Description
It rises near Hinckley in Leicestershire and is joined by the River Sence (Wigston) near Enderby before flowing through Leicester (where it is joined by the Grand Union Canal at Aylestone), Barrow-on-Soar, beside Loughborough, and Kegworth, flowing into the Trent near Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire. Its major tributary, the once navigable River Wreake, joins it near Syston.
The Soar has been made navigable to boats and several shortcuts have been built. The section between Loughborough and Leicester was made navigable in 1784, and the Grand Union Canal connected it south to the southern canals network and to London, in 1814.
According to legend, the body of King Richard III of England was thrown into the Soar after his death. The bridge carrying the A47 across the Soar at Leicester is known as 'King Richard's Bridge'.
It is believed the name "Leicester" is derived from the words castra (camp) of the Ligore, meaning dwellers on the 'River Legro' (an early name for the River Soar). In the early 10th century it was recorded as Ligeraceaster ("the town of the Ligor people"). The Domesday Book later recorded it as Ledecestre.
Read more about this topic: River Soar
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”
—Freda Adler (b. 1934)