History
Between Southwold and Walberswick, the mouth of the River Blyth forms a tidal creek, which opens out into a large area of saltings below the first bridge over the river at Blythburgh. The river was navigable to the port of Blythburgh until the 16th century, but navigation was increasingly affected by silting up of the channel. The volume of water which drained from the saltings on every tide kept the mouth of the river scoured, and enabled Southwold to develop as an important, though minor, port.
The idea of making the river navigable beyond Blythburgh was proposed by Thomas Knights in the 1740s. Knights was a brewer from Halesworth, and suggested that Southwold harbour needed to be improved first. An Act of Parliament was obtained in 1746 to authorise the improvements, which were suffiently successful that harbour dues more than doubled over the next five years. Knights tried to gain more support for a navigation to Halesworth, and a plan for the navigation, including a branch from Halesworth to Ubbeston was prepared by Benjamin Reeve in 1753. The project which included three locks was costed at £4,614 by John Reynolds in May 1753, but there was a delay before the bill was submitted to Parliament.
Following the granting of an Act of Parliament on 1 April 1757, which included additional powers for the Southwold Harbour trustees, a new survey was carried out by Langley Edwards, who estimated the cost at £3,000, which included the purchase of Wenhaston watermill. By 1759, subsciptions had been received from 38 people, mainly from the immediate locality, for a total of £3,600. Having made the estimate, Edwards was responsible for completing the work to that price, but failed to attend most of the meetings which the commissioners called. Despite his elusiveness, the work was completed at a cost of £3,822, and the official opening took place on 23 July 1761.
Read more about this topic: Blyth Navigation
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)