Oxford The Head of the River - WHERE THAMES SMOOTH WATERS GLIDE

HEAD OF THE RIVER PUB

Maps

Map: Christchurch Meadows

Left bank

In 'Oxford' by Frederick Douglas How -

Far smaller in extent [than Port Meadow], but even more famous, is the tree-girt space called Christ Church Meadow, lying between that college and the river.

Port Meadow may be said to be a wide bright outskirt of the natural robe of Oxford: Christ Church Meadow, with its Broad Walk and its mighty trees, is like a fold about her feet deep-trimmed and bordered with a silver braid.

It is here that on Show Sunday, in Commemoration Week, in June, those who hold high places in the University, with favoured guests, and some few undergraduates, pace up and down, or used to pace in days gone by; for it belongs to a more modern pen to say whether the old custom still obtains, or whether it has passed away with other things of ceremony ...

1906: Christchurch Meadows from the River, Oxford by Andrew Lang -

1906, Christchurch Meadows, Andrew Lang

1893: Isis Frozen -

1893, Isis Frozen

1908: Isis Boatclub Oilette -

1908, Isis Boatclub Oilette

1922: Punts below Folly Bridge, Francis Frith -

1922: Punts below Folly Bridge, Francis Frith

1934: College Barges -

College Barges, 1934

1822: 'Christchurch Walk' in 'The University and City of Oxford'
View from Christchurch Walk -

By Christchurch Walk, 1822

On the right hand end of the bridge I think you can see that it was lockable -
1880: Church, Summer Days-

the towpath was blocked by a lofty door, defended with formidable rails … in the interests of the watermen, who made a rich harvest by ferrying passengers across from Christ Church Meadows.

1937: "The Thames and its Story" -

... the college barges ... are an interesting study in development. The first of them were old procession barges of the London City Companies. One of them, the Oriel barge, still remains, with its delicate form, and long sharp prow, in which the rowers sat. The bronze figures by the door of the saloon are untouched, the oval windows, the tarnished gilding within.
But the spirit of utility rebelled and the model changed. The long prow was chopped off close, the semblance of the high stern went, and there was left merely a square floating dressing-room with railings round its roof, and seats for the spectators of the races.
Then the sense of beauty mutinied, perhaps alleging the use of the toy for picnic excursions, and the prow and stern were restored.
The University barge is a monument of the Gothic revival. Several architects have tried their hand in designs for these craft, and new ones are from time to time constructed.
It is the oddest little street, this row of motley Noah's Arks; and when the high poles shake out their amazing flags, and the men come down in fearless college colours, and a vaste and diverse millinery decks every foot of standing the roofs can give, there would seem to be some touch of an Arabian Night about a very English day, were it not that the vigorous people wear many more colours than Arabia would allow.

Going upstream keeping as close the the left bank (your right) as possible takes you round into the old weir pool with the “Head of the River” Public House just below Folly Bridge.

Map: The Trill Stream

On the left bank, downstream of the “Head of the River” was the inflow from the Trill Stream, coming from Castle Mill and the old Navigation stream, now silted up / culverted. When the weir and lock at Folly Bridge were in place Fred Thacker says -

the city gamins would navigate the two streams running south from the Trill Mill stream, thus dodging the lock [at Folly Bridge, with its six penny Toll for pleasure craft] in order to get a cheap view of the races.

It is said that at sometime ‘most of the flow’ of the river in summer came down the Trill Stream!

1908: T E Lawrence canoed down the Trill Mill Stream (then an underground sewer) emerging at Folly Bridge, in order to "epater les bourgeois" by firing blank pistol-shots under the gratings in the streets.
[ Now wouldn't that have made a nice scene in a film? ]

In the 1920s a decayed Victorian punt with two skeletons in it was found in the culverted stream. Perhaps a certain caution is called for before exploring this.

1920: Salter’s Boathouse on the Trill Stream, Henry Taunt -

Salter’s Boathouse on the Trill Stream, Henry Taunt, 1920
© Oxfordshire County Council Photographic Archive; HT12624

Map: Head of the River

Left bank (customers' mooring). Beware of upstream current (i.e. towards Folly Bridge) on the Head of the River wharf. You become aware that this was a weir pool not long ago!

Here it is (when it was still Salters boat yard) that, it is said, in the good old days when racing eights were made of wood, the leading university crew were proclaimed “head of the river” and ceremonially burnt their boat as a prelude to a memorable (if not remembered) evening.
That custom was not quite as daft as it seems because what they were doing was ensuring that they got a new boat for next year (and there was, and still is, considerable development in the technology of racing boats - so a new boat is usually an advantage) and that all those college boatmen were kept in full employment.

Mollie Harris has a story of how one eight celebrated their win

The Head of the River

The Head of the River pub does good pub grub, though mooring with a small boat can be a little tricky since the wharf is nearly four feet high. Twenty years ago I used to leap up and land on my feet, now I lunge forward and scramble up on my belly. Hey ho!

This whole stretch shouts to me that its level has been changed. As D S Mackoll wrote in The Royal River in 1885:
the river has banks instead of brims

... another question, that of floods, presses as much as ever. Quite recently the engineer to the Thames Commission brought out a scheme for doing away with Iffley Lock and Weir, and dredging a deep and narrow channel between Iffley and Folly Bridge. The Vice-Chancellor and the Dean of Christchurch, both by virtue of office Commissioners, were in favour of this scheme with a view to Oxford health; but it has been proved to the satisfaction of the Thames Conservancy Board, whose officers have examined the place, that so sweeping a change is not needed.

The effect of the change would be to give the river banks instead of brims, and it has been argued that it would kill the elms of Christ Church and the fritillaries in the water meadows about Iffley. Most serious of all would be the loss of Iffley Mill. We may hope that Oxford health need not be bought so dearly.

Fred Thacker, The Thames Highway, Volume II Locks and Weirs, page 133 says -

Towards the end of this year [1885] a very determined local effort was made towards abolishing the [Iffley] lock, mills and weirs. The level of the River up to Folly Bridge was to be lowered 2ft 6in, but the bed was to be dredged so that there should be a uniform depth of about five feet. Several local petitions, however, perhaps decided the Conservators against any interference with the station.

So, as yet, I cannot pin down any reference to actually reducing the levels. But my evidence that it was done is clear to me. The height of the wharf at the Head of the River; the height of the walls by Magdalen Bridge; the banks all the way down to Iffley Lock (where the river would be expected to be close to bank level) all show it to be so.

Any evidence of the change to weir or lock would have been removed by the extensive rebuilding of the Iffley Lock area in the 1920s. And I do know that extensive dredging was done (which of course would have been a necessary move after levels were reduced) witness the following photo, they dredged the hard way in those days! If you look carefully I think you can see that the level has been recently reduced. -

Bottom Ice in the Freshwater Thames!

One of the great scientific facts of my childhood was the understanding that whilst most liquids become denser as they get colder this only applies to water down to a point, and that point is at about 4ºc. Water is at its densest at this temperature and then as it cools further it actually gets less dense.

This strange quirk of nature is probably responsible for the survival of life on earth and certainly for life on land. Together with the fact that ice is less dense than water and therefore floats - it means that even relatively small bodies of water never freeze through to the bottom - and therefore life could survive.

The convection currents caused by water cooling at the surface, becoming denser and falling, cease at 4ºc and even reverse (colder water being forced to the surface where it freezes and insulates the rest).
I write this because I have recently discovered the following:

It is in "Oxfordshire of One Hundred Years Ago" by Eleanor Chance. W E Sherwood writes -

There is another thing which I suspect the Conservancy, by their dredging, may have stopped, but I am not certain, as it is so long since we have had a severe winter, and that is the formation of 'ground ice', ice that is that forms on the bottom of the river.
When I spoke to my science master about it he talked about the maximum density of water, and told me that the thing was impossible, but I took him down to the river, and showed him, opposite the barges [ie the College Barges along the left bank at Christchurch Meadow], the bottom all covered in ice.

I think he was annoyed, but at the river for behaving so unaccountably - indecently even, he seemed to think - and not at me. He was so far right that in a lake or in a river of uniform depth the ice cannot so form, but in the Thames in those days there were deep reaches followed by banks of gravel over which the water was shallow.

In times of frost the heavier warmer [ie 4ºc] water sank and remained in the deep parts, and what flowed on was the lighter water at or close to freezing point, and when the crystals formed in this they attached themselves, as forming crystals will, to any solid they could find; in this case to the gravel at the bottom.

This ice rose from time to time in spongy masses, bringing with it some of the gravel, and floated on until it reached the lock. Here it packed, and if the frost continued, formed a thick mass of rough ice which, as more came down extended further and further up stream; and it was on this ice, far more than surface ice, that on three occasions I remember a coach and four was driven from Folly Bridge to Iffley.

Frozen Isis 1890
A Coach oand four on the Frozen Isis, 1890?

Owing to the deepening of the river I doubt that this will ever again be possible, though at Binsey, the other point near Oxford where I have seen ground ice form, it may well do so.

[ I suspect there is another physical factor at work here. I guess there comes a point where almost freezing water does not freeze because it is moving. The gravel would offer many tiny 'shelters' between the stones in which the water would be relatively still and perhaps that is where the crystallisation started?
One would be interested to hear from a real physicist about this ... ]

1818: Walks in Oxford: By W. M. Wade 1818 -

A rather curious circumstance in the natural history of this river is its always freezing first at the bottom, whence the masses of ice as they are formed rise to the top.

1791: Samuel Ireland in his Picturesque Views on the Thames writes, of Buscot -

REMARKING that all the watermen, and persons concerned in the navigation, have an idea, and boldly assert, that the river, in this vicinity, freezes first at the bottom; and that they frequently find icicles and congelations adhering to the keels and bottoms of their boats, when there is no appearance of ice on the surface; and feeling myself not satisfied with this trite and vulgar opinion, I am induced to refer for a more philosophical and convincing proof of the assertion; when in Dr. Plott I find the following observation:—

"That the water-men frequently meet the ice-meers, or cakes of ice, in their rise, and sometimes in the under-side including stones and gravel, brought with them ab imo [ latin - "from the bottom"];"

and he observes,

"it is consonant to reason, for that congelations come from the conflux of salts, before dispersed at large, is as plain as the vulgar experiment of freezing a pot by the fire ; and that induration and weight come also from thence, sufficiently appears from the great quantities of them that are always found in stones, bones, testaceous, and all other weighty bodies."

He likewise seems to credit the assertion of a person who once saw a hatchet casually fall overboard into the river, near Wallingford, which was afterwards brought up and found in one of these ice-meers.

— As my author sometimes deals in the marvellous, I shall suspend any comment on these observations.

1813: The Beauties of England and Wales -

The congelation of the river Thames uniformly commences in the lowest places. The mass then formed rises (on a rude calculation) to about the middle of the water, where it presents, as in the streams of Germany, a resemblance to the partial consolidation of nuclei, or small hail.

A second mass then forms at the bottom ; the mass, centrally situated, rises to the surface ; and the new bottom, or ground ice, takes its place, and gradually (if permitted by a continued obstruction of sun-beams) mounts to the superior fabric, with which it speedily assimilates.

Dr. Plot accounts for this circumstance by supposing that the water of the Thames is more abundantly impregnated with salt than that of other English rivers ; and that, as salt naturally sinks to the bottom, and, as naturally, inclines to a principle of congelation, the formation of ice consequently takes place first at the greatest depth.

1793: June 15, In a "Letter from Oxford," attributed to John Skinner of Trinity College -

SAIL TO SANDFORD

AT Folly Bridge we hoist the sail
And briskly scud before the gale
To Iffley where our course awhile
Detain its locks and Saxon pile
Affording pause to recommend
The Hobby-horse unto my friend,
Our light-built galley : ours, I say,
Since Warren bears an equal sway
In her command ; as first, in cost
The half he shared ; himself a host,
Whether he plies the limber oar
Or tows the vessel from the shore,
Or strains the main sheet tight astern
Close to the wind. Of him I learn
Patient to wait the time exact
When jib and foresail should be backed
To bring her round ; or mark the strain
The boat on gunwale can sustain,
Without aught danger of upsetting
Or giving both her mates a wetting.

We visit Sandford next, and there
Beckley provides accustomed fare
Of eels, and perch, and brown beefsteak
Dainties we taste oft twice a week,
Whilst, Hebe-like, his daughter waits,
Froths our full bumpers, changes plates.
The pretty handmaid's anxious toils
Meanwhile our mutual praise beguiles,
Whilst she, delighted, blushing sees
The bill o'erpaid, and pockets fees
Supplied for ribbon or for lace
To deck her bonnet or her face.

A game at quoits will our stay
Awhile at Sandford Inn delay,
Or rustic nine-pins ; then, once more,
We hoist our sail, and tug the oar
To Newnham bound. Can books bestow
One half the joy we truants know?

(Salters Steamers)

Introduction
Estuary
PLA
QEII Br
Barrier
Tower Br
Custom Ho
London Br
; Frost Fairs
Cannon St Rb
The Great Stink
Southwark Br
Millenium Br
Blackfriars Rb
Blackfriars Br
Waterloo Br
Charing Cross Rb
Westminster Br
Lambeth Br
Vauxhall Br
Victoria Rb
Chelsea Br
Albert Br
Battersea Br
Battersea Rb
Wandsworth Br
Fulham Rb
Putney Br
Hammersmith Br
Barnes Rb
Chiswick Br
Kew Rb
Kew Br
RICHMOND
Twickenham Br
Richmond Rb
Richmond Br
TEDDINGTON
Kingston Rb
Kingston Br
Ditton Slip
Hampton Br
MOLESEY
SUNBURY
Walton Br
Desborough Cut
SHEPPERTON
Chertsey Br
CHERTSEY
M3 Br
Laleham Slip
PENTON HOOK
Staines Rb
Staines Br
Runnymede Br
BELL WEIR
Magna Carta Is
OLD WINDSOR
Albert Br
Datchet
Victoria Br
Black Potts Rb
ROMNEY
Eton
Windsor Br
Windsor Rb
Windsor Slip
Elizabeth Br
BOVENEY
Dorney Lake
York Cut
Summerleaze Fb
MonkeyIsland
New Thames Br
BRAY
Bray Slip
Maidenhead Rb
Maidenhead Br
Below Boulters
BOULTERS
Cliveden
Hedsor
COOKHAM
Cookham Slip
Cookham Br
BourneEnd RFb
Quarry Woods
A404 Br
MARLOW
Marlow Br
Bisham
TEMPLE
HURLEY
Medmenham
Culham Ct
Aston Slip
HAMBLEDEN
Temple Is
Fawley Ct
Remenham
Regatta
Phyllis Ct
Henley Slip
Leander
Red Lion
Henley Br
Angel on Br
Landing
Hobbs Boatyard
Hobbs Slipway
MARSH
Hennerton
Bolney
Wargrave
Shiplake Rb
R.Loddon
SHIPLAKE
Sonning Br
SONNING
Dreadnought
K&A Canal
CAVERSHAM
Reading Br
Caversham Br
Reading Slip
Purley
MAPLEDURHAM
Hardwick Ho
Whitchurch Br
WHITCHURCH
Hartswood Reach
Gatehampton Rb
Goring Gap
Goring Br
GORING
Swan
CLEEVE
Moulsford
Moulsford Rb
Papist Way Slip
Winterbrook Br
Wallingford Br
BENSON
Shillingford Br
R.Thame
DAYS
Burcot
Clifton Hampden
Clifton Church
Clifton H Br
Barley Mow
Long Wittenham
CLIFTON
Appleford Rb
Sutton Courtenay
Sutton Br
CULHAM
Culham Cut Fb
Abingdon Slip
Abingdon
Abingdon Br
ABINGDON
Nuneham Rb
Nuneham
Nuneham Park
Radley Boats
SANDFORD
Rose Island
Kennington Rb
Isis Br
Iffley Mill
IFFLEY
Oxford Rowing
Isis
Donnington Br
Riverside Slip
Boathouses
Punting
Lower Cherwell
Upper Cherwell
Islip
Head of River
Salters Steamers
Folly Br
Bacons Folly
Oxford Fb
Osney Fb
Weir stream
Osney Rb
Bullstake Stream
Osney Marina
OSNEY
Osney Br
Four Rivers
OLD RIVER
CANAL
Medley Weir Site
Medley Fb
Bossoms
Perch
Trout
GODSTOW
Godstow Nunnery
Godstow Br
Thames Br
KINGS
River Evenlode
EYNSHAM
Swinford Br
Oxford Cruisers
PINKHILL
Farmoor
Stanton Harcourt
Bablock Slip
Arks Weir Site
NORTHMOOR
Harts Fb
Rose Revived
Newbridge
Maybush
River Windrush
below Shifford
SHIFFORD
Shifford Fb
Tenfoot Fb
Trout Inn
Tadpole Br
RUSHEY
Old Mans Fb
RADCOT
Radcot Cradle Fb
Swan Inn
Radcot New Br
Radcot Old Br
GRAFTON
Eaton Hastings
Kelmscott
Eaton Fb
BUSCOT
Bloomers Hole Fb
Trout Inn
St Johns Br
ST JOHNS
Halfpenny Br
Marina Slip
LIMIT
Inglesham
Hannington Br
Kempsford
Castle Eaton Br
Marston Meysey
A419 Br
Cricklade
SOURCE?
THAMES HEAD
SEVEN SPRINGS