Ebbsfleet River

Ebbsfleet River is a river in Kent, south-east England, a tributary of the Thames Estuary. It joins the Thames opposite the container port of Tilbury Docks. Today, the river gives its name to the Ebbsfleet Garden City which is currently (2020) being developed in and around the course of the Ebbsfleet.

Ebbsfleet River
The Ebbsfleet River just before it enters the Thames Estuary at Northfleet
Physical characteristics
Source 
 • locationEight natural springs at Springhead
TQ 616728
 • coordinates51°26′13″N 0°18′54″E
 • elevation10 m (33 ft)
Mouth 
 • location
River Thames estuary
TQ 620750
 • coordinates
51°27′01″N 0°19′47″E
 • elevation
0 m (0 ft)
Length2.4 miles (3.9 km)

History

It was formerly known as the River Fleet, giving its name to Northfleet and Southfleet. Its source was eight natural springs at Springhead. In Roman times its source was the site of a Roman settlement called Vagniacis and the river was used to link Watling Street to the River Thames; in the fourteenth century it was a stopping place for pilgrims going to Canterbury. It is mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as Ypwines fleot (version A) or Heopwines fleot (version E).[1] A bridge across the river at Northfleet is mentioned in 1451 and it was still tidal and used for shipping in the sixteenth century.

In the nineteenth century the river was the earliest centre in Britain for the commercial cultivation of watercress; this was begun by William Bradbery in 1808.[2] He later moved the business to West Hyde, Hertfordshire in 1820.

Following the removal of its waters in around 1901, when all its waters were used by the local water company, its dried riverbed was the subject of a botanical study by Marie Stopes, the birth control activist.[3] Parts of the river can still be seen.

Etymology

The name Ebbsfleet may well be an artificial creation of the seventeenth-century antiquary Thomas Philpott, partly inspired by the name of Ebbsfleet in Thanet, 75 km (47 mi) to the east on the Kent coast.[4][5] Philpott was the elder son[6] of John Philipot, Somerset Herald, whose early list of Lords Warden of the Cinque Ports appears on p. 12 of Villare Cantianum.

References
  1. Michael Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, p 12
  2. Bradbery, William (1822). Gill, Thomas (ed.). "LXVII—On the Cultivation of the Water-Cress, for the London Markets". The Technical Repository. 1: 337–338.
  3. Stopes, Marie, B.Sc. (October 1903) "The Colonisation of a Dried River Bed" New Phytologist, Vol. 2, No.8, pp. 186-192. (Captcha required.)
  4. Briggs,Keith (2012). "The two Ebbsfleets in Kent". Journal of the English Place-Name Society 44:5–9.
  5. Philpott, Thomas; Philipott, John (1776) [1659]. "Swanscamp". Villare Cantianum: Or, Kent Surveyed and Illustrated (2nd, corrected ed.). King's Lynn: Printed and sold by W. Whittingham, et al. pp. 306–7.
  6. London, Stanford (1947). "John Philipot M.P. Somerset Herald 1624-1645". Archaeologia Cantiana. Kent Archaeological Society. 60: 43–44.


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