The English chalk streams: A contested legacy of purity, utility, and pastoral ideal

“ Wholly different from such noisy, turbulent, masterful rivers as those which distinguish North Britain, these chalk streams enter into the very spirit of that sweet pastoral scenery which suggests repose, peace, and plenty. They maintain for the most part an even course, tranquilly flowing without fret or violence through level land, and pursuing their tireless journey seawards, unobstructed by the rugged rocks, obstinate boulders, and uneven beds which provoke your mountain-or moorland-born waters into thunderous roar, angry swirl, and headlong rapidity. ”

“ If we journey on south-west beyond the chalk ranges of Wessex we come to a very different country indeed: we enter on a land of granite hills. The granite rocks are as different as possible from the chalk heights. Instead of rounded slopes, we see sharp, jagged peaks and broken, rocky ridges. The smooth, open stretches of turf are exchanged for wild, heathery moorland, broken by deep dells, and the waterless chalk slopes are replaced by glens, through which leap foaming torrents.
The granite hills rise to their wildest at Dartmoor, in the centre of the county of Devon. ”

“ Wessex is a land of downs and dales, and broad stretches of fertile country. It is the home of the chalk hills—those great, smooth, rolling heights, covered with short, sweet grass, on which great flocks of sheep pasture and speck the vast slopes with dots of white.
"There is hardly any part of our land which has remained so little unchanged as these Downs of Wessex. It is not because they are rugged and difficult to climb: they are not; they are often easy to surmount. ”

“ We are accustomed in England to chalk in rolling downs, except where bitten into by the sea, but elsewhere it is riven, and presents cliffs, and these cliffs are not at all like that of Shakespeare at Dover, but overhang, where hard beds alternate with others that are friable. ”

“ The chalk, which I have spoken of coldly when I discussed the preservation of the Old Road, should somewhere be warmly hymned and praised by every man who belongs to south England, for it is the 190 meaning of that good land. The sand is deserted since men learnt to plough; the Weald, though so much of its forest has fallen, is still nothing but the Weald—clay, and here and there the accursed new towns spreading like any other evil slime. But the chalk is our landscape and our proper habitation. ”

“ CHALK is a white or yellowish kind of limestone, too well known to need any description.
It is found abundantly in many of the southern counties of England, and is usually procured from large open places, called chalk-pits, by digging. In some parts of Kent, however, the workmen save themselves, in this respect, much trouble. They undermine the sides of hills to a certain depth, then dig a trench at the top as far distant from the edge as the mining extends at the bottom. ”

“ We have in England a kind of rock which constitutes at once an exceedingly clean recipient and a natural filter, and from which we can obtain water extremely free from mechanical impurities. I refer to the chalk formation, in which large quantities of water are held in store. Our chalk hills are in most cases covered with thin layers of soil, and with very scanty vegetation. Neither opposes much obstacle to the entry of the rain into the chalk, where any organic impurity which the water may carry in is soon oxidised and rendered harmless. ”

“ Sussex is, perhaps, of all the English counties that one in which it is most difficult to find good{16} water, as we have already seen in speaking of the Weald, and as we shall see further when we come to talk of the Chalk Downs. But these little villages, standing as they do just upon the crack where the chalk (which is permeable and full of water like a sponge) comes sharp on to the impermeable soil of the Weald, are all fed by a multitude of delicious running streams filtered through hundreds of feet of the pure carbon of the hills and bursting out along the old road. ”

“ The Birth of the River.
On the extreme west of the basin lie the Cotswold Hills of Gloucestershire. Here the Thames is born. The rain which falls on the hill-tops makes its way steadily into the soil, and is retained there. Down and down it sinks through the porous limestone and chalk, till eventually it reaches a layer of impenetrable material—clay, slate, or stone—through which [9] it can no longer pursue its downward course. ”

“ But the water does not run down their sides as a river, or gather in their hollows as a lake. The chalk of which they are composed is too porous for that, and the rain sinks swiftly and is lost.
Water is so abundant in almost every part of our land that we are inclined to forget that the first need of a house is its water-supply. He who thinks to build on the Downs must first reckon how deep a well he must dig through the chalk before the water can be reached. And he finds that the cost of obtaining water is so great that he must build his house elsewhere. ”

“ Successive portions of this line of heights are known as the Western Downs, the White Horse Hills, the Chiltern Hills, the East Anglian Ridge, the Lincolnshire Wolds and the Yorkshire Wolds. The rivers from the gentle southern slopes of the Oolitic heights pass by deep valleys through the Chalk escarpments, and flow on to the Tertiary plains within. The typical scenery of the Chalk country is unrelieved by small streams of running water; the hills rise into rounded downs, often capped with fine clumps of beech, and usually covered with thin turf, affording pasture for sheep. ”

“ From the beginning of human activity in this island the whole length of the river has been set with human settlements never far removed one from the other; for the Thames ran through the heart of South England, and wherever its banks were secure from recurrent floods it furnished those who settled on them with three main things which every early village requires: good water, defence, and communication.
The importance of the first lessens as men learn to dig wells and to canalise springs ”

“ When we consider something more than distance and think of London as the “centre [Pg 97] of gravity” of the Midlands, the east and the south, we find it still more central for the centuries immediately preceding our own. Their staple export was wool. The pasturage of the chalk ranges runs right round London in the Chilterns and their extension into East Anglia, in the north and south Downs and the Uplands of Wiltshire, Hampshire, and Dorset. London is the obvious centre of all that triangle of chalk. ”

“ In chalk streams the largest fish are found oftener in the mill-heads than in the mill tails. It is a mistake, though a common one, to fancy that the giant trout of the Thames lashers lie in swift water. On the contrary, they lie in the very stillest spot of the whole pool, which is just under the hatches. There the rush of the water shoots over their heads, and they look up through it for every eatable which may be swept down. At night they run down to the fan of the pool, to hunt minnow round the shallows ”

“ Littlehampton, four miles from Arundel, is better known as a port of departure for steamships than as a watering-place competing with the pleasure resorts in more favoured situations on the coast.
Hampshire is a well-watered county, and classic ground for that new school of [Pg 12] anglers who are classified as “dry-fly” men. The masters thereof graduated on the Itchen and the Test, most famous of all South-country chalk streams, and honourably mentioned in angling literature. To know that a man is a successful fisher upon either is tantamount to a certificate of the highest skill. ”

“ And again, as the blood, after circulating through the body in an infinite number of life-giving streams, returns to the heart once more on its journey, so the thousand streams which wander over the plains find their way back to the heart of the mountains, for the water is brought there in the form of vapour and clouds by the winds.
When we build water-towers, and make reservoirs on high ground to give pressure to the water in our pipes, and make it circulate everywhere,—even to the tops of our houses,—we are only taking a hint from Nature. ”

“ One is the abode of plenty, and the other of want; one is a ware-duck of nice pure water, and t'other one a cess-pool. Our towns are gettin' so commercial and factoring, that they will soon generate mobs, Sam' (how true that 'ere has turned out, hain't it? He could see near about as far into a millstone, as them that picks the hole into it) , 'and mobs will introduce disobedience and defiance to laws, and that must eend in anarchy and bloodshed. ”

“ Sometimes the way is cut off by huge thorny hedges and fences of barbed wire—man's devilish improvement on the bramble—brought down to the water's edge. The river-follower must force his way through these obstacles, in most cases greatly to the detriment of his clothes and temper ”

“ The chalk formations or “cretaceous group of beds” include strata of various mineral substances; but the white chalk which forms the cliffs of Dover and the adjoining coasts, and the downs and chalk quarries of the South of England, is the chief and most characteristic formation. Chalk, immense as are the masses in which it has been deposited, owes its origin to living actions; every particle of it once circulated in the blood or vital juices of certain species of animals, or of a few plants, that lived in the seas of the secondary period of geological time. ”

“ And so the streams have broad valleys, while the hills are smooth and gently rounded. Chalk, clay, and soft sandstone abound there. The two latter rocks are washed away with comparative ease, and the chalk is dissolved; whereas in the Lake District we have very much harder and older rocks, that require to be split up and broken 221 by the action of frost, while every stream carves out for itself a steep valley, and great masses of hard rock stand out as bold hills or mountains, that seem to defy all the agents of denudation. ”

“ Nature is in league with art in the brook garden, for nowhere is wild vegetation so luxuriant, and the two forces of warmth and moisture so generally combined, as by the banks of running streams. The brook is its own landscape gardener, and curves and slopes its own banks and terraces, sheltered from rough winds and prone to the sun.
Many houses near the Thames, especially those under the chalk hills which fringe much of the valley, have near them some rill or brook running to the main river. ”

“ It is easier to find the shells than to discover the living creature in the river. For many the deep, full river is not a suitable home; they only come there as the water does, from the tributary streams. Far up in some rill in the chalk, from the bed of which the water bubbles up and keeps the stones and gravel bright, whole beds of little pea-cockles may be found, lying in masses side by side, like seeds sown in the water-garden of a nymph. ”

“ On the sides of the chalk hills, though not on their summits, these streams cut narrow gullies and glens. Wherever, in fact, there is hilly, broken ground, the little rills form these broken ravines and gullies, often only a few yards in width from side to side. Usually these brooklet valleys are choked with brambles or fern, and filled with rank undergrowth. Often the stream is overhung and invisible, or dammed and left in soak, breeding frogs, gnats, and flies. The trees are always tall and beautifully grown, whatever their age, for the moisture and warmth force vertical growth ”

“ It is wrestling continually with the iron: tearing it out of the ironstone, directing rivers of molten metal into their proper [108] channels, bending the intractable stone and the huge forces of heat and affinity to the will of man. And in life also it is wrestling with huge forces which it but dimly understands, poised on a perilous pathway from which one slip means utter destruction. ”

“ Putting aside the natural dams made by accumulations of the various debris that are washed down by a swollen stream, and which sometimes raise the water to a very great height, we have an example of a natural dam in the curious structure made by the Beaver, for the same purpose as that of the lock in the mill-stream, namely, to insure a depth of water sufficient for the needs of the beings that make them. ”

“ Where tertiary clays cover the chalk, as in the basin of London, the boring rod no sooner pierces them than strong streams arise, with a temperature much superior to that of the surface, over which they sometimes flow in a constant stream. ”

“ Every one brought up among the chalk pits remembers them more vividly than any other thing about his home, and when he returns from some exile he catches the feeling of his boyhood as he sees them far off upon the hills.
Therefore I would make it a test for every man who boasted of the South Country, Surrey men (if there are any left) , and Hampshire men, and men of Kent (for they must be counted in) : I would make it a test to distinguish whether they were just rich nobodies playing the native or true men to see if they could remember the pits. ”

“ On the other hand, there are said to be times when midges, and nothing else, will rise fish on some chalk streams. The delicate black hackle which Mr. Stewart praises so highly (and which should always be tied on a square sneck-bend hook) will kill in June and July; and on the Itchen, at Winchester, hardly any flies but small ones are used after the green drake is off. But there is one sad objection against these said midges—what becomes of your fish when hooked on one in a stream full of weeds (as all chalk streams are after June) , save ”

“ Winchester fishers have confessed to me that they lose three good fish out of every four in such cases; and as it seems pretty clear that chalk fish approve of no medium between very large flies and very small ones, I advise the young angler, whose temper is not yet schooled into perfect resignation, to spare his own feelings by fishing with a single large fly—say the governor in the forenoon, the caperer in the evening, regardless of the clearness of the water. I have seen flies large enough for April, raise fish excellently in Test and other clear streams in July and August ”

“ And it is on this ground that I must question the policy of measures for expending public money with a view to the cultivation and reclamation of these lands.
The true solution of this matter is to get the lands out of the hands of men who are the nominal, and not the real, possessors. But Parliament maintains laws which act most injuriously in this particular. The law and practice of entails tends to keep the soil in large properties, and in the hands of those who cannot perform their duty to it. It will be said that entails exist in Scotland and in England. ”

“ Your true human being has eyes and keeps his balance in the world; deems nothing uninteresting that comes from life; clarifies his vision and gives health to his eyes by using them upon things near and things far. The brute beast has but a single neighborhood, a single, narrow round of existence; the gain of being human accrues in the choice of change and variety and of experience far and wide, with all the world for stage--a stage set and appointed by this very art of choice--all future generations for witnesses and audience. ”