River Teme

River Teme Welsh: Afon Tefeidiad
The River Teme at Ludlow, Shropshire
Location
Country	Wales, England
Counties	Powys, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire
Physical characteristics
Source	Dolfor
• location	Kerry, Powys, Wales
• coordinates	52°28′18″N 3°19′28″W / 52.47167°N 3.32444°W / 52.47167; -3.32444
• elevation	506 m (1,660 ft)
Mouth	Confluence with River Severn
• location	Powick, Worcestershire, England
• coordinates	52°09′48″N 2°14′44″W / 52.16333°N 2.24556°W / 52.16333; -2.24556
• elevation	14 m (46 ft)
Length	130 km (81 mi)
Basin features
Tributaries
• left	River Clun, River Onny, River Corve, Ledwyche Brook, River Rea
• right	Leigh Brook, Kyre Brook

The River Teme (pronounced

The river is crossed by a number of historic bridges including one at Tenbury Wells that was rebuilt by Thomas Telford following flood damage in 1795.^[1] It is also crossed, several times, by the Elan aqueduct.^[2]

Etymology

The first known mention of the River Teme is in an eleventh-century manuscript containing a copy of a charter from around 770, where the name takes the forms Tamede and Temede.

The river source is in Mid Wales, on the western side of Bryn Coch in the hills near the village of

The River Corve flows into the Teme just outside Ludlow and the Ledwyche Brook flows into the Teme at Burford, close to the Herefordshire/Shropshire/Worcestershire tripoint. The Kyre Brook flows into the Teme at Tenbury Wells, and the River Rea flows into the Teme at Newnham Bridge, Worcestershire, a few miles south of Cleobury Mortimer.

The Teme is the second largest tributary to the River Severn,

Leisure boats have long been used on the river and rowing boats can still be hired at The Linney Park, Ludlow.^[17] An annual coracle regatta has been held on the Teme. In June 2005 it was held at Leintwardine. In June 2006, the 12th regatta was held at Mortimer's Cross^[18]

A Countryside Agency report in September 2003 entitled Improving access for canoeing on inland waterways: A study of the feasibility of access agreements stated:

There are no formal access agreements for canoeing on the Teme. However, unlawful canoeing does occur and there are many claims about the resulting conflict. As a result of its character, the demand for canoeing is seasonal, when there is enough water in the river, and is more in the upper reaches where the faster water can be found. However, this part of the river is also the most valuable for fishing, with riparian owners keen to protect their interests and prevent canoeing, on the grounds that the Teme is not suited to canoeing under any circumstances. While there is probably less conflict below Tenbury, there is also less interest in canoeing, and probably less opportunity, given the water levels.^[6]

Information on canoeing on the Teme in the Ludlow area is available here^[19] and on the Tenbury Wells to Broadwas area here.^[20]

Leisure boating in the past

Historical evidence of leisure boating mentions in Victorian publications. Old maps show a few boat houses along the river in Worcestershire.^[21] Billings Directory 1855 mentions Boat House, evidently a farmhouse, five miles downstream of Tenbury Wells,^[22] and Boat House Farm still exists in Eastham.^[23] In addition, the boathouse at Newnham Bridge (three miles downstream of Tenbury Wells) was large enough, and substantial enough, to be converted later into a house.^[24]

At Tenbury Wells in 1886, people were rescued during floods using a boat that had broken loose from its mooring so there must have been at least one boat on the river at that time.^[25] The guide, Tenbury Wells and the Teme Valley includes a photograph taken at Little Hereford described as "Boating on the Teme in 1905". The author mentions two gentlemen from Oxford who in 1894 travelled up the Teme from Worcester to Ludlow in 17.5 hours, and returned (downstream) in 9 hours.^[26] Another book, Down Along Temeside, includes an account of travelling by boat from Ludford Mill to Orleton (a couple of miles upstream of Stanford Bridge) in the early 20th century.^[27]

Up at Leintwardine, a 'Teme coracle' has been locally made since the late 1980s and such craft may have been in existence earlier, near the start of that century^[28] - or earlier still, as a distant successor to the coracles once used to transport lead down to Worcester from Dre-fach Felindre in Roman times.^[29]

Travel

Navigation to Powick Mill

The final 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from Powick bridge and Mill to its confluence with the river Severn that the Teme is (or was) navigable. There was a coal wharf near Powick Bridge, belonging with the mill, whose owner had the right to use a towing path to the river Severn. In the 18th century, pig iron was brought up the river to Powick forge (as the mill then was).^[30] In 1810 it was reported that "The Teme is also navigable for barges from its junction with the Severn near Powick upwards to a small distance above Powick Bridge. The river having considerable declivity its navigation is soon interrupted by shoals and shallows"^[31]

Above Powick Mill

Except for its lowest reaches, there is no substantial evidence that the river was navigable by barges. Claims have been made that traffic on the Teme began in

Pictures, allegedly of Ludlow or its castle with a river and boats (thought to date from c. 1830), such as a painting allegedly of Dinham Bridge, Ludlow,^[38] are probably at least partly derived from the artist's imagination.^{[citation needed]}

This subject was debated at length in 2006 in the

A school inspector in the mid-19th century, wishing to visit the endowed school at Shelsley Beauchamp where the Teme turns to run south through wooded hills, found that he must travel there on horseback in the absence of either coaches or railway.^[41] There had, indeed, been a slightly earlier proposal for a railway line that followed the lower course of the river. Under the name of the Worcester, Tenbury and Ludlow Railway, this was submitted to Parliament in November 1846,^[42] but by 1849 the scheme had been wound up.^[43]

More or less the same course was proposed for the Teme Valley Railway in 1866. This was planned as a link between a line from Worcester to South Wales, that in the end was never built, and the recently opened Tenbury and Bewdley Railway, from which there was a connection to Ludlow via the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway. Lacking funds or any particular need for such a line through sparsely settled agricultural land, however, the plan came to nothing.^[44]

In the arts

A river that changes from season to season, not to mention having changed course over the years, coexists with the land that encloses it. In the eyes of those who have painted the Teme, it has often been features on its banks which were their main subjects – nowhere more so than at Ludlow Castle, where the river is only incidentally pictured flowing at its base by

The 18th century landowner Richard Payne Knight had his grounds at Downton Castle, not far away on the banks of the Teme, laid out in the picturesque style of the time, and there the river was incorporated into the design, notably at the ‘alpine bridge’ which he commissioned Thomas Hearne to portray among other views of the site.^[49] In the following century, George Price Boyce was noted for the Pre-Raphaelite precision of his landscape paintings,^[50] some of which featured the high banks of the river.^[51] Later on, Worcester-born Harry William Adams (1868–1947) painted the Teme's lower reaches, specialising in atmospheric effects such as a snow scene above the valley^[52] or overhanging woodland at sunset.^[53]

The river has had its poets too. Richard Gardner, who terms himself 'the poet of the Teme' on the title page of his volume of Poems (Worcester, 1825), "hopes you will consider him to rank among the first uneducated poets" when reading his topographical tributes to his chosen river.^[54] A few years later an anonymous Ludlow poet submits "the production of a young man…to the public with becoming deference", including among them a "Sonnet to the River Teme".^[55]

A. E. Housman made only a passing mention of the river's name in A Shropshire Lad, but that ensured its incorporation into the song cycle Ludlow and Teme (1923) when Ivor Gurney set some of the poems to music. However, the musician who received his greatest inspiration from the Teme was Edward Elgar, whose favourite spot on the river was at Knightwick.^[56] It was there that he composed much of The Dream of Gerontius;^[57] and childhood reminiscences of the Teme, he also said, were contained in the trio in the second movement of his first symphony.^[58]

Settlements on the River Teme

See also

• Canals of the United Kingdom
• History of the British canal system

References

Further reading

• Bradford, John (2008) The River Teme - A journey following the river from Worcester to its source, Hunt End Books
  ISBN 978-0-9549813-5-8
• Charteris, Bob (2006) The Teme Valley Way - Sauce to Source, Exposure Publishing
  ISBN 978-1-84685-098-1

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to River Teme.

• Teme valley project
• Teme Valley towns
• Teme Valley Times (local paper)
• Picture at Geograph (search the site for others)