River Parrett
The River Parrett flows through the counties of Dorset and Somerset in South West England. The 37-mile long river is tidal for 19 miles up to Oath. The fall of the river between Langport and Bridgwater is only 1 foot per mile, so it is prone to frequent flooding in winter and during high tides.
About River Parrett in brief
The River Parrett flows through the counties of Dorset and Somerset in South West England. The 37-mile long river is tidal for 19 miles up to Oath. The fall of the river between Langport and Bridgwater is only 1 foot per mile, so it is prone to frequent flooding in winter and during high tides. In Anglo-Saxon times the river formed a boundary between Wessex and Dumnonia, and enabled cargoes to be transported inland. The arrival of the railways led to a decline in commercial shipping, and the only working docks are at Dunball. The Parrett and its tributaries drain an area of 660 square miles – about 50 per cent of Somerset’s land area, with a population of 300,000. The river’s banks have been raised to mitigate flooding, and a River Parrette Trail has been established along the banks of theriver. The former course of the former Stertning Island has now been broken off to form Stertting Island, which is now a peninsula. The River Par Brett is 37 miles long, flowing roughly south to north from Dorset through Somerset. It flows past the Steart Peninsula past the Bristol Channel, past the Somerset Levels, and into the Bridg Water Bay nature reserve. It enters the sea at Burnham-on-Sea, where it joins the River Cary at the mouth of the River Somerset. The King’s Sedgemoor Drain empties into the river at Dunce ball, which has been moved about 3 miles downstream from its original position and now obstructs the entrance to the harbour next to the wharf below the entrance.
The village of Combwich lies to the south of the Parrett, where the river flows into a channel in the river known as \”Combwich Reach from the river – a local word for a sluice. It also flows past Aller, close to the Aller and Beer Woods and Aller Hill biological Sites of Special Scientific Interest – and past Southlake Moor, which was once a tidal moat up to 65 feet wide in places, fed by water from the Parrette. It then flows north through South Perrott and under the Salisbury to Exeter railway line before passing the remains of Muchelney Abbey before entering Langport. The last major landmark along the river’s course is Burrow Mump, an ancient earthwork owned by the National Trust, where the river then arrives in Burrowbridge. It passes Langmead and Weston Level SSSI, and on past the land-drainage pumping station at Westonzoyland. Further downstream the river passes the village of Huntworth before flowing under the M5 motorway at Dunwear. As it enters Bridg water it passes under Somerset and Hamp Bridges, and past BridgWater Castle, which had a tidal Moat up in places. It is approximately 6 miles. The river then flows northwest for approximately another 10 miles to BridGwater through the Somerset levels. It exits into the clyce, which is 0.3 miles away from the original original position of the peninsula.
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This page is based on the article River Parrett published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
