water Dark Water may refer to: Books * '' Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil'', 1920 book by American philosopher W.E.B. Du Bois * ''Dark Water'' (book) (仄暗い水の底から; ''Honogurai mizu no soko kara''; literally ''In the Depths of Dark ...