Tilling Bourne
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The River Tillingbourne (also known as the Tilling Bourne) runs along the south side of the
North Downs The North Downs are a ridge of chalk hills in south east England that stretch from Farnham in Surrey to the White Cliffs of Dover in Kent. Much of the North Downs comprises two Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Areas of Outstanding Natural Be ...
and joins the
River Wey The River Wey is a main tributary of the River Thames in south east England. Its two branches, one of which rises near Alton, Hampshire, Alton in Hampshire and the other in West Sussex to the south of Haslemere, join at Tilford in Surrey. Onc ...
at
Guildford Guildford () is a town in west Surrey, England, around south-west of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town has a population of about 77,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around inhabitants in . The nam ...
. Its source is a mile south of Tilling Springs to the north of
Leith Hill Leith Hill in southern England is the highest summit of the Greensand Ridge, approximately southwest of Dorking, Surrey and southwest of central London. It reaches above sea level, and is the second highest point in southeast England, aft ...
at and it runs through
Friday Street Friday Street is a hamlet (place), hamlet on the gentle lower north slope of Leith Hill in Surrey, England. It is in a wooded headwater ravine, just to the south of Wotton and the A25 road, A25, a single rather than dual carriageway road, runn ...
,
Abinger Hammer Abinger Hammer is a village in the Mole Valley district of Surrey, England. It lies in the Vale of Holmesdale in the Surrey Hills National Landscape and is located on the A25 about east of Guildford and west of Dorking. The village is name ...
,
Gomshall Gomshall is a village in the borough of Guildford in Surrey, England.OS Explorer map 145:Guildford and Farnham. Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – Southampton. It is on the A25, roughly halfway between Guildford and Dorking, and ...
,
Shere Shere is a village in the Guildford district of Surrey, England east south-east of Guildford and west of Dorking, centrally bypassed by the A25. Located on the River Tillingbourne it is a small still partly agricultural village chiefly set ...
,
Albury Albury (; ) is a major regional city that is located in the Murray River, Murray region of New South Wales, Australia. It is part of the twin city of Albury–Wodonga, Albury-Wodonga and is located on the Hume Highway and the northern side of ...
, Chilworth and Shalford. The source is a semi-natural uninhabited area. The catchment is situated on sandstone which has a low rate of weathering. The Tillingbourne is in length.


Geography

The Tillingbourne initially flows northward for down the northern slopes of
Leith Hill Leith Hill in southern England is the highest summit of the Greensand Ridge, approximately southwest of Dorking, Surrey and southwest of central London. It reaches above sea level, and is the second highest point in southeast England, aft ...
over a series of weirs and cascades, before turning west to run for through
Abinger Hammer Abinger Hammer is a village in the Mole Valley district of Surrey, England. It lies in the Vale of Holmesdale in the Surrey Hills National Landscape and is located on the A25 about east of Guildford and west of Dorking. The village is name ...
and Chilworth towards the
River Wey The River Wey is a main tributary of the River Thames in south east England. Its two branches, one of which rises near Alton, Hampshire, Alton in Hampshire and the other in West Sussex to the south of Haslemere, join at Tilford in Surrey. Onc ...
at Shalford. The river is classified as a subsequent stream, since its course is determined by the direction of the stratum of softer rock for the majority of its length. The river has four principal tributaries: the Friday Street stream joins at Wotton House; the Holmbury St Mary stream joins at Abinger Hammer; the Sherbourne Brook drains the
Silent Pool Silent Pool is a spring-fed lake at the foot of the North Downs, about east of Guildford in Surrey. The outflow from Silent Pool runs into a second, adjacent, lake, Sherbourne Pond, created in the mid-seventeenth century. In turn the outflow f ...
and Sherbourne Pond and the Law Brook joins near Postford.


Industry

From the 17th to the mid 20th centuries the Tillingbourne valley was a major industrial area due to its closeness to London and the ease of transport via the Wey and the
Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after th ...
. The river was used to power a relatively large number of mills in the area. Some 24 mill sites have been identified along the course of the river, used for such diverse industries as
gunpowder Gunpowder, also commonly known as black powder to distinguish it from modern smokeless powder, is the earliest known chemical explosive. It consists of a mixture of sulfur, charcoal (which is mostly carbon), and potassium nitrate, potassium ni ...
,
paper making Papermaking is the manufacture of paper and cardboard, which are used widely for printing, writing, and packaging, among many other purposes. Today almost all paper is made using industrial machinery, while handmade paper survives as a special ...
for bank-notes, iron-working, wire-making,
fulling Fulling, also known as tucking or walking ( Scots: ''waukin'', hence often spelt waulking in Scottish English), is a step in woollen clothmaking which involves the cleansing of woven cloth (particularly wool) to eliminate ( lanolin) oils, ...
, tanning and pumping water, as well as the more conventional flour, grist and malt milling. Some of the earliest gunpowder mills were those set up in 1626 by The
East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...
at Chilworth.
John Evelyn John Evelyn (31 October 162027 February 1706) was an English writer, landowner, gardener, courtier and minor government official, who is now best known as a diary, diarist. He was a founding Fellow of the Royal Society. John Evelyn's Diary, ...
wrote in his diary in 1676: Not every one was so impressed,
William Cobbett William Cobbett (9 March 1763 – 18 June 1835) was an English pamphleteer, journalist, politician, and farmer born in Farnham, Surrey. He was one of an Agrarianism, agrarian faction seeking to reform Parliament, abolish "rotten boroughs", restr ...
wrote: Present day users include a
trout Trout (: trout) is a generic common name for numerous species of carnivorous freshwater ray-finned fishes belonging to the genera '' Oncorhynchus'', ''Salmo'' and ''Salvelinus'', all of which are members of the subfamily Salmoninae in the ...
farm,
watercress Watercress or yellowcress (''Nasturtium officinale'') is a species of aquatic flowering plant in the cabbage family, Brassicaceae. Watercress is a rapidly growing perennial plant native to Eurasia. It is one of the oldest known leaf vegetabl ...
beds, a business growing
reeds Reed or Reeds may refer to: Science, technology, biology, and medicine * Reed bird (disambiguation) * Reed pen, writing implement in use since ancient times * Reed (plant), one of several tall, grass-like wetland plants of the order Poales * Re ...
and a gin distillery. The river passes through the Albury estate which operates recreational fisheries at Weston fishery, Vale End fishery and Powder Mills fishery. The river's natural course has been diverted slightly here for the purposes of the estate. The Shalford pumping station, close to the junction with the Wey, provides between 4 and 7 million gallons of water per day to supply Godalming and parts of Guildford.


Mills

*Brookmill *Friday Street Upper Mill (Friday Street Stream tributary) *Friday Street Mill (Friday Street Stream tributary) *Wotton House Mill *Crane's Mill, Abinger *Paddington Mill, now converted to private housing *Abinger Hammer Mill *Sutton Mill (Holbury St Mary Stream tributary) *Gomshall Mill, now a pub *Gomshall Tannery *Netley Mill, also known as Shere Mill *Shere Lower Mill *Shere West Mill *Albury Park Mill *Albury Mill *Postford Upper Mill *Postford Lower Mill, renamed Albury Mill in the 20th century. Also known as Bottings Mill. *Postford House Mill *Chilworth Gunpowder Mills, divided between the Lower, Middle and Upper Works. *Chilworth Great Mill *Chilworth Little Mill *East Shalford Mill *
Shalford Mill Shalford Mill is an 18th-century Grade II* listed watermill located on the River Tillingbourne in Shalford, near Guildford, Surrey, England. In 1932, the mill was endowed to the National Trust by a group of eccentric young female philanthropi ...
, now owned by the
National Trust The National Trust () is a heritage and nature conservation charity and membership organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley to "promote the ...


Environment

The River Tillingbourne supports a fish population of both wild
brown trout The brown trout (''Salmo trutta'') is a species of salmonid ray-finned fish and the most widely distributed species of the genus ''Salmo'', endemic to most of Europe, West Asia and parts of North Africa, and has been widely introduced globally ...
and
coarse fish Coarse fishing (, ) is a phrase commonly used in Great Britain and Ireland. It refers to the angling for rough fish, which are fish species considered undesirable as food or game fish. Freshwater game fish are all salmonids, particularly salmon, ...
. The
Environment Agency The Environment Agency (EA) is a non-departmental public body, established in 1996 and sponsored by the United Kingdom government's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with responsibilities relating to the protection and enha ...
has been working with local fishermen to improve the habitat for these fish by recreating a pool and riffle
habitat In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species' habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ...
and by cutting back overhanging vegetation. The
signal crayfish The signal crayfish (''Pacifastacus leniusculus'') is a species of crayfish indigenous to North America. Introduced to Europe in the 1960s to supplement the North European ''Astacus astacus'' fisheries, which were being damaged by crayfish plague ...
is a recent invasive species. The river and its environs are often studied by students from nearby field studies centres, such as Sayers Croft and Juniper Hall. There are on-going problems with invasive plants caused by phosphate enrichment due to waste-water treatment from sewage works in addition to agricultural run-off. The river was championed by the Victorian landscape painter,
Lewis Pinhorn Wood Lewis Pinhorn Wood (1848–1918) was a British landscapist and watercolourist, best known for his rural scenes of Sussex and Surrey. In the tradition of the Victorian era, his work depicted idyllic scenes of rural life across the home countie ...
, who lived in Shere from 1884 to 1897, and painted extensively along its banks with scenes including ''The Silent Pool'', ''Twilight'' (1888) and ''Evening on the Tillingbourne'' (1889). The writer, Ralph Lawrence, recalls hearing the guns on the Western Front while walking in Hurtwood on the southern slopes of the valley .


Water quality

The Environment Agency measure 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. Text was copied from this source, which is available under a
Open Government Licence v3.0
© Crown copyright.
The water quality of the Tillingbourne was as follows in 2022:


Other Notable Features

* Tillingbourne Waterfall *
Newlands Corner Newlands Corner is a nature reserve east of Guildford in Surrey, England. It is owned by the Albury Estate. It used to be managed by the Surrey Wildlife Trust under an access agreement between the estate and Surrey County Council, but is no l ...
affords panoramic views over the valley. *
Silent Pool Silent Pool is a spring-fed lake at the foot of the North Downs, about east of Guildford in Surrey. The outflow from Silent Pool runs into a second, adjacent, lake, Sherbourne Pond, created in the mid-seventeenth century. In turn the outflow f ...
* St Martha's Hill above Chilworth also provides a panorama of the valley. File:Tilling Springs, Broadmoor, pond.jpg, Pond at Tilling Springs File:Waterfall, Upper Tilling Valley. - geograph.org.uk - 136653.jpg, upTilling Waterfall File:Tillingbourne valley.jpg, Tillingbourne valley panorama from St Martha's Hill


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tillingbourne, River Rivers of Surrey 1Tillingbourne