THE ANKER VALLEY AND ITS FLORA. 
55 
I have had a marked “ Catalogue of British Plants ” showing 
the plants enumerated from the Sence basin, by the late 
Rev. A. Bloxam, Rev. — Coleman, Mr. Mott, and liis coadju¬ 
tors in the Flora of Leicestershire, and all my notes from 
this district are derived from this source. The list shows a 
flora of about 650 species, many of them rare plants, and 
about 112 species and varieties not as yet seen in the Anker 
Valley proper. 
The Anker, now a noticeable stream, continues its 
northerly course through Grendon and Grendon Park, where 
it is joined by a small stream rising in Twycross Fields. After 
leaving Grendon Park its coitrse is diverted in a westerly 
direction towards Poles worth. Here the country becomes 
suddenly elevated, and we have a ridge of high land forming 
Hermitage Hill. This causes the Anker to take an abrupt 
northerly course, past Alvecote Mill; and then again westerly 
and north-westerly under Shuttington Bridge, through Aming- 
ton and Boleliall, to its confluence with the Tame at Lady- 
bridge, Tamworth ; receiving in its course, on its left bank, 
Merivale Brook and streams from Baddesley Ensor and the 
surrounding district, and on its right affluents from Warton, 
Austrey, and Seckington. 
The course of the Anker from its rise to its mouth is 
about twenty-five miles. It is everywhere a pretty stream, 
and for a considerable distance very brook-like in character, 
limpid and rapid, and calling to one’s mind Tennyson’s 
beautiful “ Song of the Brook” :— 
“ I chatter over stony ways, 
In little sharps and trebles, 
I bubble into eddying bays, 
I babble on the pebbles.” 
The beauty of this stream has inspired the verse of one 
of her sons, the almost forgotten Michael Drayton, who was 
born at Hartshill, on the banks of the Anker, and who, in a 
pretty sonnet addressed to this river, thus expresses his 
appreciative praise:— 
“ Clear Ankor, on whose silver-sanded shore, 
My soul-shrined saint, my fair Idea, lies. 
O blessed brook, whose milk-white swans adore 
Thy crystal stream, refined by her eyes, 
Where sweet myrrh-breathing Zephyr in the spring 
Gently distils his nectar-dropping showers. 
Where nightingales in Arden sit and sing 
Amongst the dainty dew-impearled flowers. 
Say thus fair brook, when thou shalt see thy Queen, 
Lo here thy shepherd spent his wand’ring years, 
And in these shades, dear nymph, he oft hath been, 
And here, to thee, he sacrificed his tears. 
Fair Arden, thou my Tempe are alone, 
And thou sweet Ankor art my Helicon .” 
