Newton Common – a new bed to lie on

Now that the project is well over a year old I thought I’d share a few before and after shots of the work. Newton Common is the next reach of river downstream of Emmanuel’s Common. You can see from the before photos that river here had Benn canalised and depend and was as result pretty much overrun with bur-reed. I made a long section survey of the river which revealed the places where the bed had been lowered below the natural fall-line of the river. Each of these was effectively a sump. The resultant siltation was the river’s attempt over time to repair itself: it was going to take a while, so we gave the stream a helping hand with as complete an infill of gravel as we could manage within the budget and the time.

 

The top image was taken in October 2016: the channel is cooled with burr reed. the second image was taken before the project began and shows how deep and wide the basic channel was. The third image was taken just after the gravel went in, April 2016 and the fourth was taken two years later in April 2019

The top image was taken in October 2016, the middle image during the project and the bottom image in April 2019: note the presence of ranunculus and berula!