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Abbey River

Rivers of SurreyThames drainage basinUse British English from January 2018

The Abbey River is a right-bank backwater of the River Thames in England, in Chertsey, Surrey — in the town's northern green and blue buffers. The L-shaped conduit adjoins mixed-use flood plain: water-meadows landscaped for a golf course, a motorway and a fresh water treatment works on the island it creates, Laleham Burway to its east and north in turn. Its offtake from the Thames is at the apex of Penton Hook, Staines upon Thames below its lower weir close to the Chertsey-Thorpe boundary in the Borough of Runnymede. Its outfall is the weir pool of Chertsey Lock back into the Thames, visible from Chertsey Bridge. Under the "River Thames Scheme", proposed by the Environment Agency, a fish pass will be installed on the Abbey River and the riverbed will be lined with gravel to provide additional habitats for spawning. A new flood relief channel, intersecting the river, will be constructed to improve the drainage of floodwater from the Abbey Meads to the Thames.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Abbey River (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Abbey River
Thames Side, Borough of Spelthorne

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Wikipedia: Abbey RiverContinue reading on Wikipedia

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Latitude Longitude
N 51.392777777778 ° E -0.48888888888889 °
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Thames Side
KT16 8LD Borough of Spelthorne
England, United Kingdom
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Chertsey Bridge
Chertsey Bridge

Chertsey Bridge is a road bridge across the River Thames in England, connecting Chertsey to low-lying riverside meadows in Laleham, Surrey. It is 550 yards (500 m) downstream from the M3 motorway bridge over the Thames and is close to Chertsey Lock on the reach above Shepperton Lock. The bridge is a seven-arch tied arch white stone bridge built 1783–85 and is a Grade II* listed building. It has a weight restriction of 18 tonnes for LGVs. The first bridge on the site was built some time after 1299 as in that year the king and his family were carried over the river by a ferry-woman called Sibille. The earliest written forebear to this bridge is that of 1530: a "goodly Bridg of Timber newly repaird". By 1580 it was dilapidated and the Crown, who had acquired responsibility from Chertsey Abbey, was trying to find someone on whom they could pin the bill for repairs. The documents record the dimensions as "210 feet in length and 15 feet in breadth". In 1632 the bridge, which was slanted upwards from Middlesex to Surrey, was described as like the work of a left-handed man. The slant was more annoying to navigation and passage was reported in 1774 to be very inconvenient and dangerous.The present stone bridge was first considered in 1780 and replacement of the old one began in 1783. There were 184 piles for the old bridge, which were cut off six feet below high-water mark, and the materials of the old bridge fetched £120 at auction in August 1784. The architect of the new bridge was James Paine and the surveyor was Kenton Couse. It was built at a cost of £6813 4s 11d. In an early example of contract dispute, the contractor built the number of arches specified, but as they did not reach the shore, the counties had to pay, at extra expense, for linking the bridge to the banks.On the Middlesex bank, cows graze downstream in Dumsey Meadow, a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and upstream is Laleham Park. On the Surrey bank are the outskirts of Chertsey with Abbey Chase house on the river bank. At the south east end of the bridge is a late-19th-century square cast-iron coal-tax post with cornice and capping, and the City of London shield on one face. It is grade II listed.

Laleham Burway
Laleham Burway

Laleham Burway is a 1.6-square-kilometre (0.62 sq mi) tract of water-meadow and former water-meadow between the River Thames and Abbey River in the far north of Chertsey in Surrey. Its uses are varied. Part is Laleham Golf Club. Semi-permanent park homes in the west forms residential development along with a brief row of houses with gardens against the Thames. A reservoir and water works is on the island. From at least the year 1278 its historic bulky northern definition formed part of the dominant estate of Laleham across the river, its manor, to which it was linked by a ferry until the early 20th century. Its owner in period from the mid-19th until the early 20th century was thus the Earl of Lucan; however when its manor house was sold to become Laleham Abbey, a short-lived nunnery, its tenants had taken it over or it was sold for public works. The southern part of the effective island sharing the name of the Burway or Laleham Burway was the Abbey Mead. It was kept since the seventh century among many square miles of land, priories, chantries, tithes (rectories) and churches of Chertsey Abbey until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The part legally separate from Abbey Mead (being together a large mill-race island with a broad corollary of the river beside them), the narrower definition comprised 200 acres (81 ha). In 1911 these remained largely for horse and cow pasture. Part of it was a cricket venue in the 18th century and the home of Chertsey Cricket Club.