West End Brook is a small stream in southern

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 near the

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 ...

village of

Tadley Tadley is a town and civil parish in the English county of Hampshire. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE), now known as AWE, became the area's largest employer, and many houses were built during this p ...

. Its name is probably related to the parish, and village, it passes through for some of its course:

Mortimer West End Mortimer West End is a village and civil parish in north Hampshire in England. It lies in the northernmost point of the county. History At one time it was the Hampshire part of the cross-county parish of Stratfield Mortimer (mostly in Berkshire ...

Route

The source of West End Brook is from springs near Strawberry Farm, to the north of Tadley and south of the

Atomic Weapons Establishment The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) is a United Kingdom Ministry of Defence research facility responsible for the design, manufacture and support of warheads for the UK's nuclear weapons. It is the successor to the Atomic Weapons Research ...

at the former airfield of RAF Aldermaston. The springs are just above the contour, to the north of the Hampshire county boundary in Berkshire,Ordnance Survey, 1:2500 map and very close to West's Meadow, Aldermaston Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), of unimproved meadows which are unusual, as the well-drained sandy soils remain damp, probably due to a layer of clay material beneath them. The meadows provide habitat for over 80 species of grassland plants, which for a small meadow is quite a high number. The stream travels east in a wooded corridor, passing through Upper Moor's Gulley to the south of AWE Aldermaston. A tributary joins the stream on its left bank, flowing south from Decoy Pond, a large pond within the AWE site. This particular area, identified on maps as Roundwood Copse, is also an SSSI, known as Decoy Pit, Pools and Woods, which covers an area of and consists of multiple habitats, including grassland, heathland, woodland and small waterbodies. It is notable because it contains more species of breeding dragonfly and

damselfly Damselflies are flying insects of the suborder Zygoptera in the order Odonata. They are similar to dragonflies, which constitute the other odonatan suborder, Anisoptera, but are smaller and have slimmer bodies. Most species fold the wings along ...

than anywhere else in Berkshire, and also includes rare Alder woodland. Further east the stream is joined by another small stream on its right bank, rising from springs in Roundwood Gulley, and passes under Soke Road, which at that point briefly follows the course of a Roman road. It also crosses the county boundary into Hampshire at this location. The river continues through the woodland of Benyon's Inclosure, and enters Kiln Pond. An embankment carries a track over the pond, dividing it into two. In 1872, both ponds were fish ponds, but by 1896, only the lower pond, covering an area of , was used for this purpose, and the upper pond, covering , was marshy ground. By 1969, the upper area was again a pond, covering , and there were three sluices to allow water to pass through the embankment, with another sluice controlling the outflow from the lower pond. Just to the south of the pond is The Frith, an

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...

Hill fort A hillfort is a type of earthwork used as a fortified refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze Age or Iron Age. Some were used in the post-Roma ...

, where a single line of earthworks, which are quite modest in scale, enclose the top of a hill. The enclosure is by and there are no records of archaeological excavation being carried out on the site, although parts of it near its entrance have been damaged by tree planting. Silchester Roman Town is located around to the south-east, and the fort may have been associated with the Iron Age town that pre-dated the Roman one. A stream flowing from two springs on Benyon's Inclosure joins on the left bank as it passes under Church Road, at which point it has already descended to

Above Ordnance Datum In the British Isles, an ordnance datum or OD is a vertical datum used by an ordnance survey as the basis for deriving altitudes on maps. A spot height may be expressed as AOD for "above ordnance datum". Usually mean sea level (MSL) is used ...

(AOD). The course of another Roman road crosses at Lovegrove's Farm and it is joined by another stream, draining from Hundred Acre Piece, a large area of woodland to the north. It passes under Turk's Lane, and as it turns to the south, it forms the county boundary between Hamsphire and Berkshire. After passing through Tanhouse Bridge, carrying Pitfield Lane over the river, it joins

Foudry Brook Foudry Brook is a small stream in southern England. It rises from a number of springs near the Hampshire village of Baughurst, and flows to the east and then the north, to join the River Kennet to the south of Reading. The upper section is call ...

on its left bank.

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, angiosperms 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. The water quality of West End Brook was as follows in 2019. Water quality on West End Brook dropped from moderate to bad in 2015, and the reasons for it not being good are mainly to do with physical modification of the channel, which prevents fish freely moving around the system, and the presence of the invasive species, the 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 ...

References

{{authority control Rivers of Hampshire Rivers of Berkshire 2WestEnd