River Thames
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- This article is about the River Thames in southern England. For other meanings of the word Thames, see Thames
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The River Thames, looking south from the London Eye observation wheel. The bridges (foreground to background) are Westminster Bridge, Lambeth Bridge and Vauxhall Bridge. Parliament is on the right. | ||||
| Length | 346 km | |||
| Elevation of the source | m | |||
| Average discharge | m³/s | |||
| Area watershed | km² | |||
| Origin | England | |||
| Mouth | North Sea | |||
| Basin countries | ||||
The Thames (pronounced /temz/) is a river flowing through southern England and connecting London with the sea. The discrepancy between the spelling and the pronunciation is due to the Renaissance age belief that the name comes from Greek, according to which the spelling was changed from the original Temese.
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Course
The Thames has a length of 346 kilometres (215 statute miles). Its source is near the village of Kemble in the Cotswolds; it then flows through Oxford (where it is called the Isis, a truncation of Tamesis, its Latin name), Wallingford, Reading, Henley-on-Thames, Marlow, Maidenhead, Eton and Windsor and London.
The Thames rises in Gloucestershire, traditionally forming the county boundary, firstly between Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, between Berkshire on the south bank and Oxfordshire on the north, between Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, Buckinghamshire and Surrey, Surrey and Middlesex, and between Essex and Kent. The Thames is still used as an administrative border, though less so than it has been.
From the outskirts of Greater London, it passes Syon House, Hampton Court, and Richmond (with the famous view of the Thames from Richmond Hill), and Kew, before it passes through London proper, then Greenwich and Dartfordm and entering the sea in a drowned estuary, The Nore. Part of the area west of London is sometimes termed the Thames Valley whilst east of Tower Bridge development agencies and Ministers have taken to using the term Thames Gateway.
About 90 kilometres from the sea, upstream of London, the river begins to exhibit tidal activity from the North Sea. London was reputedly made capital of Roman Britain at the spot where the tides reached in 43 AD, but this spot has moved up river in the 2000 years since then. At London, the water is slightly brackish with sea salt.
The principal tributaries of the Thames are the River Darent, the River Ravensbourne (or Deptford Creek), the River Fleet, the River Brent, the River Lee, the River Westbourne, the River Effra, the River Ken, the River Mole, the River Wey, the River Loddon, the River Kennet, the River Thame, the River Cherwell, the River Windrush, the River Cole, the River Churn and the River Wandle.
Between Maidenhead and Windsor, the Thames supports an artificial secondary channel, known as the Jubilee River, for flood relief purposes.
History
From over 600,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene ice age, until the Anglian glaciation around 475,000 years ago, the early River Thames flowed from Wales to Clacton-on-Sea, crossed what is now the North Sea to become a tributary of the Rhine. The river followed a path through Buckinghamshire, the southern part of Hertfordshire and Essex, running from the area of modern Staines up the valley of the Colne to Hatfield and then eastward across Essex towards the primeval Rhine. It was later diverted by encroaching ice down the valley of the modern River Lea to its present estuary position. This path was then itself blocked by a mass of ice near Hatfield and a lake ponded up to the west of this around St Albans. Waters eventually overflowed near Staines to cut the path of the modern Thames through central London. When the ice retreated about 400,000 years ago the river bed along the new route followed the lower path and so the river remained on its present day course. The flow in the Colne valley then reversed, now flowing south as a tributary into the modern Thames. Superficial gravel deposits from the primordial Thames, are found throughout the Vale of St. Albans.
Within the human timescale, following the example of the local Celts, the Romans called the river Tamesis: Caesar (De Bello Gallica), Dion Cassius (xl. 3) and Tacitus (Annales xiv. 32).
Richard Coates has recently suggested that the river was called the Thames upriver where it was narrower, and Plowonida down river where it was too wide to ford. This gave the name to a settlement on its banks which became known as Londinium from the original root Plowonida derived from pre-celtic Old European 'plew' and 'nejd'. meaning something like the flowing river or the wide flowing unfordable river. see [[1]]
The Thames provided the major highway between London and Westminster in the 16th and 17th centuries. The clannish guild of watermen ferried Londoners from landing to landing, and tolerated no outside interference. A versifying waterman, John Taylor, the Water Poet (1580—1653), described the river in a poem commemorating a voyage from Oxford to London,
In the 17th and 18th centuries, during the period now referred to as the Little Ice Age, the Thames often froze over in the winter. This led to the first "Frost Fair" in 1607, complete with a tent city set up on the river itself and offering a number of amusements, including ice bowling. After temperatures began to rise again, starting in 1814, the river never again froze over completely. The building of a new London Bridge in 1825 may also have been a factor; the new bridge had fewer pillars than the old and so allowed the river to flow more freely, thus preventing it from flowing slowly enough to freeze in cold winters.
By the 18th century, the Thames was one of the world's busiest waterways, as London became the centre of the vast, mercantile British Empire. During this time one of the worst river disasters in England took place on September 3, 1878 on the Thames, when the crowded pleasure boat Princess Alice collided with the Bywell Castle killing over 640.
In the 'Great Stink' of 1858, pollution in the river became so bad that sittings at the House of Commons at Westminster had to be abandoned. A concerted effort to contain the city's sewage by constructing massive sewers on the north and south river embankments followed, under the supervision of engineer Joseph Bazalgette.
The coming of rail and road transportation, and the decline of the Empire in the years following 1914, have reduced the prominence of the river. London itself is no longer a port of any note, and the Port of London has moved downstream to Tilbury. In return, the Thames has undergone a massive clean-up from the filthy days of the late 19th and early- to mid-20th centuries, and life has returned to its formerly dead waters. It is now the cleanest river in the world which flows through a city.
In the early 1980s, a massive flood control device, the Thames Barrier, was opened. It is closed several times a year to prevent water damage to London's low lying areas upstream. In the late 1990s, the 12km long Jubilee River was built, which acts as a flood channel for a section of the Thames around Maidenhead and Windsor. [2]
There are many bridges and tunnels crossing the Thames, including Tower Bridge, London Bridge, Lambeth Bridge, and the Dartford Crossing.
The Thames in Literature
Many books refer to the Thames. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome describes a boat trip up the Thames. Somewhere near the Oxford stretch is where the Liddells were rowing in the poem at the start of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The river is mentioned in both The Wind in the Willows and the play Toad of Toad Hall.
In books set in London there is Sherlock Holmes looking for a boat in A Study in Scarlet; in Oliver Twist, Bill Sikes kills Nancy just near the river.
Navigation
The River Thames is navigable from the estuary as far as Halfpenny Bridge at Lechlade. Between the sea and Teddington Lock, the river forms part of the Port of London and navigation is administered by the Port of London Authority. From Teddington Lock to the head of navigation, the navigation authority is the Environment Agency.
There are 45 locks on the River Thames. See Locks on the River Thames for a full list of all locks.
Crossings of the Thames
Famous crossings of the Thames include:
- Dartford Crossing
- Thames Barrier
- Blackwall Tunnel
- Rotherhithe Tunnel
- Thames Tunnel
- Tower Bridge
- London Bridge
- Millennium Bridge
- Hungerford Bridge
- Westminster Bridge
- Maidenhead Railway Bridge
- Marlow Bridge
See Crossings of the River Thames for a full list of all crossings.
Islands in the Thames
Famous islands in the Thames include:
- Isle of Sheppey
- Canvey Island
- Isle of Grain
- Eel Pie Island, Twickenham
- Magna Carta Island, Runnymede
- Fry's Island, Reading (sometimes known as De Montfort Island)
See Islands in the River Thames for a full list of all islands.
See also
External links
cy:Afon Tafwys da:Themsen de:Themse es:Támesis fr:Tamise it:Tamigi ja:テムズ川 nl:Theems no:Themsen pl:Tamiza simple:River Thames
