Latchmore Brook

The Latchmore Brook is a significant stream in 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 ...

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 England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It rises from the elevated gravel plateaus in the north of the Forest, north of

Fritham Fritham is a small village in Hampshire, England. It lies in the north of the New Forest, near the Wiltshire border. It is in the civil parish of Bramshaw. History The name Fritham may be derived from Old English meaning a cultivated plot (''ha ...

, and drains into the River Avon north of

Ibsley Ibsley is a village in Hampshire, England. It is about 2.5 miles (4 km) north of the town of Ringwood. It is in the civil parish of Ellingham, Harbridge and Ibsley. Overview The village of Ibsley lies to the east of the River Avon on the m ...

. The stream's catchment is open

heathland A heath () is a shrubland habitat found mainly on free-draining infertile, acidic soils and characterised by open, low-growing woody vegetation. Moorland is generally related to high-ground heaths with—especially in Great Britain—a coole ...

deciduous In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, ...

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the ''plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (se ...

, silvicultural inclosures and, in its lower reaches, small scale pastoral farmland; as such there are no consistent sources of pollution and the stream's course and character has largely remained free from artificial modification. Historically, the greatest human impact on the brook was connected to the Schultze Gunpowder Factory which was established in the 1860s at Eyeworth Lodge near

. The factory required large volumes of water and this demand was met by damming the brook to create a reservoir (which still survives as

Eyeworth Pond Eyeworth Pond is a pond located near Fritham in the New Forest, in Hampshire, England. The pond was created in 1871 by damming Latchmore Brook, with the purpose of supplying water to a nearby gunpowder factory. The factory, the Schultze Gunpowde ...

). The problem of sulphuric and nitric acid discharges contaminating the river, killing fish, only ended when the factory closed in the 1920s. New Forest Rivers of Hampshire {{Hampshire-geo-stub