New River (London)
Among the districts it flows through are (from north to south): Its original termination, near Clerkenwell, Islington, became known as the New River Head where the water filled a large cistern – the Round Pond – next to the current location of Sadler's Wells theatre — where water from the river was used to flood a large tank to stage an Aquatic Theatre at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
In 1602, Edmund Colthurst first proposed the idea of digging an artificial waterway to supply London from Chadwell and Amwell springs near Ware in Hertfordshire, and obtained a charter from King James I in 1604 to carry it out.
[4] After surveying the route and digging the first 2-mile (3 km) stretch, Colthurst encountered financial difficulties and it fell to Myddelton to complete the work between 1609 and its official opening on 29 September 1613.
The expense and engineering challenges of the project—it relied on gravity to allow the water to flow, carefully following the contours of the terrain from Ware into London, and dropping around just five inches per mile (8 cm/km)—were not Myddelton's only worries.
He also faced considerable opposition from landowners who feared that the New River would reduce the value of their farmland (they argued that floods or overflowing might create quagmires that could trap livestock); others were concerned at the possible disruption to road transport networks between Hertfordshire and the capital.
Other sections of the river, including the one in Harringay, were carried across valleys in wooden aqueducts lined with lead and supported by strong timbers and brick piers.
A winding original section of the channel that used to run through the town centre of Enfield has been cut off from the main flow, but is still maintained as an important local civic amenity called the New River Loop.
The double box design allowed the temporary diversion of the river during construction and also enables maintenance to be undertaken on either side without stopping the flow.
The blast wave from the bomb caused the pipeline carrying the New River to rupture, flooding the shelter and killing the majority of the people taking cover.
Charles Lamb wrote an essay about a friend he calls G. D. (probably the blind poet George Dyer) who walked into the New River by accident but was rescued.
A spectacle like this at dusk would have been appalling enough; but, in the broad open daylight, to witness such an unreserved motion towards self-destruction in a valued friend, took from me all power of speculation.
Had he been drowned in Cam there would have been some consonancy in it; but what willows had ye to wave and rustle over his moist sepulture?—or, having no name, besides that unmeaning assumption of eternal novity, did ye think to get one by the noble prize, and henceforth to be termed the STREAM DYERIAN?Rochemont Barbauld, minister of the nearby Newington Green Unitarian Church and husband of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, went violently insane, attacked his wife, and committed suicide by drowning himself in the New River in 1811.
