I have blogged previously about exploring the seasonal nature of the Thames at Thames Head and also the so-called “alternative” or “ultimate” source of the Thames at Seven Springs and the River Churn. What I want to do now is to track the Thames from where it ceases to be seasonal through to its development into a full navigable river.
The Thames and its tributaries between Thames Head and Buscot Lock
Waterhay (1). October 2025: The riverbed under the road bridge was dry except for a shallow puddle.
Waterhay (2). A few meters further away from the bridge, the clump of vegetation ends, and water fills the riverbed.
This entry will start at Upper Waterhay just upstream of Cricklade, where there is a car park next to the road bridge over the river. From the car park, it's possible to make your way down to the edge of the river through an overgrown bank. I was there last October, and the riverbed was completely dry under the road bridge except for a shallow puddle. About 5 or 10 metres downstream of the bridge, stood a clump of rushes and reeds. On the bridge side of the clump, the riverbed was completely dry; but on the downstream side of the clump, standing water was continuous into the distance. In other words, after a dry summer, the continuous Thames started just downstream of the road bridge at Waterhay. This was the end of the seasonal Thames, roughly 12km from Thames Head, at least as far as I could see it on that day. That continuous water was the beginning of the watercourse that leads all the way to the Estuary.
The Thames at Cricklade
Travelling on from Waterhay towards Cricklade, the river has the form of a narrow stream. At Cricklade, it snakes past the town's ancient flood meadows, looking thoroughly unprepossessing. The River Churn, as I described in a previous entry, represents the longest continuous body of water from the Cotswolds to the estuary. I've not yet managed to find its confluence, because it stands on private land just downstream of Cricklade and is hard to access. Maybe one day I will try to get there on a boat.
Castle Eaton on a November evening. Willows stretch down to the widening river.
Even if the river is less than impressive in size at Cricklade, further along at the village of Castle Eaton, it has earned the title of “River”. It passes under a bridge close to the Red Lion pub, built on the site of the eponymous castle, which, according to Peter Ackroyd in “Thames: Sacred River”, is unusual in that it preceded the bridge. The river passes the ends of gardens where willows stand, and seem to weep into the river.
Inglesham and the Roundhouse
Further downstream lies the village of Inglesham. And here the sense of the deep history of the Thames begins to assert itself more strongly. There is a roundhouse standing by the river. The roundhouse was made for the keepers of the lock where the (now redundant) Thames and Severn Canal joined the River Thames. This was an engineering marvel completed in 1789, designed to link the east and west of England between the two great rivers; its purpose was to provide a cargo route from Bristol and the Midlands to London. However, the railways took over most of the intended trade not many decades later, and by 1941, it was fully abandoned.
Right nearby, there's also the junction with another tributary of the Thames, the River Coln. On the day I was there, so much foliage from the trees and bushes had grown up that the junctions of both canal and tributary were completely obscured. In my copy of “The Book of the Thames, from its rise to its fall” by Mr and Mrs S. C. Hall, first published in 1859, there is a lovely engraving of the junction of the Thames with the Coln and the canal: it shows the roundhouse very clearly. In those days, the foliage had not grown up over the confluences, and the junction of the three watercourses was plain to see. Sadly, not so much when I was there.
The river makes a bend going past Inglesham, and as it passes, it widens and becomes a fuller river. Shortly after, the river enters Lechlade. Traditionally, Lechlade is the start of the navigable Thames, marked by Ha’ppeny Bridge.
Ha’penny Bridge: summer. Foliage hides the toll house.
St John’s Bridge, late winter: trees cut back, revealing the toll house
Last summer, Ha’ppeny Bridge was half hidden by an enormous willow, which completely covered the former toll house on the bridge. The bridge gets its name from the half-penny (Ha’penny) that was charged for crossing the bridge after it opened in the late 1700s. This was naturally exceptionally unpopular with the local population, and eventually the toll was scrapped. When I returned last March, the willow had been pollarded (cut back hard) and the toll booth was plain to see.
Lechlade, with the trees lining the banks of the river pruned hard.
Just as strikingly, many of the other trees that stand along the river had been pollarded too. In that sense, the visual character of the river shifts between summer and winter. In winter, the tall pollarded trees lining the bank present a stark, melancholic silhouette against the grey sky, as they stand above houseboats moored on the riverside.
Just downstream of the town is St John's Bridge and the lock and weir of the same name. The lock is the first of the working locks on the Thames.
St John’s Bridge
St John's Bridge is a 19th-century single-span stone arch that is the successor to a multi-arched 13th-century bridge that was one of the first stone bridges across the Thames. I caught it in the early morning, and the low sun angled perfectly, lighting up the interior of the arch above the dark water and shining a beam of light onto the river itself.
Cheese Wharf, early morning, reflected cloudscape
Not far below St John's Lock sits a quiet bend in the river, known as Cheese Wharf. Currently, it is a popular spot for wild swimming. But before the arrival of the Great Western Railway, Cheese Wharf was an important nexus for barge traffic that transported cargo between Gloucestershire and London. Fred Thacker, in his book “The Thames Highway”, noted that at its peak, between 2,500 and 3,000 tons of cheese were shipped from Cheese Wharf annually to supply the insatiable London market.
For me, this quiet riverbank holds a deeply personal resonance. In the 1861 census, my second great-grandfather is shown as an established cheesemonger running a business on Gray's Inn Road in central London. Standing by Cheese Wharf early one morning, I couldn't help but reflect on the possibility that he handled, cut and sold cheeses from Wiltshire and Gloucestershire that began their journey on barges loaded right here, just below Lechlade. He would have been running his shop during the period when the slow waterborne trade gave way to the speed of the railways, a transition that introduced different varieties of cheese, fresh and highly perishable, that simply could not have survived the week-long journey by horse-drawn barge.
Buscot weir with paddleboarders
Stand-up paddleboard weir-surfing
The last place I'll mention in this entry is Buscot Weir. Buscot Weir is a substantial, modernised concrete and steel structure. The Thames floods through it forcefully, giving a flow of what is, in effect, a strong surf. While walking up to the weir, I saw a young couple on stand-up paddleboards making their way up to it. After a while, I saw something completely new to me. One of them paddled right up to the weir and seemed to surf the turbulent flood coming through, while the other, balancing carefully nearby, captured all the action on his smartphone.
Looking at these pictures, I can't help thinking about Fred Thacker's account of the hard-fought Thames Preservation Act of 1885. He noted that the act stated, “It shall be lawful for all persons, whether for pleasure or right of profit, to go and be, pass and repass, in upon any and every part of the River through which Thames water flows, between the Town of Cricklade and Teddington Lock, including all such backwaters, creeks, side-channels, bays and inlets connected therewith as form parts of the said river …”.
Watching the paddleboarders loitering and finding pleasure in the weir's white water felt like the perfect contemporary demonstration of what that 19th-century act was designed to protect. Thankfully, the river remains a space for private pleasures, and also for the joy of solitary contemplation of deep history.