Here's the article I wrote for Chatterbox just before Christmas. Frustratingly, the version that was printed was mangled so much (presumably by cutting and pasting errors after I'd emailed it to the editor) that large sections were unintelligible. So here is the text as it SHOULD have been printed...
To me, the river Chater is an integral part of Ketton. The village is even said to take its name from the river, according to Eilert Ekwall’s Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names, and was recorded as Chetene in the Domesday Book in 1086. The Chater itself may take its name from ancient British words ceto-dubron meaning “forest-stream.” Now of course mostly flowing through farmland rather than forests, the Chater runs 22 miles from its source near Whatborough Hill to its confluence with the river Welland between Ketton and Tinwell. Settlements often form near rivers to access both water and power, so the Chater may well be the reason Ketton began. A water mill in Ketton is recorded in the Domesday book, and a mill was working at Mill Lane until the late 19th century.
How many of us enjoy seeing the river as we walk about Ketton? It may be a quick glance as we pass by, or a longer stop to take in the view with, if we’re lucky, some wildlife sightings. My son and I cross the Chater everyday on the way to school, and always look down to see what we can see and enjoy the sound of the bubbling water. One winter’s day we were rewarded with a sight we’d only ever seen on wildlife documentaries: wild brown trout spawning, right in front of us! We might have been a little late for school that morning… On the way home he enthusiastically told his friends, who all came to look – there was a buzz of excitement as they realised the trout where still there, and they endeavoured to watch without their shadows disturbing the fish and scaring them off. We’ve also been privileged to see the electric-blue flash of a kingfisher darting past, and have heard that otters have been seen nearby. Such sightings are not a given, however. These creatures all depend on having the right habitat and water quality. There is growing concern among people I talk to in Ketton about the health of the Chater. This chimes with the growing realisation across the country of just how threatened our rivers are, and how far from ideal the quality of our freshwater is.
Our river systems have been shaped drastically by people over the centuries: even ones we think look “natural” are surprisingly removed from their natural states. Lidar images help us look back in time to see the position of water channels in the past. They show that our idea of one defined, static river channel is not how rivers would be without our interference. In the past, many rivers would be more like a series of dynamic shifting braids, changing form and position over time, and swelling over floodplains after rain. But as we carved out fields and homes nearby, we tamed them into straighter, single channels. Once we had buildings and farmland along the banks to defend from the water, it wasn’t convenient for the shifting and seasonal flooding to continue, which led to even more taming, often involving dredging the channel to make it deeper to try to carry more water at once. But investing effort in building and farming right up to these banks was always going to be a high risk strategy: when a single, deep channel fails to contain the water, it overflows dramatically. This is the reasoning behind a recent push towards more natural flood management. If a river can have more space to spread out and behave naturally in some areas where there aren’t buildings, and surrounding wetlands and woodlands are restored to slow the flow of floods, this can absorb and slow down flooding events and lessen their impact on more built-up areas downstream.
Changing the physical shape of rivers over the centuries has profoundly affected the other species which use the river. Deep, dredged rivers with steep banks offer only one type of habitat. But a fully functioning natural river ecosystem would have a whole mosaic of habitats: shallow, swift gravelly runs ideal for trout spawning and the invertebrates which need lots of highly oxygenated water; slower, deeper pools good for other parts of the fish life cycle and invertebrates which need less oxygen; different types of material on the river bed in different areas, from large stones to small gravel to silt; surrounding wetlands including ephemeral pools that dry up in the summer, great for all sorts of insects and everything that eats them; a variety of water plants and algae living in the different microhabitats; submerged tree roots for sheltering fish fry; and submerged dead wood vital for many invertebrates to make a home on, providing food for animals further up the food chain.
A brown trout caught (and quickly released!) in the Chater.
Physically restoring a more natural river system is not so possible in the middle of a village - our lovely Ketton buildings are already here, and we all need to be able to move around on our paths and roads - but I think it’s still important to think about how the river might once have been, to better understand river restoration where it can be done. However, working together to increase the quality of the water in the Chater seems to me a no-brainer: it improves the environment for us and for other species. Discharge of untreated sewage by water companies has been much in the news recently. If you visit the Rivers Trust website https://www.theriverstrust.org/key-issues/sewage-in-rivers you find an interactive map showing where the sewerage network discharges treated effluent and overflows of untreated effluent and storm water. Unfortunately the one in Ketton (just downstream of where the Sinc stream enters the Chater) doesn’t have monitoring equipment fitted so we can’t see a record of discharge events, though I have often noticed a whiff of sewage when I pass… Considering the increase in popularity of wild swimming, and how many children like to paddle and play in the Chater, it is vital we have good river water quality.
Another source of pollution is nitrate and phosphate run-off from farmland, which can be reduced through better land management. As with sewage, too much of these nutrients in rivers can lead to algal blooms, deoxygenation of the water and biodiversity loss. This summer I sampled water from the Chater in conjunction with the Welland Rivers Trust (WRT) River Wardens scheme and Freshwater Watch, and found the nitrate levels to be well above what they should be. There are a number of WRT River Wardens in Ketton – if you would like to get involved too, have a look on http://www.wellandriverstrust.org.uk - it’s a wonderful organisation working hard within the Welland catchment to connect us to our local rivers and form partnerships to improve river quality.
Ketton Green Spaces Group hope to run a river dipping event in conjunction with WRT next year – look out for details nearer the time. Meanwhile, do get in touch via our website https://kettongreen.wixsite.com/kett , Twitter @GreenKetton or Facebook @kettongreenspaces if you would like to be involved with KGSG, or if you have observations or concerns about the Chater.
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