The River Glaven at Wiveton, north Norfolk, looking downstream from Wiveton bridge.
The River Glaven is 10½ miles long and flows through picturesque North Norfolk countryside to the North Sea. Rising from a tiny headwater in Bodham the river starts 2½ miles before Selbrigg Pond where three streams combine at the outfall. The river has a catchment area of approximately 115 km² and from its source falls 50 metres to the present tidal limit at Cley sluice. The sub-surface geology is predominantly chalk and in parts of the lower valley the river runs over chalk beds. The land adjoining the river consists of a mixture of arable farm land and, in the upper reaches near Edgefield, coniferous plantations. In the middle reaches there are grazing meadows and low-lying washlands especially below Glandford Mill. The Glaven has two major tributaries: Stody Beck joins just above Hunworth Mill, and Thornage Beck joins close to the unbridged ford on the Thornage to Hunworth road. It reaches the North Sea past Cley and through Blakeney Harbour, the area of sheltered water behind the sandspit known as Blakeney Point. . Wiveton and Cley were active medieval ports but the end came for Wiveton when local landowner Sir Henry Calthopre and his son, Philip, built a bank across the harbour entrance in order to exclude the tide and turn the harbour mudflats into pasture. Strong local resistance eventually took the dispute to the Privy Council which order the bank to be removed, but the damage had been done and Wiveton port never recovered. Cley, by then mainly outside the bank following a fire, struggled on with its channel reduced by loss of scour, but ships got bigger and by the late 19th century, trade had more or less abandoned it.
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Photo credit: © John Worrall / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: bank, bed, calthorpe, chalk, cley---sea, england, glaven, land, meadow, medieval, norfolk, north, port, reclamation, reed, river, scenic, sea, stream, tourism, uk, water, winter, wiveton
