River Caul Bourne

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The Caul Bourne is a stream on the Isle of Wight, England.

Winkle Street (also known as Barrington Row) in Calbourne, with the Caul Bourne running in front of the houses.

Etymology

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The name Caul Bourne is first attested in a thirteenth-century copy of a charter from 826, where it appears as "Cawelburnan". The burn element is a common Old English word for "stream, river". The cawel element has traditionally been taken to be the Old English word that is the ancestor of Present-Day English "kale" (borrowed into Old English from Latin caulis, "stem, brassica"): perhaps the river was named for brassicas growing on its course. A more recent suggestion is that the cawel element is another Old English word, meaning "basket" (also borrowed into Old English, from Latin *cavellum, "basket"). In this case, the baskets were perhaps fish-traps, and the river was named for their use in it.[1]

Geography

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The stream is 3 miles (5 km) long from source to the start of the Newtown River Estuary just below Shalfleet.[2] Its source is in an ornamental lake, near Winkle Street in Calbourne, from which it runs to the north (like most other rivers on the Isle of Wight) through Newbridge and Shalfleet.[3][4] It is joined by several tributaries before flowing into The Solent via Newtown estuary, a Site of Special Scientific Interest.[5]

The river was subject to flooding in December 1993 when a longer than normal period of precipitation (over 8 hours of rainfall) led to four houses in Shalfleet suffering £36,000 of damage between them.[6]

References

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  1. ^ The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, Based on the Collections of the English Place-Name Society, ed. by Victor Watts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), s.v. River CALE. ISBN 9780521168557.
  2. ^ "Caul Bourne". environment.data.gov.uk. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  3. ^ Historic England. "Westover (Grade II) (1000931)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  4. ^ "Isle of Wight catchment Management Plan Consultation Report" (PDF). Environmentdata.org. National Rivers Authority. May 1995. p. 7. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  5. ^ "Newtown Harbour SSSI" (PDF). naturalengland.org.uk. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  6. ^ "Caul Bourne - Medina Valley Centre". medinavalleycentre.org.uk. Retrieved 23 February 2018.