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The River Cam is a tributary of the River Great Ouse in the east of England. The two rivers join to the south of Ely at a place called Pope's Corner. The Great Ouse connects the Cam to England's canal system. In earlier times the Cam was named the Granta. After the name of the Anglo-Saxon town of Grantebrycge had been modified to Cambridge, the river was renamed to match.
The lower and middle river
The Cam connects Cambridge with the North Sea at King's Lynn, a total distance of about 40 miles (64 km). An organisation called the Conservators of the River Cam was formed in 1702, charged with keeping the river navigable. The Conservators are responsible for the two locks in and north east of Cambridge: Jesus Lock and Baits Bite Lock. The stretch north of Baits Bite Lock is called the lower river.
The middle river, between Jesus Lock and Baits Bite Lock, is the home of the college rowing teams. There are also many houseboats on this stretch, forming a community who call themselves the Camboaters. Access for houseboats to the upper river is permitted during the winter months.
From the Backs to Grantchester
The stretch above Jesus Lock is known as the upper river. Between Jesus Lock and the Mill Pond, it passes through the Backs below the walls of many of the colleges. This is the section of river most popular with tourists, with its picture-postcard views of elegant bridges, green lawns and graceful willows. This stretch also has the unusual feature of a submerged towpath: the riverside colleges did not permit barge horses on the Backs, so the beasts waded up the Cam to the mill pulling their loads behind them.
From the Mill Pond and its weir, the river can be followed upstream through Granchester meadows to the village of Grantchester and Byron's Pool, where it is fed by many streams. In the summer the upper river is open only to manually propelled craft, the most common of which are the flat-bottomed punts. Punts and canoes can be manhandled around the weir by means of the rollers, a slipway from lower to upper level.
Tributaries
The two principal tributaries of the Cam are the Granta and the Rhee, though both are also officially known as the Cam. The Rhee begins just west of Ashwell in Hertfordshire running 12 miles through the farmland of southern Cambridgeshire. The longer tributary, the Granta, starts near the village of Widdington in Essex flowing the 15 miles north past Audley End House to merge with the Rhee a mile south of Grantchester. A further tributary, also known as the Granta, runs 10 miles from south of Haverhill to join the larger Granta south of Great Shelford. Another minor tributary is Bourn Brook which has its source near the village of Eltisley, 10 miles west of Cambridge, running east through Caxton, Bourn and Toft to join the Cam at Byron's Pool, where the poet, Lord Byron, is reputed to have swum.
Literature
Byron's Pool was certainly a bathing place for Rupert Brooke and the Cambridge neo-Pagans. Brooke used to canoe from Cambridge to lodgings in Granchester, which included the Old Vicarage. His homesick poem of 1912 evokes the river memorably:
Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through,
Beside the river make for you
A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep
Deeply above; and green and deep
The stream mysterious glides beneath,
Green as a dream and deep as death.
...
To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten
Unforgettable, unforgotten
River-smell, and hear the breeze
Sobbing in the little trees.
Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand
Still guardians of that holy land?
The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,
The yet unacademic stream?
—"The Old Vicarage, Grantchester", Collected Poems (1916)
One of Brooke's contemporaries, Gwen Darwin, later Raverat, grew up in the old mill by the Mill Pond. Her book, Period Piece, is a wonderful memoir of a childhood messing about on the river. The mill house is now Darwin College.
Children's author Philippa Pearce, who lives in Great Shelford, features the Cam in her books, most notably Minnow on the Say. The river is re-named the River Say, with Great and Little Shelford becoming Great and Little Barley, and Cambridge becoming "Castleford" (not to be confused with the real town of the same name in West Yorkshire).
Trivia
Ingesting the river water is reputed to bring on a flu-like illness, known locally as Cam fever. The water is certainly murky, but clean enough at Cambridge to support fish.
References
See also
External links
- History and course of the River
- Conservators of the River Cam
- First and Third Trinity Boat Club guide to the Cam
Cambridge | Rivers in Cambridgeshire | Tributaries of the River Great Ouse
"River Cam"