THE ARTIFICIAL THAMES.
WHEN complaints are made that salmon no longer come up to Windsor, and that the bed of the lower river is enninletelv scoured out by the rush of the ebb-tide, so that
fish cannot breed there, it is worth while recalling the fact that our national river has in the course of a thousand years been made the most artificial of the great natural features of this country. Nature is ever prodigal of repairs or restorations after the artificers have been dealing at large with our favourite stream. But it is no paradox to say that of the Tipper Thames, as we know it to-day, from Oxford to Ted- dington, the greater part is both in history and in fact an artificial river, which might be described as a chain of narrow lakes, joined at the links by locks or weirs, between which the water is held up at an artificial depth, its rate of flow controlled, and in many cases its course entirely altered by short cuts made across loops, the loops being themselves abandoned for navigation, and in some cases the only purely natural bits of the river left, though a portion of the water which once went through them is diverted down the " cut." The date of man's practical interference with the river is earlier even than his annexing it to manors by form of law, a process which had the imprimatur of Domesday Book, and the legality of which was established only a fortnight ago, when the lord of a Thames-side manor successfully established his right to a private fishery there. It is no part of the purpose of the present article to put the legal aspect of any questions connected with the river ; but the record of the modifications made in its course is so largely contained in legal formulae and documents that it is not easy to get entirely away from the ancient disputes and titles involved.
We have one brief but significant piece of evidence as to the original state of the Thames. The Britons did not know the use of water-mills, but ground their corn by hand. Consequently we may be fairly certain that though they probably ran up fish-weirs of wattle on the side streams, there were none of solid construction capable of holding up great lengths of water as they do now. Caesar confirms this view. After failing to cross the Thames at the only ford, near Sunbury, he had to march his army up the stream for a considerable distance before he could find a passage. If the river had been barred by heavy weirs it is difficult to believe that he could not have repaired or used them as bridges.
By the time that Domesday Book was drawn up there were in all only fifteen mills on the Thames. Probably those were on the side streams, and the natural flow of the river remained. It is interesting to note that by 1888 the number of mills mentioned in Domesday had only increased by thirteen, the artificial treatment of the river at present being due almost entirely to the desire to improve it as a waterway and to get rid of flood- water rapidly. But the first and original interference with the stream was by the erection of weirs, some probably to divert water to mills now vanished, others to catch fish on a large scale. In 1347 a statute was passed in answer to a complaint that every lord erected a weir on the river opposite his own domain. Nor is this wonderful, for if A saw B catching the fish above and C catching them below, and also taking tolls for passing his weir, he would naturally wish to share in the profits. The statute ordered that all locks and weirs whatever should be removed. Through all the Plantagenet days statutes were constantly passed against the putting up of weirs and limit- ing the size of those existing, and there is every reason to think that up till the seventeenth century the Thames was still a natural river. With the first Stuart, when trade and business enterprise were brisk, came the great change which has lasted until our own day. Much larger boats and barges began to be used, and horses for the first time are mentioned as drawing them. The owners of the bank were to be com- pensated. but the barges might use " strength of men or horses, or either of them." It was then, probably at the suggestion of the Dutch engineers employed in draining various fens, that the discovery was made that weirs, properly used and supplied with locks, were a help and not a hindrance to navigation, by keeping up a head of deep water and lessening the current. Various Acts appointed Commissioners to buy up towing-paths and towing-rights, and to purchase and make locks, compensating owners of mills and lands ; and in a short time the Thames was cut up into lengths by regular locks and weirs, and put generally into leading-strings. The channel was deepened, and straightened by numerous cuts across the windings and loops of the river. and sometimes these have again been recut. Often, too, the old bed of the river has become naturally only a side stream, the main bed having changed. The Report of the Select Committee of 1884 recommended that all of these which are not blocked by weirs, and " through which Thames water flows," should be free to the public. The only parts of the river in which the original conditions prevail are those loops which were left un- touched by the larger boats and barges when cuts were made to avoid them. Perhaps the most characteristic of these is that at Long Wittenham, between Sutton Courtney and Clifton Hampden. It is very sinuous, narrow, and most uneven in its bed, alternating from gravelly shallows two and a half feet deep to pools and holes fifteen feet deep. Large trees grow in places straight up from the banks, and on the points opposite the shallows are deep beds of sand and river shells mixed. It is the only place in the river known to the writer where there is ideal spawning- ground for trout or salmon, the gravel being bright and clear, and the water highly aerated.
An artificial feature running all the way from Putney to Lechlade is the towing-path. A towing-path has a very definite " connotation," to use the old term of logic. It tells all kinds of things, the chief of them being that the stream along which it runs is a very artificial kind of highway, of which the towpath by the side is as much a distinguishing mark as a pavement or footway along a road is, meaning that the latter is mainly reserved for vehicles. The two have not quite the same meaning, but the inferences are much alike.
The towpath is also a thing peculiar in itself, being not in the least of the same nature as a footpath, or right- of-way for ever for foot passengers, as the public rashly incline to assert. There is a distinction and a difference, clear to the legal mind, and one of those points which mark off lawyers as a body from the loosely thinking laity. A towpath is only a portion of ground on which bank- side proprietors have permitted persons owning barges to tow them, either by hand or with horses. The bargain lies entirely between the man in the boat, who cannot propel himself with- out help from the shore, and the man who owns the shore. If the tribe or village which owns the shore at the Nile cataracts preferred to let the owners of boats find their own haulage, say by a steam motor, and indemnify themselves by charging for the use of a track, that would be about the legal position of the towpaths of the Thames. It is not the reasonable position, because generally where horses are driven it is not objectionable for persons to pass along, using the path as a footpath. But it is quite conceivable that where a rowdy public-house pours out people late at night who shout and scream across the water, a riparian proprietor might object that the towpath was only meant for " dumb beasts," and not for vociferous humans. It is noticeable that in some of the old paintings of the Thames, notably at Walton Bridge and at Hampton Court, the horses are shown walking in the water, where it is shallow near the bank. These shallows and over- spreadings were formerly very common. Now they are all carefully filled in, the policy of the Conservators, who have not only to maintain the navigation, but also to provide a channel for the sudden flood-waters caused by modern drainage, being to heighten the banks and deepen the river-bed, while narrowing the channel to obtain a rapid flow. Thus the Thames has been narrowed, deepened, cut up into lengths, its current regulated, and its course diverted and straightened. Lately the Conservators, who have always acted strictly for the interests of the public at the time being, have restored its purity and protected its birds. That the Thames itself has preserved its character to so great a degree under interferences so extensive is an instance of what we may term natural vitality almost without parallel.
Previous page
