Home - WHERE THAMES SMOOTH WATERS GLIDE

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Web Name: Home - WHERE THAMES SMOOTH WATERS GLIDE

WebSite: http://thames.me.uk

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THAMES,WHERE,Home,Thames,guide,river,Thamesis,Isis,ThamesSociety,ThamesTradition

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from " Writing the Thames" by Christina Hardyment:The most comprehensive topographical survey of the river is not a book but a website.John Eade is a retired vicar who has been a lifelong aficionado of the river, exploring as far upstream in his punt Pax as Cricklade, and downstream to Teddington.The website also covers the tidal Thames, with its fascinating historic bridges and races.Although Eade now lives in Dorset, he still regularly visits the river in the second of the two punts he built himself; in 2015 Pax was even coaxed through the jungle of Oxford backwaters around and under Botley Road as far as The Fishes at North Hinksey.A developing interest is the tides and their graphical online presentation."Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide" ... is an unrivalled treasure house of facts, literary reference and artworks that is constantly being added to and updated. from "Once upon a River" by Diane Setterfield"There is one website I navigated a thousand times while writing this book and which was invaluable to me. It takes you on a journey through space and time, along the river.Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide (Thames.me.uk) was created by John Eade and he maintains it with dedication.If you can't get to the Thames itself, this website is the next best thing."John Eade is the rather magnificent curator of the website I consulted most often and most fruitfully when I was writing Once Upon a River. It takes the user on a journey up or downstream, giving all kinds of information, present day and historical, scientific and poetic, visual and in words, all arranged by location. It is an amazing resource for anyone interested in the Thames. Now he has added a section to his information on the Swan Inn devoted to Once Upon a River, in which he gathers together material to help readers visualise and understand that stretch of the Thames. You'll need to scroll down to reach the images and text. Thank you John!from Hear the Boat SingI received a very short (but powerful, I realised later) e-mail from John Eade. He sent some very interesting links to his website Where Thames Smooth Water Glide. Reading here and there, I was extremely impressed with all the information on these sites and the different links that took you further and deeper into a special niche. (The particular pages of interest for 'Hear the Boat Sing' were: Oxford Rowing; Henley Royal Regatta; The Boat Race, and Doggett’s Coat and Badge Race) My warmest thanks to John Eade for sending these links and allowing me to post them here.from "Recommended Resources on the History of the River Thamesby Dr Simon WenhamOnline ResourcesThere are loads of great river Thames resources, but Thames.me.uk is one that contains a lot of historical information.S. Wenham, ‘Oxford, the Thames and Leisure: a History of Salter Bros, 1858-2010 (Oxford University DPhil thesis, Michaelmas, 2012)PS Simon's new book is now out: Hobbs of Henley: a History'from The Great Frost of 1683-4The winter of 1683-4 produced one of the most notable of the Frost Fairs on the River Thames, known as the Blanket Fair. Others have covered that in great detail (e.g. the Thames.me.uk website), ...Morris OxfordA recent and very welcome subscriber to Morris Oxford is John Eade, whose historical cornucopia of a website, Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide, https://thames.me.uk contains no fewer than 84 pages on the rivers of Oxford. 1578: Thames from Holinshed's Chronicles PDF1603: Thames from Stow's Survey PDF1632: Thames Isis by John Taylor, the Water Poet PDF1758: A Description of the River Thames by Binnell & Griffiths PDF1794: Survey of the River Thames by John Rennie PDF1801: Picturesque Views on the River Thames by Samuel Ireland PDF1811 & 1818:(Thames Views) combined: Cooke & Owen / Cooke PDF1814: Frostiana Printed on the Ice of the Thames PDF1817: Sailing directions Norie PDF1827: Chronicles of London Bridge INCOMPLETE 1829: Tour on the Banks of the Thames, London to Oxford A & R Walton PDF1830: Eighty Picturesque Views on the Thames Tombleson & Fearnside PDF1832: Bridges from 'Public Buildings of London' Britton, Pugin & Leeds PDF1840: Thames and its Tributaries. [& Frost Fairs] Charles Mackay PDF1844: Thames Frost & Fair, 1683-4 edited Rimbault PDF1845: Picturesque Thames John Fisher Murray PDF1849: Thames: Rambles by Rivers James Thorne PDF1849: Thames Sights and Songs John Kendrick PDF1861: River Excerpts from 'Tom Brown at Oxford' Thomas Hughes PDF1861: Explosion at Erith, 1864 Illus. London News PDF1866: Rowing and Training 'Argonaut' (E.D.Brickwood) PDF1869: The Phantom of Regatta Island by Charles Dickens PDF1873: Thames Map, Oxford to London by Henry Taunt PDF1875: Making Waterloo, Southwark & London Bridges J Rennie. Edited. PDF1876: The Thames from 'The Tiber & the Thames', publ. Lippincott PDF1880: Isis & Thamesis Alfred J Church PDF1881: Our River George Leslie, Artist and punter. PDF1883: The Thames from Oxford to its Source Paul Blake (Boys' Own) PDF1883-1908:Thames Magic Lantern Slides W.C.Hughes PDF1885: Rivers of Great Britain, The Thames [The Royal River] various PDF1885: Dictionary of the Thames Charles Dickens(jun) PDF1885: Thames Trip (Dickens's Dictionary edited geographically) PDF1886: Down the Thames, Oxford to Windsor, Julia Isham Taylor PDF1888: Boating by W.B.Woodgate PDF1889: "Log" of Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K Jerome no stories - sad! PDF1890: William Morris's trips on the River, 1880 & 1890 PDF1891: Boating Life on the Upper Thames, Dr F. Campbell Moller PDF1891: Stream of Pleasure, J & E Pennell PDF1899: "A Tale of Henley", Victor Whitechurch [a short story ] PDF1902: "A Naturalist on the Thames", C J Cornish PDF1904: Great Thames Barrage by Barber PDF1909: The Stripling Thames Book of the river above Oxford. Thacker PDF 1910: Thames Valley Villages Volumes I & II. Charles Harper PDF1914: The Thames Highway: Vol I General History Fred Thacker PDF1920: The Thames Highway: Vol II Locks & Weirs Fred Thacker PDFAlmost every feature of the River has a page to itself (in order from Sea to Source)Most pages have:1) A map of the feature2) Links to various maps3) Locks and other major features have a summary of the River conditions shown on the Environment Agency site at this momentNB river flow is often quoted in terms of "excedance": the percentage of the time annually that this flow is exceeded - so 0% would be the highest flood, and 100% the lowest drought of the year.4) A link to a Google Streetview if available (which it is for many of the bridges and locks.)5) Locks etc have River Levels and estimated flows (in cubic meters per second)6) History, Historic pictures, Poetry and more ...Quotation attributed to William Shakespeare, but more likely William Sly or Wentworth Smith: 'The Life of the Lord Cromwell' - The River Thames, that by our door doth pass, His first beginning is but small and shallow: Yet keeping on his course, grows to a sea.There are two things scarce matched in the Universe - the sun in heaven and the Thames on earth!What is there to make so much of in the Thames? I am quite weary of it; there it goes, flow, flow, flow, always the same.No doubt he was just a cynic - but he does have a point. Because the river is carefully managed by its weirs the level hardly changes in ordinaryconditions. The current may vary by up to say 20 times with only an inch or two change in level. Only in flood or drought does the level change significantly. In the last few years the ratio between the highest flow and the lowest is nearly 1:400 !To navigate around this site click a link in the menu, top leftor the next page ( means downstream)OR: you can just step through all 600 or so pages in sequence -Scrolling to the bottom of a page automatically finds the next upstream.[SPACE] may scroll down one SCREEN; F11 may toggle that FULL SCREEN experience - on and offGet Thames News (with email alerts, recommended)The Thames is a secret waterway through the heart of England, accessible only to those with a boat,or willing to hire a boat, or to some extent those willing to walk the Thames paths. It is very slow, generally understated, a gentle, plain, beauty with few dramatic points.There are no rapids or waterfalls, and the beauty which takes your breath away is generallyof trees on the hills at which the river nudges in an undemanding sort of way.Above Cricklade the Thames flows through flat water meadows from the source at Thames Head,though the Churn is rather more exciting with lovely scenery up to Seven Springs.From Cricklade to Oxford the countryside is essentially flat and gentleand there are so few people to be seen that any human contact becomes quite welcome.From there on down the scenery slowly becomes more dramatic reaching its height below the Goring Gap. Other beauties include Hennerton backwater and the Cliveden Reach. Slipways or other launching sites have been identified enabling the whole navigable river to be used for day trips by trailered or car topped boats. All but the Lechlade - Cricklade section, the River Cherwell, the Bullstake Stream and Hennerton Backwater, would be suited to small powered boats, but the site was written from a punter's point of view. 1923: "Father Thames", by Walter Higgins, has these delightful Thames sketch maps.But Walter Higgins couldn't make them interactive - and I have!Click for a description of any place for which a tooltip appears - 1923: Maps from "Father Thames" by Walter HigginsThis Site is full of Poetry1844: The title is quoted from the poem by Joseph Tubbs,on the Poem Tree, Wittenham Clumps.And yonder there Where Thames Smooth Waters GlideIn later days appeared monastic prideMany of the more significant poems can be heard (if your browser allows it).from Thames Village by Charles Harper, 1910With rushes fenced, with swaying osiers crowned,Old Thames from out the western country hies;By daisy-dappled meads his course is found,Bearing upon his breast brave argosiesOf stately lilies. Poets loved to praiseThe stream whose tide doth calmly flow along,And this the echo of their tuneful lays:"Sweet Themmes, runne softly till I ende my song."Past town and village, cot and lonely farm,His silver stream with murm'ring music goes;Singing glad anthems, full of drowsy charm;Sweet songs of praise, unheeded not by thoseWho know his banks full well, who often loveTo roam his course, his marge to pace along,While Spenser's line re-echoes as we rove:"Sweet Themmes, runne softly till I ende my song."This site is full of quotations1912: Hilaire Belloc said -I cannot get away from it that the Thames may be alive!1932: ENGLAND by Ronald Carton - We English cannot boast about the greatness of our rivers that is, about their greatness measured coldly in miles either of length or width. Nor do we. We do not seek to match our Thames with Amazon, our Mersey with Mississippi, our Severn with Zambesi. These could swallow our rivers, hardly accounting them rivers, almost our country even and scarcely know the difference. We have no imposing deltas, no thunderous cataracts, no perilous rapids. But if they are no giants, our rivers have personality and character. They are very much a part of our lives, almost of ourselves.The Thames Valley means green and rolling country, low hills closely wooded,broad pastures where the cropping sheep tinkle an idle bell,cool lawns that slope greenly to the unhurrying stream. And the river itself means the confluence of many brooks near Coates, on the edge of Gloucestershire, below Cirencester.It means Isis above Dorchester where the Thame flows into it and Thame and Isisare one name and one river thereafter. It means the dividing line between Berkshire and Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, Middlesex and Surrey, and then at last Essex and Kent.It means Oxford and Reading and Windsor, Pangbourne and Henley, Putney and Mortlake, London. How much of England is in those names? What would be left if all that is and has been on those two hundred miles of river-banks were swept away out of our lives, out of the past?Tour of the Thames, the Sights and Songs of the King of Rivers, Kendrick 1849Thames, broad, bright, and beautiful! Why, with twenty millions of worshippers, hast thou never had a poet, a painter, or an historian? thou who of all Earth's streams art the noblest!If thou art not so long and lazy as the Rhine, or so rushing and rough as the Rhone, or so mysterious and maudlin as the Nile, or so classic and clay-coloured as the Tiber, or so sunny and slow as the Ganges, or so swift and savage as the Amazon, or so mighty and miry as the Mississippi—thou couldst buy them all!On thy bosom fleets have rode, that could have battered down the Alps, and from thy bosom armies have gone forth, which have made India but a purse in the pocket of England. To cover thee with wealth, the Chinese shivers on the hills of Kang-Fu, and the Negro broils at the Line; the Russian Fur-hunter freezes within three degrees of the Pole; and the Californian digs, until he digs his grave.This site is full of historic picturesI acknowledge gratefully permission to print many copyright pictures and poems and other items.I have no commercial interest in any of them.This site is for personal study and education, to enhance the enjoyment and knowledge of the River Thames,and may not be used for any other purpose. Doug Myers has painted all the bridges of the Thames. His pictures are copyrighted by him. Doug has been very co-operative in helping me use his pictures.The Frithphotographs are historically important and copyright - my grateful thanks for permission to show them.The MOTCOPictures from various 18th and 19th century works are reproduced by permission.The aerial photos by LAST REFUGE are great.Wouldn't you like to fly round the country taking photos like that?The captive balloon photos by Skyscan are fantastic!They can sell you a copy of "The Secret Thames".Oxfordshire County Council Photographic Archive have kindly allowed me to reproduce their photographs.Other permissions gratefully acknowledged from:Panteek Antique PrintsMy own pictures are copyright John Eade 2017 email me: Other quotations and pictures are from books no longer covered by copyright but if I have inadvertently been mistaken in any particular please forgive me and let me know!1949: Paul Gedge in Thames Journey wrote -The first time you go by boat from London to Lechlade it is an Odyssey.The second time it is an adventure.The third time, and thereafter it is Green Content.I am now well into Green Content!( I have now changed my punt for a skiff and have to decide - Is green content transferable? I guess it is - but only time and miles will tell. In 2017 I sculled in my single Thames skiff Lechlade to Windsor and back - Green Content is transferable!I have invented a time machine. It looks like a punt, it floats like a punt,but on the River Thames it carries me back, sometimes a thousand years.For the Thames is liquid history. Mysterious river, always changing.Down the entire length of the Thames, almost without exception, every weir and bridge and churchhas origins traceable to the middle ages and before. In finding out about them I have collected several hundreds of books about the river and immersed myself in them.And this now is my summary of what I have found related to the river as I have punted it,three times down the entire puntable length.I have covered the freshwater Thames from Teddington to Thames Head and Seven Springs,and also the Oxford section of the river Cherwell and the Bullstake Stream.For completeness I have also added a Tideway section though I have no personal experience of it.It is, in places, also a personal view of the river with some of my own photos taken with one hand,with a punt pole in the other hand. In many of them the front of the punt appears in the frame.But it is largely quotations and pictures and prints from the many authors and painterswho have appreciated this great river. I am an enthusiast for poetry and though there is a persistent refrain that the great river poem has yet to be written nevertheless I do love much of what has been written and have included almost every river poem I can find at the most appropriate place.I have avoided going on about wash and engine noise and litter and notice boards - I simply leave that to George Leslie and Jerome K Jerome - they make the point far better than I!A licence is needed in order to navigate even a manually propelled boat on the Thames. Click hereThis site starts from the Estuary and goes towards Cricklade, going UPSTREAM.The Convention is being changed - so be wary!WHY THE CHANGE? Because the Environment Agency have applied the international convention to buoys, which is fair enough, but then they have extended that to the naming of banksThis is the opposite convention to that accepted historically Somebody tell the Parisians their left bank is now the right bank!It is useless to oppose this - but it seems a pity - and all because someone was ignorant of their history![ Except for the following quotation and its equivalents I have 'corrected' all my sources to avoid confusion as far as possible! ]1859: All the Year Round by Charles Dickens -The right and the left banks of rivers are distinguished by turning your back on their source and facing the point where they discharge themselves into the sea.Supposing the Thames to be the river in question ; you stand on Westminster-bridge and look towards Margate : Lambeth will be on the right bank, the city of Westminster on the left.This really does matter -for example the EMERGENCY RENDEZVOUS POINTS (RVPs) used when a boat needs to reach the emergency services, usethis changed convention of Left and Right banks as seen from the sea. So beware if you dial 999 when afloat.They see the banks as from the sea.It was that Emergency use that convinced me I had to change.IF YOU FIND A WRONG BANK REFERENCE TO LEFT OR RIGHT PLEASE TELL ME.Email Emergency Rendezvous Points (RVP) Tamas Reaches, by Jenyth Worsley, May 2003,by kind permission, www.riverthamessociety.org.uk/poetryc4.htmNear the railway bridge on the road to Cirencesteryou pass a sign which says, Source of the River Thames.Its underground spring comes up for breaththrough banks that are hardly higher than the water.Trout are here, otters and water voles.Take the meandering rivers path through Lechlade,whose stone-built houses keep their hidden views,until, near Oxford, wider waters offerresidence to house-boats, fishermen and geese. From Putney to Mortlakeleaning and pullingoars on the rowlocksdipping and twistingpast Barn Elms and Hammersmithsweatshirts soddenwith splashes and strainingmegaphones shoutingto dark blue and light bluevictors triumphantstride through the waterbut slumping defeated the losers stay listlessWhere fretful salt meets yellow-brownish sludge The old Thames sang of rotting wood and skulls,barbyl, flounders, spearheads, bits of rope.Its pre-Celt name was Tamas, dark river.At this forum of city stone and waterthe old trades are gone. Docks and wharves,where two thousand masts once glittered on the waterwith cargoes of tea and sugar, silk and oranges,and steamers to the Empire bruised the oceanswith holds of steel and missionary trunksall are transformed by the new commerce,the new river gods, Finance and the Media.Below their elegant glass powerhousessailboards catch the windand wine and coffee bars displaceoyster and apple stalls I shall speak of the river as occasion presents, as it really is made glorious by the splendour of its shores, gilded with noble palaces, strong fortifications, large hospitals, and public buildings; with the greatest bridge, and the greatest city in the world, made famous by the opulence of its merchants, the increase and extensiveness of its commerce; by its invincible navies, and by the innumerable fleets of ships sailing upon it to and from all parts of the world. As I meet with the river upwards in my travels through the inland country I shall speak of it, as it is the channel for conveying an infinite quantity of provisions from remote counties to London, and enriching all the counties again that lie near it by the return of wealth and trade from the city; and in describing these things I expect both to inform and divert my readers, and speak in a more masculine manner, more to the dignity of the subject, and also more to their satisfaction, than I could do any other way.

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'Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide' guide to the River Thames, UK. 'Unrivalled treasure house of facts, literary reference and artworks' Hardyment. 'If you cant get to the Thames itself this website is the next best thing' Setterfield

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