Bow Back Rivers or Stratford Back Rivers is a complex of waterways between Bow and Stratford in east London, England, which connect the River Lea to the River Thames. Starting in the twelfth century, works were carried out to drain Stratford Marshes and several of the waterways were constructed to power watermills. Bow Creek provided the final outfall to the Thames, and the other channels were called Abbey Creek, Channelsea River, City Mill River, Prescott Channel, Pudding Mill River, Saint Thomas Creek, Three Mills Back River, Three Mills Wall River and Waterworks River.
The rivers have been subject to change over centuries, with Alfred the Great diverting the river in 896 to create a second channel, and Queen Matilda bridging both channels around 1110 by paying for the construction of Bow Bridge.
Because the river system was tidal as far as Hackney Wick, several of the mills were tide mills, including those at Abbey Mills and those at Three Mills, one of which survives. Construction of the New River in the seventeenth century to supply drinking water to London, with subsequent extraction by waterworks companies, led to a lowering of water levels, and the river was gradually canalised to maintain navigation. Significant changes occurred with the creation of the Lee Navigation in 1767, which resulted in the construction of the Hackney Cut and the Limehouse Cut, allowing barges to bypass most of the back rivers. A major reconstruction of the rivers took place in the 1930s, authorised by the River Lee (Flood Relief) Act 1930 (20 & 21 Geo. 5. c. cxcii), but by the 1960s, commercial usage of the waterways had largely ceased. Deteriorating infrastructure led to the rivers dwindling to little more than tidal creeks, and they were categorised in 1968 as having no economic or long-term future, although in April 1968 barges were still being used to convey massive tree trunks to some canal-side timber yards between Old Ford locks and the Hertford Union junction. (For photos of barge traffic in 1968, see "Waterways World", April 2012 pp. 58–61: "London's Olympic Waterways", ISSN 0309-1422).
However, British Waterways decided that their full restoration was an important aim in 2002, and the construction of the main stadium for the 2012 Summer Olympics on an island formed by the rivers provided funding to construct a new lock and sluices which stabilised water levels throughout the Olympic site. It was hoped that significant amounts of materials for the construction of the Olympic facilities would be delivered by barge, but this did not happen. Improvements to the channels which form a central feature of the Olympic Park included the largest aquatic planting scheme ever carried out in Britain.
Name It is unclear when the individually named rivers became known collectively as Bow Back Rivers. Charles Tween, writing on behalf of the Lee Conservancy, referred to them as both the Stratford Back Rivers and the Stratford Back Streams in 1905. The section to the west of the more recent City Mills Lock was labelled Bow Back River on a map of 1895,Ordnance Survey, 1:1056 map, 1895 but had previously been part of Pudding Mill River.Ordnance Survey, 1:5280 map, 1850 Powell, writing in 1973, still referred to them as the Stratford Back Rivers.
The 1939 edition of "Inland Waterways of Great Britain", an early attempt to provide a guide for the leisure use of canals, noted that the River Lee had "several subsidiary canalised waterways", and listed Bow Creek, Old River Lee, City Mills River and Waterworks River, but did not describe them collectively. Boyes and Russell writing in 1977 referred to them as the Bow Back Rivers or Stratford Back Rivers, and by the sixth edition of "Inland Waterways of Great Britain", published in 1985, they were referred to as Bow Back Rivers.
The river which supplies the Bow Back Rivers has been known as the River Lee or River Lea, but modern usage tends to use "Lea" when referring to the natural river, and "Lee" when referring to the navigation, so that the Lee Navigation is a canalisation of the River Lea. The name Bow may derive from either an arched bridge over the River Lea in the 12th century or a bend in the road east of Bow Road station.
History
The Bow Back Rivers cross an area originally known as Stratford Marsh, an area of common Lammas land, where inhabitants had common rights to graze horses and cattle between Lammas Day (1 August) and Lady Day (25 March), but which was used for growing hay for the rest of the year. The Marsh was between Stratford-Langthorne and Stratford-at-Bow. Little remains from pre-history, but the names suggest that the two settlements lay at either end of a stone causeway across the marsh. Remains of a stone causeway have been found, but no traces of an associated road. The ford at Old Ford is of pre-Roman origin, part of a route from London to Essex which crossed Bethnal Green. In the Roman era, a new road was built from London to the ford, which carried the principal road to Colchester. There may also have been a ford further south at Bow, and a further causeway existed between Homerton and Leyton, known as Wanstead Slip.
These crossings passed across a true marsh, either side of the River Lea. This wide, fast flowing river was then tidal as far as Hackney Wick, and navigable as far as Hertfordshire. Dates for the earliest use of the rivers by boats are unknown, although a late Bronze Age dugout canoe and parts of a Saxon barge have been found in the marshes at Walthamstow. The first alteration to the natural river may have been made by Alfred the Great, who cut another channel to strand a force of Danes in 896, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This lowered the tide head to Old Ford, and prevented large boats sailing the river until the 15th century.
During the reign of King Henry I, in 1100, his wife Queen Matilda (or Maud), directed that the road should be routed further south, and paid for two bridges, one to cross the Lee and the other to cross the Channelsea River, from her own funds. She also paid for the road to be built between them, and the location of the bridge became known as Stratford-atte-Boghe, later Stratford-le-Bow, and finally dropped Stratford to become Bow or Bow Bridge. John Leland, writing in the 1500s, gives a more fanciful account, in which the queen falling into the water prompted the action. The addition of le-Bow probably had less to do with the shape of the bridge than the fact that arch was derived from arcus, meaning bow. This was the style of French bridges rather than the Anglo Saxon straight construction, and its design gave it its name.
In 1135, Stratford Langthorne Abbey was founded. The Abbey continued the process of draining Stratford marsh begun in the Middle Ages and creating artificial channels to drive water and tide mills. A small river port developed at Stratford, mentioned in the 15th century, to serve the needs of Stratford Abbey and the mills at Stratford, and there is similar evidence in later centuries. The Abbey took on responsibility to maintain the marsh walls around Bow Creek, to keep the tidal waters out. The river was being used for the transport of goods and passengers by 1571, when an act of Parliament, the River Lee Navigation Act 1571 (13 Eliz. 1. c. 18), empowered the Lord Mayor of London to make improvements to the river to ensure that supplies of grain continued to reach the capital. These works included a new cut near the Thames, probably the section of river between Bow Tidal Gates and Old Ford, on which no tolls were to be charged, and a pound lock was constructed at Waltham Abbey, only the second to be built in England.
Between Bow Bridge and Channelsea Bridge there were three others, said in 1303 to have been built to fill the gaps caused by the cutting of mill streams through Maud's causeway, although there is evidence that the mills pre-dated the causeway. However, the mill owners took responsibility for the bridges, which crossed the mill streams for St Thomas's, Spileman's and Saynes mills. The last two were owned by the City of London, and the bridges were called Pegshole and St Michael's Bridges. An administrative mistake around 1814 resulted in the City of London taking responsibility for St Thomas's Bridge, but the miller did not complain as Pegshole bridge was smaller and therefore less costly to maintain. The names were eventually swapped, and all three were replaced by Groves Bridge in 1933, which crossed the widened Three Mills Wall River, the two branches of the Waterworks River having been combined into Three Mills Wall River, while Three Mills Wall Back River was filled in.
Crossing the Back Rivers by a series of low-level bridges is the Northern Outfall Sewer which leads to the Abbey Mills Pumping Station, both of which were designed by Joseph Bazalgette in the 1860s. Today, the route of the embankment that encloses the sewer from Bow to Beckton is followed by a public footpath, The Greenway.
Public water supply Water was extracted from the rivers to provide a public water supply. The opening of the New River in 1633, a channel built to bring water to London from Amwell springs, and soon afterwards from the River Lea near Ware, had a detrimental effect on both navigation and milling by reducing water levels. Around 1745, the West Ham Waterworks Company built a waterworks at Saynes Mill in Stratford, the river on which it was located later being known as Waterworks River. The East London Waterworks Company was set up in 1807, and built works at Old Ford, where they extracted water from the river. The supply to the works was moved further upstream in 1829, and in 1830 they built a canal, running parallel to the Hackney Cut, so that water could be obtained from Lea Bridge. Much of the work was carried out by the contractor William Hoof, who had gained a reputation as a specialist tunnelling contractor, after working on Strood Tunnel for the Thames and Medway Canal and Harecastle Tunnel on the Trent and Mersey Canal. He worked on the waterworks project from 1829 until 1834. Where there had been a reservoir to the south of the Middlesex Filter Beds weir in 1850,Ordnance Survey, London Town Plans, 1:5280, 1850 maps from 1870 show the site occupied by a waterworks, and the canal which supplied the Old Ford works running beside the Hackney Cut. Another large reservoir, triangular in shape, was located between the old river and the Hackney Cut at Old Ford, with two connections to the old river. The water supply canal passed under the old river to feed two compensation reservoirs to the north of the Great Eastern Railway tracks. A covered reservoir was situated on the west bank of the old river.Ordnance Survey 1:2500 map, 1870