River Avon (Severn, Tewkesbury)
| River Avon | ||
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| Data | ||
| location | United Kingdom | |
| River system | Severn | |
| Drain over | Severn → Bristol Channel | |
| source | At Naseby 52 ° 23 ′ 50 ″ N , 0 ° 59 ′ 26 ″ W. |
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| Source height | 190 m | |
| muzzle | at Tewkesbury in the Severn coordinates: 51 ° 59 ′ 47 " N , 2 ° 9 ′ 49" W 51 ° 59 ′ 47 " N , 2 ° 9 ′ 49" W. |
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| Mouth height | 10 m | |
| Height difference | 180 m
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 The Avon at Stratford-upon-Avon |
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The River Avon [ ˈeɪvən ] is a 136 km long river in England that flows through the counties of Northamptonshire , Warwickshire , Worcestershire and Gloucestershire in the Midlands . The river is also called the Warwickshire Avon or Shakespeare's Avon .
The Avon has its source in northern Northamptonshire near the village of Naseby . For the first few kilometers it forms the border between Northamptonshire and Leicestershire ; then it runs west, past the Cotswolds north, through Rugby , Leamington Spa , Stratford-upon-Avon , Evesham and Pershore . At Tewkesbury the Avon joins the Severn .
In Stratford-upon-Avon, the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal , a narrowboat canal, meets the Avon. The tributaries of the Avon include the River Leam , River Stour , River Sowe , River Dene , River Arrow , River Swift and River Isonbourn . The course of the river is interrupted by numerous weirs and large and small locks .
Avon is a Welsh word meaning river . There are therefore other rivers that bear the name Avon, see Avon . The Avon was probably known to the Romans as Avona .
From the weir at Alveston, about three kilometers north of Stratford-upon-Avon, to its confluence with the Severn at Tewkesbury, the Avon is navigable for ships with a maximum length of 21 m and a width of 4.1 m, with the north of Evesham the width is reduced to 3.8 m. Recreational shipping with cabin cruisers and narrowboats dominates by far compared to the rare commercial shipping. The Avon is part of the Avon Ring, a circuit that is popular among boat tourists.
history
As early as 1635, King Charles I allowed the Avon to be used as a shipping route. After weirs and locks had been built, the Avon was navigable from Tewkesbury to about 6 km from Warwick from 1641 and inland vessels with a payload of 30 t reached Stratford-upon-Avon from 1664. In 1771, ownership of the river was divided into the southern Lower Avon and the northern Upper Avon. The boundary between the two was in Evesham.
George Parrot, who managed the Lower Avon, subsequently expanded the locks so that from 1768 inland vessels with a payload of up to 40 t could also reach Evesham. The Worcester and Birmingham Canal Company leased the Lower Avon from 1830 to 1872, but when the railroad construction reached Evesham in 1864, freight rates on the Lower Avon fell so sharply that the lease was not extended. The Upper Avon suffered a similar fate when Stratford-upon-Avon was connected to the rail network. The maintenance of the locks and weirs was discontinued from around 1870 and navigability was lost over the years. At the end of the Second World War , only one cargo ship regularly sailed the Avon from Tewkesbury to Pershore, north of Pershore the Avon was no longer navigable at that time.
restoration
After the Second World War, the restoration phase of the English inland waterways began. While the narrowboat canals were nationalized and repaired and maintained with public funds, the Avon remained privately owned. In 1950 the non-profit Lower Avon Navigation Trust (LANT) and fifteen years later the equally non-profit Upper Avon Navigation Trust (UANT) were formed, which initially re-opened the seven locks from Tewkesbury to Evesham with donations of money and material as well as voluntary work by enthusiasts repaired so that it was possible to restart shipping in this section in June 1962. At that time, the section from Evesham to Stratford-upon-Avon had in part not been navigable for more than 100 years, so that the restoration effort was considerably greater. But in 1974, under the auspices of the Queen Mother, the Upper Avon Navigation Trust was also able to reopen its northern section of the river for shipping on June 1, 1974.
Remarks
- ↑ Cf. Tacitus , annales 12.31. On the problematic spelling of the name Emil Hübner : Avona 1 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume II, 2, Stuttgart 1896, Col. 2424.