River Loddon - Navigation

Navigation

It seems likely that the Loddon was used for navigation in the past, although the exact nature of this use is not clear. There is circumstantial evidence in the naming of Barge Lane, which runs beside the river at Swallowfield, and in the naming of some of the pools by the mills. The pools at Arborfield Mill and Sindlesham Mill are both called Lock Pool. More concrete evidence is provided by the number of boat houses marked on old maps, including two on the Arborfield estate, one of which still exists, one near Mill Lane at Sindlesham, and another at Woodley, near to Colmansmoor Lane. Other evidence includes postcards in the collection at Reading Local Studies Library, which show a punt at Twyford and rowing boats at Sindlesham Mill and Arborfield Hall. Old postcards also show that The George public house at Winnersh used to have rowing boats which were available for hire on the river. There was a boathouse on the opposite bank to the public house, one of eleven on the river around the 1900s.

Lady Constance Russell, writing in 1901 recorded the fact that Sir Henry Russell, who owned Swallowfield Park and who died in 1852, spent his latter years improving his property, and this included filling in the canal which "ran from the Lock Pool near the church to the Bow Bridge". The canal is clearly shown on a map produced in 1790 by Thomas Pride, and on an Enclosure Map for Swallowfield, produced in 1817 and held at the Berkshire Record Office. Further evidence for the use of the river was the death of John Alfred Dymott in 1917, who drowned after falling out of a punt which he was using to transport materials. He regularly performed such duties, and in this case had been assisting the estate carpenter to erect fencing near the river and remove timber from it.