Bow Back Rivers - History

History

The Bow Back Rivers cross an area originally known as Stratford Marsh, an area of common Lammas land, where inhabitants had common rights to graze horses and cattle between Lammas Day (1 August) and Lady Day (25 March), but which was used for growing hay for the rest of the year. The Marsh was between Stratford-Langthorne and Stratford-at-Bow. Little remains from pre-history, but the names suggest that the two settlements lay at either end of a stone causeway across the marsh. Remains of a stone causeway have been found, but no traces of an associated road. The ford at Old Ford is of pre-Roman origin, part of a route from London to Essex which crossed Bethnal Green. In the Roman era, a new road was built from London to the ford, which carried the principal road to Colchester. There may also have been a ford further south at Bow, and a further causeway existed between Homerton and Leyton, known as Wanstead Slip.

These crossings passed across a true marsh, either side of the River Lea. This wide, fast flowing river was then tidal as far as Hackney Wick, and navigable as far as Hertfordshire. Dates for the earliest use of the rivers by boats are unknown, although a late Bronze Age dugout canoe and parts of a Saxon barge have been found in the marshes at Walthamstow. The first alteration to the natural river may have been made by Alfred the Great, who cut another channel to strand a force of Danes in 896, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This lowered the tide head to Old Ford, and prevented large boats sailing the river until the 15th century.

During the reign of King Henry I between 1100 and 1118, his wife Queen Matilda (or Maud), on hearing of the problems of crossing the river at Old Ford, directed that the road should be routed further south, and paid for two bridges, one to cross the Lee and the other to cross the Channelsea River, from her own funds. She also paid for the road to be built between them, and the location of the bridge became known as Stratford-atte-Boghe, later Stratford-le-Bow, and finally dropped Stratford to become Bow or Bow Bridge. John Leland, writing in the 1500s, gives a more fanciful account, in which the queen falling into the water prompted the action. The addition of le-Bow probably had less to do with the shape of the bridge than the fact that arch was derived from arcus, meaning bow.

In 1135, Stratford Langthorne Abbey was founded. The Abbey continued the process of draining Stratford marsh begun in the Middle Ages, and creating artificial channels to drive water and tide mills. A small river port developed at Stratford, mentioned in the 15th century, to serve the needs of Stratford Abbey and the mills at Stratford, and there is similar evidence in later centuries. The Abbey took on responsibility to maintain the marsh walls around Bow Creek, to keep the tidal waters out. The river was being used for the transport of goods and passengers by 1571, when an Act of Parliament empowered the Lord Mayor of London to make improvements to the river to ensure that supplies of grain continued to reach the capital. These works included a new cut near the Thames, probably the section of river between Bow Tidal Gates and Old Ford, on which no tolls were to be charged, and a pound lock was constructed at Waltham Abbey, only the second to be built in England.

Between Bow Bridge and Channelsea Bridge there were three others, said in 1303 to have been built to fill the gaps caused by the cutting of mill streams through Maud's causeway, although there is evidence that the mills pre-dated the causeway. However, the mill owners took responsibility for the bridges, which crossed the mill streams for St Thomas's, Spileman's and Saynes mills. The last two were owned by the City of London, and the bridges were called Pegshole and St Michael's Bridges. An administrative mistake around 1814 resulted in the City of London taking responsibility for St Thomas's Bridge, but the miller did not complain as Pegshole bridge was smaller and therefore less costly to maintain. The names were eventually swapped, and all three were replaced by Groves Bridge in 1933, which crossed the widened Three Mills Wall River, the two branches of the Waterworks River having been combined into Three Mills Wall River, while Three Mills Wall Back River was filled in.

Crossing the Back Rivers by a series of low-level bridges is the Northern Outfall Sewer which leads to the Abbey Mill Pumping Station, both of which were designed by Joseph Bazalgette in the 1860s. Today, the route of the embankment that encloses the sewer from Bow to Beckton is followed by a public footpath, The Greenway.