RIVER FLOWS AGAIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 142, 17 June 1936, Page 7

RIVER FLOWS AGAIN

LOCAL PEOPiE. ALARMED "FORETELLS DISASTER"

The upper reaches of the Misbourne, which rises near Great Missenden and runs through Amersham and the Chalfonts, are full of water again (reported the "Observer" recently). This is an event which so rarely befalls the normally dry bed of this little Chiltern stream that it invariably causes wide- . spread curiosity and—in some quarters —a certain amount of disquiet. ' It is still a belief amongst the older of the local inhabitants that such an - occurrence can only foretell disaster. ' They have not forgotten that just such a thing .happened in 1912. The earliest written record of a similar effluence is in the parish, register of Great Hampden, just over two miles to the westward, when an entry of 1774 records the fact that in the months of March, April, and May of • that year the stream was rising in the valley below Hampden House. There is a tradition that the same sort of thing happened in 1664. The Misbourne normally takes its rise in the lake of Missenden Abbey, about a mile to the south of Great Missenden, but at present the blue line indicated on the Ordnance Survey is justified and the Misbourne begins at Mobwell, a half-mile to the north of the village. At Christmas this extra mile and a half was quite dry, but now (March) there is a full stream running down the bed which has known no water for so long. It is calculated that it takes about four months of exceptionally heavy rainfall to have any effect on the natural springs in chalk-formed country such as the Chilterns. An ordinary downpour, unless it is of the dimension of the local cloudburst in 1917, will have no effect at all. The rainfall must be persistent to penetrate to the watertable from which these springs arise. Similar streams—or "bournes" as they are commonly called in the chalk country of Southern England—are reported to be flowing again in Surrey; there is one at Coulsdon and another in the Caterham Valley. In the Wolds of East Yorkshire these intermittent flowing spates are fairly common at the latter end of winter or in early spring. They are known as ."gipsies" (pronounced with a hard "g"), a name which has given distinction to a stream that rises about twelve miles to the north-west of Bridlington and runs into the sea through its harbour. This stream, too, is variable in its flow, sometimes being dry for five years at a time and then surprising everybody in the locality by an unexpected appearance.