The Great Ouse : The History of a River Navigation

Summers, Dorothy

ISBN 10: 0715359711 / ISBN 13: 9780715359716

Published by David & Charles, Newton Abbott, Devon, UK, 1973

About this Item

Dust jacket price clipped. Green cloth with bright gilt titling on spine. Small ownership label. Photographs / Illustrations / Plates. 247 pages clean and tight. The history of river navigations other than the Thames is poorly documented. We now have, however, two excellent ones, Baron F. Duckham's The Yorkshire Ouse and Dorothy Summers' The Great Ouse. These give us the navigation history of two important rivers from the earliest times to the present, and very different they are. Navigation on the Great Ouse, completed to Bedford in the seventeenth century, had to contend for most of the time with powerful drainage interests: only occasionally, as under the South Level Corporation, were the two reconciled. Trade, too, was made more difficult because, right through the river's history from the seventeenth century to our own, navigation rights for most of the river were in private and not in company hands, with the right to charge tolls, except at one place, undefined. All this offers an absorbing and hitherto largely untold story. Dorothy Summers here develops the navigation history of the whole river from Bedford to King's Lynn and the Wash : the river and its tributaries, locks, staunches, bridges and mills, boats and boatmen, set against the endlessly recurrent need for good drainage. The Great Ouse adds greatly to our knowledge of navigation history: it is a book for all waterway enthusiasts, and for those who know and love East Anglia. Size: 8vo.

Seller Inventory # 129779

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Great Ouse : The History of a River Navigation
• Publisher: David & Charles, Newton Abbott, Devon, UK
• Publication Date: 1973
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0715359711
• ISBN 13: 9780715359716
• Binding: Hard Cover
• Illustrator: Photographs / Illustrations / Plates
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

The Great Ouse: The History of a River Navigation