Tillingbourne | |
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Location | |
Country | England |
County | Surrey |
Districts | Mole Valley District, Guildford Borough |
Physical characteristics | |
Source | Tilling Springs |
• location | Leith Hill, Surrey |
Length | 24 km (15 mi) |
Discharge | |
• location | Shalford |
• minimum | 0.23 m3/s (8.1 cu ft/s)(4 August 1992) |
• average | 0.54 m3/s (19 cu ft/s) |
• maximum | 6.1 m3/s (220 cu ft/s)(15 September 1968) |
Basin features | |
Tributaries | |
• left |
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• right |
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River Tillingbourne | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The River Tillingbourne (also known as the Tilling Bourne) [1] runs along the south side of the North Downs and joins the River Wey at Guildford. Its source is a mile south of Tilling Springs to the north of Leith Hill at grid reference TQ143437 and it runs through Friday Street, Abinger Hammer, Gomshall, Shere, Albury, Chilworth and Shalford. The source is a semi-natural uninhabited area. The catchment is situated on sandstone which has a low rate of weathering. [2] The Tillingbourne is 24 km (15 mi) in length. [3]
The Tillingbourne initially flows northward for 4 km (2.5 mi) down the northern slopes of Leith Hill over a series of weirs and cascades, before turning west to run for 14 km (8.7 mi) through Abinger Hammer and Chilworth towards the River Wey at Shalford. [4] The river is classified as a subsequent stream, since its course is determined by the direction of the stratum of softer rock for the majority of its length.
The river has four principal tributaries: the Friday Street stream joins at Wotton House; the Holmbury St Mary stream joins at Abinger Hammer; the Sherbourne Brook drains the Silent Pool and Sherbourne Pond and the Law Brook joins near Postford. [4]
From the 17th to the mid 20th centuries the Tillingbourne valley was a major industrial area due to its closeness to London and the ease of transport via the Wey and the Thames. The river was used to power a relatively large number of mills in the area. [5] Some 24 mill sites have been identified along the course of the river, used for such diverse industries as gunpowder, paper making for bank-notes, iron-working, wire-making, fulling, tanning and pumping water, as well as the more conventional flour, grist and malt milling. [6] Some of the earliest gunpowder mills were those set up in 1626 by The East India Company at Chilworth.
John Evelyn wrote in his diary in 1676:
I do not remember to have seen such Variety of Mills and Works upon so narrow a Brook, and in so little a Compass, there being Mills for Corn, Cloth, Brass, Iron, Powder etc.
Not every one was so impressed, William Cobbett wrote: [7]
This valley, which seems to have been created by bountiful providence, as one of the choicest retreats of man, which seems formed for a scene of innocence and happiness, has been, by ungrateful man, so perverted as to make it instrumental in effecting two of the most damnable of purposes; in carrying into execution two of the most damnable inventions that ever sprang from the minds of man under the influence of the devil! Namely, the making of gunpowder and of banknotes!
Present day users include a trout farm, watercress beds, a business growing reeds and a gin distillery.
The river passes through the Albury estate which operates recreational fisheries at Weston fishery, Vale End fishery and Powder Mills fishery. The river's natural course has been diverted slightly here for the purposes of the estate.
The Shalford pumping station, close to the junction with the Wey, provides between 4 and 7 million gallons of water per day to supply Godalming and parts of Guildford. [8]
The River Tillingbourne supports a fish population of both wild brown trout and coarse fish. The Environment Agency has been working with local fishermen to improve the habitat for these fish by recreating a pool and riffle habitat and by cutting back overhanging vegetation. [9] The signal crayfish is a recent invasive species. [3] The river and its environs are often studied by students from nearby field studies centres, such as Sayers Croft and Juniper Hall. [10] There are on-going problems with invasive plants caused by phosphate enrichment due to waste-water treatment from sewage works in addition to agricultural run-off. [11]
The river was championed by the Victorian landscape painter, Lewis Pinhorn Wood, who lived in Shere from 1884 to 1897, and painted extensively along its banks with scenes including The Silent Pool, Twilight (1888) and Evening on the Tillingbourne (1889).
The writer, Ralph Lawrence, recalls hearing the guns on the Western Front while walking in Hurtwood on the southern slopes of the valley . [12]
The Environment Agency measure water quality of the river systems in England. Each is given an overall ecological status, which may be one of five levels: high, good, moderate, poor and bad. There are several components that are used to determine this, including biological status, which looks at the quantity and varieties of invertebrates, angiosperms and fish. Chemical status, which compares the concentrations of various chemicals against known safe concentrations, is rated good or fail. [13]
The water quality of the Tillingbourne was as follows in 2022:
Section | Ecological Status | Chemical Status | Length | Catchment | Channel |
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Tillingbourne [14] | Moderate | Fail | 24.122 km (14.989 mi) | 58.931 km2 (22.753 sq mi) | |
Abinger Hammer is a village in the Vale of Holmesdale, located on the A25 in Surrey, England. The village is located within the Surrey Hills AONB, approximately midway between the market towns of Dorking and Guildford. The village is named after its water-powered iron forge.
Shalford is a village and civil parish in Surrey, England on the A281 Horsham road immediately south of Guildford. It has a railway station which is between Guildford and Dorking on the Reading to Gatwick Airport line.
Abinger is a large, well-wooded and mostly rural civil parish that lies between the settlements of Dorking, Shere and Ewhurst in the district of Mole Valley, Surrey, England.
Shere is a village in the Guildford district of Surrey, England 4.8 miles (7.7 km) east south-east of Guildford and 5.4 miles (8.7 km) west of Dorking, centrally bypassed by the A25. Located on the River Tillingbourne it is a small still partly agricultural village chiefly set in the wooded Vale of Holmesdale between the North Downs and Greensand Ridge. As of 2011 the village had a population of 1,032.
Albury is a village and civil parish in the borough of Guildford in Surrey, England, about 4 miles (6.4 km) south-east of Guildford town centre. The village is within the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Farley Green, Little London and adjacent Brook form part of the civil parish.
Chilworth is a village in the Guildford borough of Surrey, England. It is located in the Tillingbourne valley, southeast of Guildford.
The River Wey Navigation and Godalming Navigation together provide a 20-mile (32 km) continuous navigable route from the River Thames near Weybridge via Guildford to Godalming. Both waterways are in Surrey and are owned by the National Trust. The River Wey Navigation connects to the Basingstoke Canal at West Byfleet, and the Godalming Navigation to the Wey and Arun Canal near Shalford. The Navigations consist of both man-made canal cuts and adapted parts of the River Wey.
Gomshall is a village in the borough of Guildford in Surrey, England.
Silent Pool is a spring-fed lake at the foot of the North Downs, about 4 miles (6 km) east of Guildford in Surrey. The outflow from Silent Pool runs into a second, adjacent, lake, Sherbourne Pond, created in the mid-seventeenth century. In turn the outflow from the Sherbourne Pond feeds the Sherbourne Brook, a tributary of the Tilling Bourne.
St Martha is a hillside, largely wooded, small civil parish in the Guildford borough of Surrey towards the narrower part of the west half of the North Downs. It includes three homes north of St Martha's Hill, a southern knoll of the range of hills but almost all its population is south of this, in much of the village: Chilworth which is divided between it and Shalford parish. This results in an overlapping of areas where it is wished to consider the village of Chilworth. Chilworth gunpowder works mark the southern border of the entity, and are a well-preserved, publicly accessible area of bourne-side former industry, which helped to provide much of Surrey's contribution toward the gunpowder for many years of the British Empire.
Blackheath Hundred or the Hundred of Blackheath was a hundred in the county of Surrey, England. It corresponds to parts of the districts of Waverley and Guildford.
Tillingbourne Bus Company was a bus company based in Cranleigh, Surrey. The company operated bus and coach services in Surrey, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire from 1924 until 2001.
The Law Brook or Postford Brook is a stream in the Surrey Hills AONB which feeds the Tillingbourne which in turn feeds the River Wey. It is notable in its own right chiefly for its industrial vestiges and records.
The Cranleigh Waters or Bramley Wey is a tributary of the River Wey in Surrey.
The Pipp Brook is a left-bank tributary of the River Mole, Surrey, England. It rises at two main springs north of Leith Hill on the Greensand Ridge, then descends steeply in a northward direction, before flowing eastwards along the Vale of Holmesdale. It runs to the north of Dorking High Street, before discharging into the Mole at Pixham.
Many watermills lined the banks of the River Wey, England, from the 17th century, due to the river's ability to provide a reliable, year-round flow of water. These mills chiefly ground wheat, often referred to as corn, for flour and oats for animal feed though many were used in the production of other goods such as paper, cloth, leather, wire and gunpowder. The river was home to more mills per mile than anywhere else in Great Britain. The mill situated at Coxes Lock near Addlestone, Surrey, is the largest. There are many mills on the river's principal tributaries, such as the Tillingbourne, the Ock and some mills on the Whitmore Vale stream, Cranleigh Waters and Hodge Brook. The last commercial mill on the Tillingbourne, Botting's Mill at Albury, closed in 1991. Headley Water Mill, on the Wey South branch is still in business. Town Mill, Guildford still has a water turbine driven generator producing electricity for the town.
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