Author(s): Dorothy Summers

Britain, Scotland, Ireland, Wales | Maritime, Aviation

 The history of river navigations other than the Thames is poorly documented. We now have, however, two excellent ones, Baron F. Duckham's The Yorkshire Ouse and Dorothy Summers' The Great Ouse. These give us the navigation history of two important rivers from the earliest times to the present, and very different they are. Navigation on the Great Ouse, completed to Bedford in the seventeenth century, had to contend for most of the time with powerful drainage interests: only occasionally, as under the South Level Corporation, were the two reconciled. Trade, too, was made more difficult because, right through the river's history from the seventeenth century to our own, navigation rights for most of the river were in private and not in company hands, with the right to charge tolls, except at one place, undefined. All this offers an absorbing and hitherto largely untold story. Dorothy Summers here develops the navigation history of the whole river from Bedford to King's Lynn and the Wash : the river and its tributaries, locks, staunches, bridges and mills, boats and boatmen, set against the endlessly recurrent need for good drainage. The Great Ouse adds greatly to our knowledge of navigation history: it is a book for all waterway enthusiasts, and for those who know and love East Anglia.
Coloured Frontispiece.

Good condition. Inscription at top of inside front cover page. Plastic slip over dust jacket.