The River Dearne in
South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the north, the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north-east, Lincolnshire ...
, England flows roughly east for more than , from its source just inside
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a Metropolitan counties of England, metropolitan and Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and east, South Yorkshire and De ...
. It flows through
Denby Dale
Denby Dale is a village and civil parish in the metropolitan borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire, England. It is 8 miles north-west of Barnsley and 10 miles south-east of Huddersfield.
The village is the main village in the Denby Dale civ ...
,
Clayton West,
Darton
Darton is a large village in the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley (part of South Yorkshire), on the border with West Yorkshire, England. At the time of the 2001 UK census, it had a population of 14,927, increasing to 21,345 for both Darton War ...
,
Barnsley
Barnsley () is a market town in South Yorkshire, England. It is the main settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley and the fourth largest settlement in South Yorkshire. The town's population was 71,422 in 2021, while the wider boroug ...
,
Darfield,
Wath upon Dearne,
Bolton on Dearne,
Adwick upon Dearne and
Mexborough
Mexborough is a town in the City of Doncaster, City of Doncaster District, South Yorkshire, England, between Manvers and Denaby Main, on the River Don, Yorkshire, River Don close to where it joins the River Dearne, and the A6023 road. It is co ...
to its
confluence
In geography, a confluence (also ''conflux'') occurs where two or more watercourses join to form a single channel (geography), channel. A confluence can occur in several configurations: at the point where a tributary joins a larger river (main ...
with the
River Don at
Denaby Main
Denaby Main is a village between Mexborough and Conisbrough in the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster in South Yorkshire, England. The village falls within the Doncaster MBC ward of Conisbrough and Denaby. It was built by the Denaby Main Collie ...
. Its main tributary is the
River Dove, which joins it at Darfield. The river was one of those affected by the
2007 United Kingdom floods
A series of large floods occurred in parts of the United Kingdom during the summer of 2007. The worst of the flooding occurred across parts of Northern Ireland and Scotland on 14 June; East Riding of Yorkshire, East Yorkshire and English Midlan ...
.
The course of the river is accessible to walkers as the Dearne Way, a long distance footpath from ''Dearne Head'' to the river's junction with the Don. Places of interest along the Dearne include the
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
The Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is an art gallery, with both open-air and indoor exhibition spaces, in West Bretton, Wakefield, in West Yorkshire, England. It shows work by British and international artists, including Henry Moore and Barb ...
at
West Bretton
West Bretton is a village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in City of Wakefield, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England. It lies close to junction 38 of the M1 motorway at Haigh, Yorkshire, Haigh. It has a population of 546, reducing to ...
, and
Monk Bretton Priory. The
Dearne Valley below Barnsley is a regeneration area.
The river has been subject to channel engineering to ease the problem of flooding. A new channel was constructed near its mouth in the 1950s, as the old route had been affected by mining subsidence. Washlands, which can be progressively flooded as water levels rise, were constructed in the 1960s and 1970s. A flood relief channel and a regulator to restrict the flow was built at Bolton upon Dearne. During the
2007 United Kingdom floods
A series of large floods occurred in parts of the United Kingdom during the summer of 2007. The worst of the flooding occurred across parts of Northern Ireland and Scotland on 14 June; East Riding of Yorkshire, East Yorkshire and English Midlan ...
, the washlands filled to capacity but the regulator could not be operated as it had been vandalised.
Industrialisation caused the river and the
Dearne and Dove Canal
The Dearne and Dove Canal ran for almost ten miles through South Yorkshire, England from Swinton, South Yorkshire, Swinton to Barnsley through nineteen canal lock, locks, rising . The canal also had two short branches, the Worsbrough branch and ...
, to become grossly polluted in the early nineteenth century and fish populations died. The West Riding River Board tried to address the problems in 1896 with limited success and much of the river remained dead until the 1980s, when industrial effluents were removed before they were discharged and improvements were made to sewage treatment. Despite setbacks, fish populations had been partially reinstated by the early 1990s. Channel engineering was carried out at Denaby in the 1990s, to re-introduce bends, deep pools and shallow gravel riffles, to assist fish spawning. In June 2015,
salmon
Salmon (; : salmon) are any of several list of commercially important fish species, commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the genera ''Salmo'' and ''Oncorhynchus'' of the family (biology), family Salmonidae, native ...
were reported in the river for the first time in 150 years.
Route
The river rises just below the contour west of Birdsedge. Within around , it reaches the A635 Barnsley Road bridge at
Denby Dale
Denby Dale is a village and civil parish in the metropolitan borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire, England. It is 8 miles north-west of Barnsley and 10 miles south-east of Huddersfield.
The village is the main village in the Denby Dale civ ...
, by which time it has dropped below the contour, and its flow has been swelled by several springs and the output of Park Dike. Below the bridge, Munchcliffe Beck joins near a large millpond, which supplied mills at Denby Dale. Beyond the mills, the river passes under a railway viaduct near
Denby Dale railway station
Denby Dale railway station serves the village of Denby Dale and the surrounding area, in West Yorkshire, England. It lies on the Penistone Line, south-east of Huddersfield, and is operated by Northern Trains.
History
Opened by the Huddersf ...
.
[Ordnance Survey, 1:25,000 map] The curved viaduct with 21 tall arches was built by the
Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway
The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR) was a major History of rail transport in Great Britain, British railway company before the Railways Act 1921, 1923 Grouping. It was Incorporation (business)#Incorporation in the United Kingdom, incorpo ...
in 1884.
The river flows to the north east closely following the A636 road. It is joined by Thorpe Dike at Kitchenroyd. It passes through
Scissett and west of
Clayton West where it is crossed by the
Kirklees Light Railway
Whistlestop Valley, formerly the Kirklees Light Railway, is a Tourist attraction, visitor attraction featuring a long Track gauge, gauge minimum-gauge railway. The attraction's main site is in the village of Clayton West in Kirklees, West Yo ...
. Park Gate Dike swells the flow,
[ before a double-arched skew bridge built in the early 19th century carries the A636 over the channel. Nearby is a hump-backed packhorse bridge with a single arch, probably built in the previous century, after which the river turns to the east to pass the upper and lower lakes in a channel from where it feed the lakes in the ]Yorkshire Sculpture Park
The Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is an art gallery, with both open-air and indoor exhibition spaces, in West Bretton, Wakefield, in West Yorkshire, England. It shows work by British and international artists, including Henry Moore and Barb ...
. Bretton Hall lies to the north. The river turns south at the dam of the lower lake and passes over weirs before picking up the outflow from the lakes, after which the contour is crossed.[
Next it turns to the south east and passes under the A637 road, the ]M1 motorway
The M1 motorway connects London to Leeds, where it joins the A1(M) motorway, A1(M) near Aberford, to connect to Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle. It was the first inter-urban motorway to be completed in the UK; the first motorway in the count ...
and the sliproads which form part of Junction 38, to reach Darton
Darton is a large village in the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley (part of South Yorkshire), on the border with West Yorkshire, England. At the time of the 2001 UK census, it had a population of 14,927, increasing to 21,345 for both Darton War ...
. The Cawthorne Dike joins from the west as it turns to the east and passes under the Wakefield to Barnsley railway line. The B6428 crosses on Barugh Bridge,[ a single-span bridge made of rock-faced stone, which bears the date 1850 on the north-west buttress. As the river approaches ]Barnsley
Barnsley () is a market town in South Yorkshire, England. It is the main settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley and the fourth largest settlement in South Yorkshire. The town's population was 71,422 in 2021, while the wider boroug ...
, the remains of the Barnsley Canal follow it on the south bank. Beyond the A61 Old Mill Lane bridge there was a mill, after which an aqueduct carried the canal over the river. Two more road bridges follow, the second of which carries the A633 Grange Lane.[ Just before the bridge is Priory Mill, a thirteenth-century mill which was heavily rebuilt by Sir William Armyne in 1635, and further remodelled in the nineteenth century. It was powered by a leat from the river, which supplied internal water wheels. Water from the leat was also channelled to Monk Bretton Priory, where it flushed the kitchens and the reredorter. Next there are two former railway bridges which now carry footpaths. Soon sections of the disused ]Dearne and Dove Canal
The Dearne and Dove Canal ran for almost ten miles through South Yorkshire, England from Swinton, South Yorkshire, Swinton to Barnsley through nineteen canal lock, locks, rising . The canal also had two short branches, the Worsbrough branch and ...
run parallel to the river, and after passing under two more railway bridges, the course turns to the south to reach Darfield, below which the River Dove joins from the west. The river turns to the east again, passing to the north east of a series of lakes which form the Dearne Ings and Old Moor washlands.[ On the opposite side of the channel are the Bolton Ings washlands, which cover and have been acquired by the ]Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is a Charitable_organization#United_Kingdom, charitable organisation registered in Charity Commission for England and Wales, England and Wales and in Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, ...
(RSPB). In 2011, the site was in its early stages of development, but the reedbeds have attracted spoonbill
Spoonbills are a genus, ''Platalea'', of large, long-legged wading birds. The spoonbills have a global distribution, being found on every continent except Antarctica. The genus name ''Platalea'' derives from Ancient Greek and means "broad", refe ...
s and avocets, and are expected to act as a breeding ground for bittern
Bitterns are birds belonging to the subfamily Botaurinae of the heron family Ardeidae. Bitterns tend to be shorter-necked and more secretive than other members of the family. They were called ''hæferblæte'' and various iterations of ''rared ...
s in due course. After the washlands, the river flows to the north of Wath upon Dearne, and to the south of Bolton on Dearne.[
The railway to Bolton on Dearne station crosses, after which the river is flanked by the disused Bolton Common tip on the south bank. From the village of Adwick upon Dearne, which is a little further to the south, Harlington Road crosses the river at Adwick Bridge,][ a ]grade II listed
In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...
twin-arched bridge built of sandstone
Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...
around 1800. Denaby Ings nature reserve is separated from the river by a railway embankment on the north bank. The river sweeps round to the south to join the River Don just below Mexborough Low Lock, where Mexborough New Cut on the River Don Navigation
The River Don Navigation was the result of early efforts to make the River Don, South Yorkshire, River Don in South Yorkshire, England, navigable between Fishlake and Sheffield. The Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden had re-routed the mouth of ...
rejoins the river.[ In 1903 the junction of the river with the Don was adjacent to the railway sidings of the Cadeby Main colliery, but by 1930 it had been moved further upstream, much closer to its present location.
There is a long-distance path which follows the course of the river from its source to its junction with the River Don. It is known as the Dearne Way, and the paths are marked on current editions of the Ordnance Survey maps. The path is around long and can be walked in 12 to 16 hours. Walkers who start at the source descend through over the length of the walk.
]
Flood defences
By the 1950s, the course of the river near its mouth had been affected by subsidence from coal mining, and the lowering of the channel resulted in much of the surrounding land being regularly flooded. In order to alleviate the problem and restore the gradient of the channel at this point, a new channel was constructed on the south side of the railway embankment, from near Harlington to the River Don. The old channel can still be seen on the north side of the embankment, and connects to the Denaby Ings Nature Reserve.
As part of a comprehensive assessment of flood risks caused by the River Don and its tributaries, the River Dearne Improvement Scheme was implemented between 1963 and 1973. It was recognised that simple enlargement of the river channel would not provide a satisfactory solution, as it would just move the problem to the River Don, and therefore a series of washlands were created, which could be progressively flooded if required, without affecting centres of population. Near the mouth of the river, Dearne Mouth washland, which is now known as the Denaby Ings Nature Reserve, was created in 1963, and a manually operated sluice allowed the flow of the river to be diverted through the floodbank and into the washland when there were high levels at the junction with the River Don. The sluice was rebuilt in 1973. Additional washlands were created at Harlington and North Ings, and the river was straightened and realigned.
Further upriver, a flood relief channel was built at Bolton upon Dearne, and more washlands were formed between Wath railway bridge and Adwick bridge. The Bolton Ings and Old Moor washlands were next to be created, to be followed by those at Wombwell Ings, where the River Dove joins the Dearne, Darfield, Houghton and Cudworth. Some of the storage capacity was lost as a result of mining schemes, and a regulator was installed at Bolton in 1972, allowing the flow to be restricted by a sluice gate. During the flooding in 2007, all of the washlands filled to capacity, although the Bolton regulator could not be operated as it had been vandalised. Some damage to the Houghton washlands resulted from the extremely high water levels, which overtopped the banks and caused erosion to take place. Following the floods, a reassessment of the function of the regulators was carried out, and in view of the costs of maintaining them, the Environment Agency intend to remove them once some reconfiguration of the river channel has been completed. This work will ensure that the washlands fill and empty at the appropriate points in a flood cycle.
Water quality
In the late 1700s, the river held good populations of fish. Industrial development of the valley consisted of several deep coal mines, but they were fairly small, and did not significantly pollute the river. There were collieries at Smithies, Honeywell, Queens Ground and Mount Osborne. The opening of the Dearne and Dove Canal
The Dearne and Dove Canal ran for almost ten miles through South Yorkshire, England from Swinton, South Yorkshire, Swinton to Barnsley through nineteen canal lock, locks, rising . The canal also had two short branches, the Worsbrough branch and ...
in 1810 had serious impacts on the river, as it provided a way to transport the coal to Sheffield and Rotherham, where it was used in the steelworks. This led to the rapid development of more and larger collieries. The population grew rapidly, but it was housed in small villages near the pits. With no urban infrastructure, sewage polluted the river, as did the industrial discharges from the mines.
Parts of the upper river were well suited to the woollen trade, and mills developed in the 19th century, at Denby Dale, Scissett and Clayton West. The valley of the upper river is quite narrow, and housing was provided by building terraces, which often backed on to the river. Again, sewage ended up in the river, as did the effluent from processing the wool, which included caustic washing agents and dyes. Water used in washing was returned to the river without adequate cooling, and the temperature rose. As early as 1896, the West Riding River Board was working hard to improve the situation, and achieved limited success by 1902, when they produced a report. They identified 44 small sewage treatment
Sewage treatment is a type of wastewater treatment which aims to remove contaminants from sewage to produce an effluent that is suitable to discharge to the surrounding environment or an intended reuse application, thereby preventing water p ...
plants, none of which treated the sewage adequately, and noted that the river was "much polluted by domestic sewage and by untreated or partially treated trade refuse." By the early 1900s, the river was lifeless between Barnsley and the Don, with fish unable to survive in the cocktail of chemicals. The River Dove was also lifeless, although the Cawthorne Dyke and several other small tributaries managed to retain populations of brown trout.
The situation had not improved by the 1960s, when the Yorkshire Ouse River Board noted that industrial waste from the mining, paper making, brewing and textile industries was being dumping into the river without any treatment. Pressure from the Board and from local authorities based along the river resulted in some treatment being carried out, but by 1974 much of the river was still rated as Class E on the six-point water quality scale, which indicated it was of poor quality, with some parts rated as Class F, meaning that they grossly polluted with little or no life. Nevertheless, small pockets of fish began to appear. A small population of brown trout had survived in the upper of the river, but could not proceed downstream due to dams erected for the woollen mills. Moth-proofing agents were released by the mills into the water, which were highly toxic to fish, and although the discharge of these chemicals ceased in 1979, when they were routed to a sewer for treatment, the problem did not immediately go away, as the chemicals continued to seep into the river from land which had been contaminated by them for another ten years. Any progress with the re-establishment of fish stocks was destroyed by a series of releases of pollutants into the river during the 1970s and 1980s.
Improvements
By 1987, water quality had improved sufficiently to try restocking the upper river, and large numbers of yearling trout were released into the river in April. A fish survey carried out by the Yorkshire Water Authority a year later showed that many of these were surviving. By 1992, there was evidence that the fish were breeding in the river, and naturally bred brown trout were found between Denby Dale and Clayton West in 1994, for the first time in over 100 years. The trout population in the upper Dearne was declared to be self-sustaining by 1996.
The river below Clayton West ceases to be a shallow, fast-flowing watercourse, and consists of deeper pools with a slower flow, which is suitable for various coarse fish as well as trout. By 1974, a modest improvement in water quality had been achieved by treatment of industrial effluent, and some fish managed to exist below the weir at the Star Paper Mill in Barnsley. The weir helped to oxygenate the water, and most of the fish had been washed downstream from Cannon Hall and Bretton Lakes. During flood conditions, many of the population would be washed further downstream, to be replaced by others from the lakes. A survey in 1982 found gudgeon, minnow and three-spined stickleback, which had increased by 1985, and over 10,000 coarse fish were released as part of a restocking programme. However, most of these were killed by serious pollution incidents that affected the river in 1987 and 1988, and incidents continued for a further three years. The sewage treatment works at Darton and Lundwood, on either side of Barnsley, were largely responsible.
Discharges from the Darton sewage treatment works contained residues from dyes used by a local carpet manufacturer, which reached the works by a foul sewer, but could not be adequately treated by the existing processes. As a result, the final effluent was a deep red colour, and was a major factor in the poor biochemical oxygen demand
Biochemical oxygen demand (also known as BOD or biological oxygen demand) is an analytical parameter representing the amount of dissolved oxygen (DO) consumed by aerobic bacteria growing on the organic material present in a water sample at a s ...
ratings for the river. Major improvements, including new primary settlement tanks and tertiary treatment lagoons, were made to the treatment works, and the carpet manufacturers installed facilities to treat their effluent before it was discharged to the sewer. By 1994, fish were again appearing below the Star Paper Mill weir, and Yorkshire Water and the Environment Agency carried out another fish restocking programme.
Improvements to water quality through Barnsley highlighted the fact that fish populations did not exist below the discharge from the Lundwood sewage treatment works to the east of Barnsley. As the population of Barnsley had increased, the volume of effluent received by the works had increased without a corresponding increase in its ability to treat it. In addition, the outfall reached the river along a stretch of the Cliffe Bridge Dyke, which had suffered from subsidence. This resulted in slow movement along the dyke, which sometimes caused the effluent to become septic before it reached the main channel. A major programme of refurbishment was carried out at the works between 1997 and 1998, to improve the quality of discharge. The fish populations on the lower river fluctuated, as a result of pollution incidents on the middle river, but by 1994, chub and dace were clearly breeding in the river. Breeding was assisted by re-engineering of the channel at Pastures Road, Denaby, which had been straightened in the 1960s after it was affected by subsidence. A series of bends were created, which encourage the formation of deep pools and shallow gravel riffles. These features are needed by dace
A dace is a small fish that can be one of many different species. The unmodified name is usually a reference to the common dace (''Leuciscus leuciscus''). This, like most fish called "daces", belongs to the family Leuciscidae, mostly in subfami ...
and barbel
Barbel may refer to:
*Barbel (anatomy), a whisker-like organ near the mouth found in some fish (notably catfish, loaches and cyprinids) and turtles
*Barbel (fish), a common name for certain species of fish
**''Barbus barbus'', a species of cyprini ...
for successful spawning, and prevent young fish from being washed downstream in flood conditions. Water quality has continued to improve, and the lower Dearne has become an important venue for angling.
Further improvements to the Lundwood sewage treatment works began in 2007 to enable it to comply with the Freshwater Fish Directive, and although the site was inundated during the floods of 2007, the scheme, which cost £8 million, was completed in 2008. To celebrate the opening of the new works, the poet Ian McMillan was asked to run a poetry workshop at Littleworth Grange Primary Learning Centre, where children completed a poem about water treatment for which he supplied the first two lines. In June 2015, the Environment Agency announced that salmon
Salmon (; : salmon) are any of several list of commercially important fish species, commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the genera ''Salmo'' and ''Oncorhynchus'' of the family (biology), family Salmonidae, native ...
had returned to the Dearne for the first time in 150 years. This follows the opening of a fish ladder
A fish ladder, also known as a fishway, fish pass, fish steps, or fish cannon, is a structure on or around artificial and natural barriers (such as dams, locks and waterfalls) to facilitate diadromous fishes' natural migration as well as mov ...
at Sprotborough weir in 2014.
Assessment
The Environment Agency measure the water quality of the river systems in England. Each is given an overall ecological status, which may be one of five levels: high, good, moderate, poor and bad. There are several components that are used to determine this, including biological status, which looks at the quantity and varieties of invertebrate
Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate s ...
s, angiosperm
Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed within a fruit ...
s and fish. Chemical status, which compares the concentrations of various chemicals against known safe concentrations, is rated good or fail. The Dearne and several of its tributaries are designated as "heavily modified", which means that the channels have been altered by human activity, and the criteria for this designation are defined by the Water Framework Directive.
The water quality of the Dearne and its tributaries was as follows in 2019.
Like most rivers in the UK, the chemical status changed from good to fail in 2019, due to the presence of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE), perfluorooctane sulphonate (PFOS), mercury compounds and cypermethrin, none of which had previously been included in the assessment.
Points of interest
See also
*Rivers of the United Kingdom
For details of rivers of the United Kingdom, see
* List of rivers of England
* List of rivers of Scotland
* List of rivers of Wales
* Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland ( ; ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, part of the United Kingd ...
Bibliography
* (This is available online at The Don Catchment Rivers Trust. Page numbers refer to the pdf file).
References
External links
{{authority control
Dearne
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Rivers with fish ladders