The River Eamont is a

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of ...

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scotland. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local government, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

and one of the major tributaries of the River Eden. The name of the river is from

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...

(ēa-gemōt) and is a back formation from

Eamont Bridge Eamont Bridge is a small village immediately to the south of Penrith, Cumbria, England. The village is named after the bridge over the River Eamont and straddles the boundary between the historic counties of Cumberland and Westmorland. One ...

which means the ''junction of streams.'' The river is formed by the outflow from

Ullswater Ullswater is the second largest lake in the English Lake District, being about long and wide, with a maximum depth a little over . It was scooped out by a glacier in the Last Ice Age. Geography It is a typical Lake District "ribbon lake", ...

in the

Lake District The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes, forests, and mountains (or '' fells''), and its associations with William Wordswor ...

, later augmented by Dacre Beck from the west and the

River Lowther The River Lowther is a small river which flows through limestone rock in Cumbria, England. It is a tributary of the River Eamont which in turn is a tributary of the River Eden which flows into the Solway Firth near Carlisle. The Lowther begins ...

which carries the water from

Haweswater Haweswater is a reservoir in the valley of Mardale, Cumbria in the Lake District, England. Work to raise the height of the original natural lake was started in 1929. It was controversially dammed after the UK Parliament passed a Private Act ...

north to the Eamont at Penrith. It reaches the Eden east of Penrith. The river has flooded on numerous occasions, with the most recent being when

Storm Desmond Storm Desmond was an extratropical cyclone and fourth named storm of the 2015–16 UK and Ireland windstorm season, notable for directing a plume of moist air, known as an atmospheric river, which brought record amounts of orographic rainfall ...

hit in December 2015. During the flooding, 300-year old Pooley Bridge was washed away and a temporary bridge had to be installed to reconnect the two halves of the village. The same storm caused damage to the grade I listed

, but after masonry work, it re-opened in March 2016. In April 2019 preparatory works began for replacing the temporary bridge with a new bridge. The crossing is to be closed from September 2019 until Easter 2020, while the new bridge is installed. It is also a strong hold for the endangered white clawed crayfish ('' Austropotamobius pallipes'').

References

External link

Eamont 1Eamont {{England-river-stub