River Wandle

Wandle in Beddington Park

Template: Infobox River / Obsolete

The Wandle is an orographic right tributary of the River Thames in the city of London. He has from the Old English Wendlesworth, German " Wendles settlement " His name. With a length of only 14 kilometers, it belonged in the 19th century to the most economically used by mills rivers.

Course

The Wandle gets its water from the limestone bedrock of the North Downs, a range of hills south of London. At the northern spring horizon of the North Downs lie at the level of about 35 meters, the main source of Waddon Ponds in Croydon, and the secondary source, the Carshalton Ponds in Sutton. South of the Ponds running ditches and streams, which usually resulted only in heavy rain water and historic headwaters of the Wandle were were overbuilt.

Of the Waddon Ponds Wandle flows around two and a half kilometers to the west, where it joins with its approximately one kilometer long side source river of the Carshalton Ponds. There he changes direction and flows north-north- west to the River Thames.

History

Due to the proximity to London and the high gradient on short flow distance of the Wandle served early on the water mills. The Domesday Book of 1086 lists 13 mills along its course. 1805 were twelve cotton mills, flour mills, nine, five snuff mills, five mills, three bleachers, two dyers and one paper mill, sawmill and copper mill and a brewery on the river.

With the advent of steam engines changed the economic structure of the Wandle. It originated factories for the production of paints, solvents and other chemicals, the waste water was directed into the river. In the 1960s, the Wandle was officially declared a sewer. Residents saw the river in the following years " red, pink or blue, depending on the dyes that they used in the tanneries " ( "red, pink or blue, DEPENDING on the dye theywere using in the tanneries ").

In the 1970s and 1980s has begun to improve water quality. They focussed on the modernization of the sewage treatment plant in Beddington, from which the Wandle refers 80 % of its water. The success of the restoration and the reintroduction of fish received on 17 September 2007 a ​​setback when sodium hypochlorite, which was used for cleaning the sewage treatment plant Beddington, ran into the river and the ecosystem severely damaged to five kilometers. Thames Water, the operator of the wastewater treatment plant, was sentenced to a payment of £ 125,000, the largest ever penalty for water pollution in the UK.

Surrounding countryside

2001, the Wandle Trust was established to take care of the restoration of the river and improving its environment. So there is a roughly 18 -mile hiking and biking trail, the Wandle Trail, the Ponds to the mouth. For the future, the creation of the Wandle Valley Regional Park is planned, kept in the open space for conservation and leisure activities as well as to inform about the history of Wandles.