Xxiv INTRODUCTION. 



importance with the natural watercourses themselves. Indeed, these 

 last have in many cases been so much modified for the sake of the 

 mills and navigation, that the present condition of those which were 

 at first natural, and those which have always been artificial, is not now 

 in many cases very different. 



The Neio River has especially, from the length of time since it was 

 made, almost acquired the appearance of a natural stream. The 

 water was admitted September 29, 1613, by Sir Hugh Middelton, 

 who commenced the work February 20, 1608, when the scheme had 

 been given up as impracticable by others. It nominally commences 

 about half-a-mile south-west of Ware in Herts, in a spring called 

 Chadwell, but the large proportion of its water (as much, it is said, 

 as nineteen-twentieths) is let in from the Lea a little below the 

 spring. The whole length of the New River is thirty-six miles, of 

 which twenty-four miles are in Middlesex. It enters the county near 

 Waltham Cross, and follows a very serpentine course south by Enfield, 

 Winchmore Hill, Wood Green, Hornsey, and Highbury, to Islington 

 and the New River Head at the corner of Amwell Street and Penton- 

 ville Road. The latter part of this course from Canonbury is now 

 bricked over, but a very few years back it was an open canal in front 

 of Duncan Terrace and Colebrook Row, Islington. 



^ The boarded river,' often mentioned in the writings of the older 

 metropolitan botanists, was part of the course of the New River close 

 to Highbury Vale, near Stoke Newington, where it leaves the parish 

 of Hornsey and enters that of Islington. The water was here carried 

 in an aqueduct made of wood lined with lead, and supported by 

 strong timbers standing on piers of brick. The trough was 462 feet 

 long and 17 feet high. This was found to need such constant 

 repairs that it was removed in 1776 by raising a day bank under- 

 neath it. A bridle road, which passed under the ^ boarded river,' was 

 carried over it afterwards by a bridge. A little stream also passed 

 under it, and, receiving waste water from it, ran into the Lea at Old 

 Ford under the name of Hackney Brook. A similar trough for the 

 New River existed at Bush Hill near Enfield, which was removed 

 about 1784. (See Gentleman'' s Magazine, ]784, and Nelson's History 

 of Islington.) The New Rivp:*- was also carried in a trough over a 

 hollow, made by dif^ging gravel, in the City Road, and filled up in 1803. 



The New River is one of the water supplies of London ,• other 

 canals are used for purposes of navigation alone. 



The Grand Junction Canal, from the north (begun 1794), is con- 

 nected with the Colne from Rickmansworth to West Drayton, keeping 



