The water supply of Kent : with records of sinkings and borings / by William Whitaker ... with contributions by H. Franklin Parsons ... Hugh Robert Mill ... and J.C. Thresh ... Pub. by order of the lords commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury.
- Whitaker, William, 1836-1925.
- Date:
- 1908
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The water supply of Kent : with records of sinkings and borings / by William Whitaker ... with contributions by H. Franklin Parsons ... Hugh Robert Mill ... and J.C. Thresh ... Pub. by order of the lords commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![a mile further up . . and on very rare occasions at Dean Farm, two or three miles further up. It follows the course of the Petham A alley, and used to empty into a stream at Shalmes- ford Street . . . but of late years it has been turned into a small pond at Perry Farm, where the earth is sufficiently porous to let it drain away. The Nailbourne does not run at regular intervals nor for any regular time, but it generally begins about January, after a wet autumn and winter, and runs till about the middle or end of the summer. In 1860, it ran all the summer, which was very wet and on through the winter and spring, but until recently, it was not known to have run for more than two years in succession.” He repudi- ates the old syphon-theory and adopts one of super-saturation of the Chalk. “ After heavy rains and before the Nailbourne breaks out, the water in all the wells in the Petham Valley rises considerably, and people who live in the village can tell by the length of rope they have to let out to reach the water when the springs* will rise in the pond.” An account of a later outburst has been given by Mr. Buckingham(1) according to whom it was more or less simul- taneous with that of the Little Stour. The hollow near Petham Church began to fill on January 9, 1904, overflowed on January 26, and occupied the road to Swarling House [ ? Farm] on February 13, after which it gained only another 80 yards. It ceased on July 26. He records also that it flowed in 1897. The Ospringe stream is intermittent. The watercourse at the village has been dry, and on the other hand, it has been flooded. In 1893, the wrater was exceptionally high at the Mill. Higher up, just above Whitehill, there is rarely no water. In the great flood (1890), there was water all along the valley from Charing Hill, the ground being frozen hard and much snow thawing. It is said that there was a like flood nearly 70 years earlier. This, of course, was not due to the outbreak of springs, but to exceptional surface-conditions. The Doddington Valley was similarly affected. Others of the North Kent streams, east of the Medway, may be of the nature of Nailbournes, but I iiave no notes as to this. Westward of the Medway, there are no Chalk-streams till we pass Gravesend. Then at Swanscombe is a short stream that has been artificially made into a Nailbourne (see Addenda). Mr. J. Lucas has recorded a flow in the parishes of Eynsford and Shoreham, saying: “in July, 1874, a bourne broke out in the Austin valley below Itomney Street, and flo'wed down the valley with great violence, demolishing a wall and doing other damage to the farm-buildings at Upper Austin Lodge . . . the water sank below the surface lower down the valley.”(2) This part belongs to the Darent. ’ E. Kent 8ci. N. II. Soc. Report, ser. ii., vol, v.f 1905, p. 13. 3 Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng., 1877, vol. xlvii.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28126737_0070.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
