River Trent - Migration of Course in Historic Times

Migration of Course in Historic Times

Unusually for an English river, the river channel has occasionally altered significantly in historic times. An abandoned channel at Repton is described on an old map as 'Old Trent Water'. Further downstream, archaeologists have found the remains of a medieval bridge across another abandoned channel. The course of the river was altered in the area of Ingleby in Derbyshire, "moving" 300 acres (120 ha) from one side of the river to another. The river's propensity to change course is referred to in Shakespeare's play Henry IV - Part 1:

“

Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here,

In quantity equals not one of yours:

See how this river comes me cranking in,

And cuts me from the best of all my land

A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.

I'll have the current in this place damm'd up;

And here the smug and silver Trent shall run

In a new channel, fair and evenly;

It shall not wind with such a deep indent,

To rob me of so rich a bottom here.

”

Famous quotes containing the words historic and/or times:

“If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)