Soham Lode
Soham Lode is one of the Cambridgeshire lodes, a man-made channel which joins the Great Ouse.
Soham Lode runs for about 7 miles from the River Great Ouse about a mile below the point where the River Cam joins it. The origin of Soham Lode is less well known than the other lodes, but it probably dates from the 1790s, when it was built to reduce flooding in the Soham and Fordham area, by carrying water from the River Snail, which formerly flowed into the River Lark, to join the Great Ouse instead.[1] Soham is about halfway along it, and was once close to a large inland lake called Soham Mere, which was drained in the late 18th century.[2]
History
There is no evidence that the Lode was navigable beyond Soham. Lighters brought cargoes of corn to a water mill at Soham, and later brought coal when steam engines replaced the water wheel. Barley and timber were other important cargoes.
There was a sluice at the entrance to the lode, with two sets of mitre gates, pointing in opposite directions, one to prevent flood waters from the Great Ouse entering the lode, and the other to raise the water level in the lode to make navigation easier.[1]
The railway network reached Soham at last in 1879, and this resulted in the rapid demise of waterborne transport. Commercial traffic on the lode ceased about 1900, and the lode was described as un-navigable in a report by H Dunn in 1906. When the Anglian Water Authority was created by Act of Parliament in 1977, the lode was not listed as a navigation, and their successors, the Environment Agency, have taken this to mean that there is no right of navigation.[3]
There is now a pumping station and a set of mitred flood doors at the start of the lode, and although it is not officially navigable, two narrowboats navigated part of it in 2001,[4] and there is increasing evidence that boats can and do use it as far as it is possible.[3]
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References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Boyes & Russell 1977, pp. 177–178
- ↑ Blair 2006, p. 95
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 East Anglian Waterways Association, The Easterling, Feb 2008, accessed 30 May 2009
- ↑ Tuesday Night Club, 2001 cruising log, Page 20, accessed 29 May 2009