With the main river, it creates Andersey Island on the left bank of the Thames opposite Abingdon-on-Thames.

Within a poem published in 1632, the Water Poet John Taylor wrote:[1]At Abingdon the shoals are worse and worse That Swift Ditch seems to be the better courseWhen Ordric was elected Abbot at the Abbey in Abingdon in 1052,[2] the River Thames was the main transport route for goods between London and Oxford.

The channel left the main stream near Thrupp, and passed through the meadows of Andersey to the south of the Abbey Church, flowing back into the Thames at Culham.

[3] Around 960 AD, the monks had built a head mill stream to the Abbey from the direction of the Swift Ditch.

Within ten years, the Wilts & Berks Canal connected to the current navigation channel at Abingdon.