RIVER
STORT at Little Hallingbury
HALLINGBURY
MILL
The
quiet Stort runs past watermills and country houses
through some of the prettiest landscape in southern
England.
The river is a tributary of the Lee, and extends
navigation to Bishops Stortford. But the two waterways
are very different.
The rural Stort's gentle, winding course has remained
unaltered by the passage of time, unlike the Lee which
has been straightened and shortened by generations of
engineers.
It begins in
Langley Hills, near Clavering, in Essex. After flowing
through Bishop's Stortford, the river continues another
13.25 miles (21.32km) through Hertfordshire to Feildes
Weir, where it joins the River Lee.
The
navigation is engagingly beautiful, its mills and
maltings a million miles away from the sprawl of Greater
London.
The first act of parliament
relating to this river is entitled 'An Act for making the
River Stort navigable, in the counties of Hertford and Essex,
from the New Bridge, in the town of Bishop Stortford, into
the River Lea, near a Place called the Rye, in the county of
Hertford', and appointed certain persons commissioners for
carrying into effect the provisions of the act.
However, there was difficulty
in raising sufficient money for construction, and a second
act was passed in 1766 entitled 'An Act for making and
continuing navigable the River Stort, in the counties of
Hertford and Essex'. The second act empowered Charles
Dingley, George Jackson and William Masterson to build the
Navigation and to collect tolls, which were set as follows:
Tonnage rates
|
| For
wheat, rye, beans or peas |
0s 6d per
quarter. |
| For
malt or oats |
0s 4d ditto. |
| For
barley, or any other sort of grain not before enumerated |
0s 5d ditto. |
| For
meal or flour (five bushels to a sack) |
0s 4d per
sack. |
| For
coal, culm or cinders |
2s 6d per
chaldron (£0.13/m³) |
| For
lime |
2s 6d ditto
(£0.13/m³) |
| For
oil-cakes, malt-dust, pigeon dung or other manure of any
Kind |
1s 6d per ton |
| For
goods, wares or merchandize not before enumerated |
2s 6d ditto. |
A chaldron was
a dry English measure, beginning in 1826, of 4 quarters or 32
bushels. More recently, it has been applied exclusively to
coal, for which a chaldron is equal to 36 bushels heaped up.
On shipboard, 21 chaldrons of coal was the allowance to the
score. The use of the unit ended in 1963 with the reform of
the Weights and Measures Act.
A bushel is a
unit of dry volume, usually subdivided into eight local
gallons. It is used for volumes of dry commodities, not
liquids, most often in agriculture. It is abbreviated as bsh.
or bu.
1 Imperial
bushel = 36.36872 litres = 8 Imperial gallons ..
Boats returning with a back
lading of Oil-cake, Malt-dust, Pigeon Dung or any other Kind
of Manure, which have passed up or down the River immediately
before, and paid the Tolls or Rates on their Cargoes, shall
be exempted from Tonnage Rate on such Manure.'
Thomas Yeoman was appointed
engineer for the Navigation in 1766, and it was opened to
boats in the autumn of 1769. The 15 locks are built to take
boats 85 feet (25.9 m) by 13 feet 13 inches (4.0 m).