River Nene

The River Nene is a river in the east of England. It flows for 91 miles (147 km) through Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. The tidal river forms the border between Cambridgeshire and Norfolk for about six kilometres.

The river's environment

The river rises at sources near Badby (the nearby village of Newnham appears to be named after it), Naseby and Yelvertoft, Northamptonshire, then it flows through arable land, before entering the modern industrial landscape of Northampton, Wellingborough and Irthlingborough to flow among its gravel pits. At TL116976, the Romans bridged the river with Ermine Street in the first century.

Having passed among the gentle hills of Northamptonshire it enters the rural part of the City of Peterborough, passes the Nene Valley Railway and the East of England Showground. After the cathedral city itself, the landscape changes to the Nene Washes in The Fens and their vast, seemingly endless horizons. It flows through Wisbech, then Sutton Bridge in Lincolnshire, and it finally enters the North Sea at The Wash between two towers known as "the lighthouses".

The Nene links the Grand Union Canal to the River Great Ouse, via the Middle Level system. Much of its route has been upgraded to a wide canal with locks at regular intervals. Some sections where the "canal" runs adjacent to the "river" are known as the "Nene Navigation".

The name

Pronunciation of the river's name is a bone of contention in its locality, and changes as one moves downstream. Through Northamptonshire locals mostly refer to it as the (rhyming with "hen"), but around Peterborough it changes to (rhyming with "mean"). The spelling was "Nen" until the beginning of the 20th Century, and the point at which the pronunciation changes has been moving further inland for many years.

The river gave its name to the former Nene College of Higher Education in Northampton, now University of Northampton.

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The river's environment

The name

See also