Talk:River Great Ouse

Name

The River Great Ouse is a river in the east of England.

Does anyone actually call it the "River Great Ouse"? I would have thought the British convention "River X" does not apply where the name is already qualified: "River Nile" yes, "River Blue Nile" no. Perhaps as the title of the article title it's ok for clarity, but the intro should mention the form(s) people actually use. I would propose

The Great Ouse is a river in the east of England.

And is it pronounced "ooze"? Joestynes 09:33, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think I can help here, I live just 400 m from the river in Eaton Ford, Cambridgeshire and I can assure everyone that the river 'is' properly called 'The River Great Ouse', it's often abbreviated locally to just 'Ouse', and is sometimes referred to as the 'Great Ouse'. It is pronounced 'ooze', and in fact 'Ouse' and 'ooze' are cognate words, coming from either Saxon or Brythonic (I forget which) and referring to something wet and flowing or to the act of flowing. Basically, it's the River Great 'River'!

There's also a tributary called the 'River Little Ouse', and there are several other rivers also called Ouse, notably one in Yorkshire.

At the time of writing there are 214 000 [Google hits] for 'River Great Ouse', and a look at some of those websites should make it pretty clear that the full name really is used very widely. I agree that it's unusual, perhaps even strange, but that is what people call it. I hope that helps! Chris Jefferies 23:46, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Very little of it is in East Anglia. RJP 23 Apr 2005

As far as the name goes, I may be remembering wrong (I was quite young when I lived near the river) but ISTR that it was usually called The Great River Ouse, and its tributary was The Little River Ouse. Grutness...wha? 12:25, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Size

Is there a definition of 'largest' for rivers? The post said it was the 'largest' Ouse - it seems pretty clear it's the longest, but the outflow of the Yorkshire Ouse is much more (51m3/s v's 16m3/s) and the catchment area of the Yorkshire Ouse is bigger too - 10,000 km2 v's 8,000 km2. I've just taken out the word 'largest' for now, but if there's a technical definition and it is larger, we should put it back. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atreic (talk • contribs) 19:22, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Northants

I was surprised to find no mention of the Northamptonshire part of the river in the template, and no mention of Brackley in the text (the first town that the G.O. passes through). I've added it to both - by the way, shouldn't the list of tributaries in the text and template at least look vaguely similar? There's not a huge overlap betwen the two... Grutness...wha? 01:21, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

The point about the tributaries is a good one; the list and the template have separate origins. The template claims to show 'major tributaries' so should certainly not include Hen Brook and Duloe Brook as these are very, very minor.

I've fiddled with both the list and the template to bring them in line. I've also removed the smaller tributaries from the template. Can others check again please, some of these tributaries may be out of sequence. Also, do we have any consensus on what we mean by a 'major' tributary in the template? Chris Jefferies 17:08, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

The list of rivers, Rivers of the United Kingdom lists the tributaries from the sea up. At first sight, this seems a rather back-to-front approach but it has a logic to it. You start from the sea and go to the higher order streams (those with tributaries with tributaries etc.) first, then the lower. It would not be possible to work the other way round.

As to which size of tributary is too small to be noted, the logical approach would be to judge by flow rates or the like but that is not practical so I suggest that the tributary in question should be named by the Ordnance Survey 1:50 000 map and/or the stream in question should be shown extending from a minimum number of kilometre grid squares. For example, the Alconbury Brook near Huntingdon is shown in 30 Km squares and may be deemed to qualify while the South Brook, a little upstream, barely counts 20 and perhaps, does not qualify. There are bound to be cases like the South Brook where several squares are only just entered but you have to judge somehow.

Working upstream, The tributaries are: Babingley River (22 Km squares), Middle Level Main Drain, Nar, Well Creek/Popham's Eau, The Cut-off Channel, Wissey, Little Ouse, Lark, Cam, Alconbury Brook, Kym (23 Km squares), Ivel, [here my OS 1:50 000 coverage ends] Tove,

The Old and New Bedford Rivers are not really tributaries. They link one part of the Great Ouse to another. They are in reality, part of the Great Ouse after the manner of the modern relief channel to the east of the lower Great Ouse. The Cut-Off Channel on the other hand is a modern catchwater drain. It is linked to the Great Ouse only at the Cut-off Channel's downstream end. (RJP 20:31, 25 July 2005 (UTC))

Flood warnings?

An anon editor has added some text on a current flood warning. It seems to me that this should be deleted. A record of major historical floods might be a different matter. --Concrete Cowboy 16:48, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I have deleted as this is transient information and Wikipedia is not a news service. --Concrete Cowboy 17:06, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Minor tributaries

To avoid Wp:trivia, it seems to me that tributaries that are too small to have their own article should not be listed. I believe that this was agreed earlier. So I shall delete. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:35, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Information consistency

The header box read: Length 150 miles (240 km) Source elevation 115 m (380 feet)

I've swapped it so it reads Length 240 km (150 miles) Source elevation 115 m (380 feet)

I think we should be consistent, either "imperial measurement (metric measurement)" or the other way round in both.

--mgaved (talk) 17:28, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone have a source for the length? Hunter-Blair (The River Great Ouse and tributaries) quotes 260km, the EA (here) quote 240km of navigable waterway on the Great Ouse system (ie including tributaries). Most of the web sources seem to have copied one another, judging by the surrounding text. Bob1960evens (talk) 14:03, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Sandalls Cut

Looking at the deposited plan for the railway that runs adjacent north of Ely (Lynn and Ely Railway Act 1845), I note that the river at this location is labelled Sandalls Cut, in the ownership of the South Level Drainage and Navigation Commissioners. This is up to the junction with the river Lark. However, this name does not appear in the wiki and there is only one reference on the wider internet. Does anyone have any more information, such as when Sandalls Cut was built? Pubwebmaster (talk) 10:32, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Two different lengths given

That given in the lede and that in the infobox differ due to conversions - and I can't remember how to fix the problem! Geopersona (talk) 20:02, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

{{convert}} assumes that trailing zeroes indicate precision, so 230; 2,300; 23,000; 230,000; 2,300,000 etc means "give the conversion correct to two significant figures". See debate at template talk:convert. Problem is fixed by adding a decimal point. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:27, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Ahh, yes! thanks Geopersona (talk) 20:58, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

And re the IP's changes to the length, I'd quibble with other lengths derived from that source (and indeed from various others!) but until we can find a better more accurate one it's all we've got to go on, given WP's (understandable if sometimes frustrating) longstanding policy re preferring reference-ability over accuracy. cheers Geopersona (talk) 10:21, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

I have invited the IP editor to contribute a better source. How else can we know what is 'accurate'? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:25, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Well indeed, but as I've been finding elsewhere, better sources are thin on the ground. It's a shame that a trusted body like OS (or the Environment Agency or its equivalents in other of the UK's four nations) isn't able to provide that sort of detail as a public service. There are sporadic references to river lengths in SSSI citations and the like, not least in those cases where the entire watercourse is protected in that fashion - they can be expected, though not guaranteed, to have a certain level of accuracy. Geopersona (talk) 14:22, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

I have taken quite some time to survey the river's entire length using the measuring tool available at the wheresthepath website and it gives a distance from the source to the point at which it enters the Wash at high tide of some 270km or 168 miles. I am fairly confident of the accuracy of that figure to within 1km but . . . it depends on channel choices at various points (besides islands, it boasts a few anabranches) and, more particularly in this context, it is very obviously original research (OR) on my part so entirely ineligible for inclusion in the Wikipedia article. What it does provide (at least for me, not necessarily for others of course as they can't be assured of my competence or care in this - and that's where the WP policy comes in) is a guide as to how accurate any referenced figure for the length that may be happened upon, actually is. See also discussion at Talk:River_Wye#Length_of_river. Anyway, that remains the challenge, to find that reference for the Great Ouse. Oh, and we could also do with finding a reference/s for where the river is deemed to start and where it is deemed to end - I've yet to see ones that suitably pin either end down. Geopersona (talk) 21:02, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm sure you already know that your WP:OR can't be used. I suppose you might persuade the Environment Agency to publish something but frankly I would be astonished if they did. As for the source and without spending ages on it, the first place on the map that I can see the name used is south of Syresham, [here] (1952 6" map). But it all comes out in the Wash. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:11, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes John - as I very clearly stated, OR is ineligible for inclusion - we both know that! Nor had I imagined that EA would be overly interested in taking up that challenge; they've other things to do with their depleted workforce. But what we do have is an unsatisfactory situation here in WP - and hence in an awful lot of mirror sites and other web locations which derive their figures from WP without further thought. A quick trawl of over 60 of the main rivers featured in WP articles in England and Wales reveals that more than 50% of the given lengths are entirely unreferenced so we haven't even any established figure to go on and one or two more or less admit to being OR. I shall seek to remedy those more blatant ones first. Geopersona (talk) 20:53, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Drainage Acts

Mauls tagged {{cn}} and {{which?}} some asserted Acts of the early 1600s. The article Bedford Level Corporation gives 1660, 1661 and 1663 as the dates of the relevant Acts. So looking very dubious. Anyone got any reason to believe the claims to have merit? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 22:20, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

More fundamentally, Parliament didn't even sit, at all, in the year 1600! I might have thought it was a mistaken reference to 1660, but it is chronologically followed in the text by events in 1618. Mauls (talk) 17:10, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

So maybe Boyes & Russell (1977) has the required info? I'll ask at WP:UK Geo. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:40, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

There's this 1940 book by H. C. Darby [1] which has references on pages 22 and 29 to a 1600 Act (43 Eliz cap. 11), but I take Mauls' point that Parliament didn't sit in 1600, so not adding it just yet in case there's something we're missing. Stortford (talk) 20:33, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Ah - looks like the year has been misquoted (easily done if they only had the regnal year to work from - the 43rd year of the reign of Elizabeth did start in 1600, albeit the parliament in that year of her reign sat in the calendar year 1601). Appears from its long title to be same thing as the "Land Drainage Act 1601" mentioned here. Stortford (talk) 20:47, 8 October 2024 (UTC)