The River Lea

The River Lea runs from Leagrave at the edge of Luton into Hertfordshire and the south to enter Greater London near Waltham Cross. (Another stream starts two miles to the west at Houghton Regis but seems seldom to be considered as the source.) It continues south through Enfield Lock, Ponders End, Brimsdown and Tottenham Hale to Stratford. The spellings Lea and Lee are both in current use, but the river is more often called the River Lea (anciently sometimes the River Ley) and the navigation the Lee Navigation.

From Hertford, the River is sometimes a part of the Lee Navigation, and sometimes runs parallel to it, at times in a complicated mass of streams and flood channels - as in the area which is to be the site of the London Olympics in 2012. This includes the Old River Lea, Three Mills River, Prescott Channel, Channelsea River, City Mill River and Waterworks River.

Water taken from the Lea between Hertford and Broxbourne also forms the basis of the New River, constucted to bring clean drinking water to London in the 17th century.

The Lea Valley was for years the industrial centre of London and home to many inventions. Here was the first monorail (horse-drawn), the driving power behind the motorcycle industry, the great railway works, buses, guns, gunpowder, chemicals, shipbuilding and much more. In the first half of the 20th century this was the UK's 'silicon valley''. The modern electronics revolution began with the invention of the diode by Ambrose Fleming at Ediswan in Ponders End in 1904, and companies including Thorn, MK, Belling, Ferguson (and much later, Amstrad) set up factories here.

Chaim Weizmann's work with others at Three Mills on the fermentation of grains to produce acetone played a vital part in munitions manufacture in the First World War and led to the Balfour declaration, leading to the setting up of Israel (he became its first president in 1949.)

South of Stratford, there are two routes to the Thames. The river itself runs down through the tidal Bow Creek, with its dramatic bends sweeping around the factory of Pura Foods and on under a tidal barrier to meet the main river at Trinity Buoy Wharf, more or less opposite the Millennium Dome.

Most small boats prefer the easier route of the Limehouse Cut, leading now to the Regents Canal Dock (which can also be reached by turning down the Hertford Union Canal at Hackney Wick, which links the Lee Navigation to the Regents Canal. From the dock, also known as Limehouse Dock, a single lock now leads the the River Thames.

The Limehouse Cut, constructed in 1770, had its own lock to the Thames until relatively recently. It was only in 1969 that a new short lenght of canal was cut, taking the Cut into the Regents Canal Dock (also called Limehouse Dock.)

This site will look at all of the waterways listed above, and also some of the other flood channels, the Old River Lea and the Bow Back rivers and other associated waterways, and the area surrounding the rivers, especially in the area of the London Olympic 2012 site.

1980-92 black and white pictures

1980s Colour pictures

2000 to date (colour)

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