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The geography of Somerset has controlled and
limited communication by waterways of all kinds. The county has a long
coastline on the Bristol Channel giving access for small craft to the river
Severn, one of Britain's main waterways, especially during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, with links to the industrial Midlands. On the
northern boundary, the river Avon gave Bristol much of its economic importance
as, for centuries, the second largest city in Britain. Yet Somerset itself has
no large or important rivers and only a few small ports. River or canal
navigation was possible only across the marshy areas of the north-west and the
Somerset Levels between the Mendips and the Western Hills. The marshes of the
Parrett valley penetrate southwards almost to the Devonshire border and to
within only a few miles of the river Axe which flows into the English Channel
at Seaton. River navigation was helped by the exceptionally high tidal range
of the Severn estuary and the tidal bore which helped to carry boats up the
rivers Parrett and Tone.
The history of the waterways of Somerset can
be appreciated most easily in three main phases. The first includes from
earliest times all those rivers which could possibly be used by even the
smallest of boats the Axe, Brue, Parrett, Tone and Yeo, as well as the
Avon, where it passed through Somerset beyond Bristol towards Bath. The second
phase came with the increasing use of coal by the end of the seventeenth
century, when river navigation was improved and developed. The third phase, in
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was the planning of canals to
supplement or provide an alternative for river navigation, not merely for
local trade but as part of complicated schemes to link by waterway the Bristol
and English Channels. |
Navigable Rivers
