But the story has one last twist. Having deprived the land of the flooding, the farmers realized that they were taking away one of the very things that had made it so productive in the first place – the nutrient-rich water that every winter washed over it. So around the seventeenth century, as the agricultural revolution took hold, landowners realized that drainage alone was not the answer and that managed flooding would dramatically increase the yield from the land, so the water meadows came into being.
By digging carriers, or leats, quite literally streams that carry water away from the main river, redirecting side streams, filling in others and creating a series of hatches to manage the flow of water, the farmers were able to use the winter and spring flows to flood the meadows from February to May. The term flooding is something of a misnomer; deep, static water over the grass would do little more than rot it away. The skill in floating, the creation of a water-meadow system, is to keep a thin layer of water constantly moving over the surface. The warmth of the water and the protection from frost, plus the nutrients carried in from the river, allow the grass to grow earlier and quicker. When ready for grazing the cattle would be let in, to be taken off when they had eaten it down and the land reflooded. If this all sounds a laborious process, it probably was. It was far beyond the daily regime of the farmers who banded together to employ a drowner, or waterman, who regulated the flows.
Today drowners are a long-distant memory, the advent of artificial fertilizers sounding the death-knell for the meadows from the early 1900s. When the watermills finally stopped grinding a few decades later, the raison d’être for this integrated water system would have all but disappeared except for the fact that somewhere along the line, in the period when the chalkstream valleys went from marshes to meadows, the brown trout had become the dominant species in the river. Never ones to miss an opportunity, anglers soon followed, first for food and then for sport, at which point the chalkstreams became a byword for angling perfection. The drowners and farmers were replaced by river keepers who lavished care on the rivers far beyond the basic needs of an agrarian England.
Fishing, angling, call it what you will, with an insect, worm, net, hook, spear or anything else that captures the fish, is as old as mankind. But as a pastime, done for the pleasure of the activity as much as for the outcome, it has to be credited to the Victorians. They did of course have their antecedents. Dame Juliana Berners, an English nun, wrote A Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle in 1496, which can be claimed as the first book about fishing as a sport, although she has been eclipsed in history by Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler, which followed 150 years later. But these great anglers and writers were exceptions; for most people trout were there for catching and eating with the minimum of effort. So why the Victorians? Well, it was a coming together of wealth, leisure time, technology, the railways and the insatiable curiosity of a few individuals.
Gavelwood today is a tiny proportion of what was once a huge country estate, running to thousands of acres and 11 miles of the River Evitt. In fact the entire river valley, encompassing all 30 miles of the Evitt from source to estuary, was in the ownership of just three families. Hardly very egalitarian, but those were the times, and for fishing, and the chalkstreams in particular, they proved decisive for the future. Once the fishing craze caught on amongst the landed gentry the rivers became much more than farmland irrigators and power sources for mills. River keepers were employed, banks maintained, fish reared for stocking, river weed cut, predators removed. The water meadows were kept in good shape not just for drowning but fishing as well. Suddenly the owners of the great estates began to value the rivers for the sport they could offer.
As the railways made the countryside more accessible, great houses hosted grand fishing parties. Gunsmiths turned their hands to fine reels, rods, lines, hooks and flies, using the latest techniques and materials. Weekly magazines like The Field and Country Life lionized innovators like Frederic M. Halford, a wealthy industrialist in his own right, who codified fly-fishing in a single book. Fly-fishing went from an obscure pastime to the ‘must do’ sport in a matter of decades. If you fished for salmon Scotland was the place to head for, but for brown trout dry fly-fishing the chalkstreams of southern England were the ultimate destination.
The mayfly period, or Duffers Fortnight, became as much a part of the English season as Ascot or Wimbledon. The future kings of England were elected president of the world’s most exclusive fly-fishing club. Fine tackle manufacturers received the Royal Warrant. Government ministers cut short cabinet meetings to catch the train in time for the evening rise. Eisenhower took time out from the D-Day preparations to fish the River Test. As the fly-fishing craze spread across Europe and the Americas, visitors from abroad took home stories of the fabled chalkstreams which took on deserved iconic status. But time, money and enthusiasm are not always limitless, and as I walked around Gavelwood on this late September day I could chart the progression from a chalkstream paradise to something that is today a shadow of its former self.
Nobody set out to make it so. It was simply another twist in the evolution of the rural landscape. In succession the water meadows, watermills and finally fly-fishing were no longer part of the daily life of Gavelwood as the ownership changed to commercial farming. No longer were the myriad carriers and streams of any use, so they were left to atrophy. The meadows were ploughed, fertilized and sprayed for crops. The river was left untended. Gradually as the diverse habitat disappeared so did the creatures that inhabited the river, banks and meadows.
But three or four decades of neglect did not put Gavelwood beyond redemption.
AS EVER, MY ancient leaking Land Rover provided little protection against the sideways rain of the late October day as I drove down the potholed track to the river. I had hoped for better weather. This was to be a landmark day in the restoration of Gavelwood: our first step towards the re-creation of something special, where the fruits of our dreams and expectations would, at least in part, be rewarded. After a month of back-breaking work North Stream was ready to be opened to fresh, gin-clear, chalkstream water from the Evitt for the first time in four generations.
North Stream is an ancient carrier that connects the main river – the Evitt – with another side stream we call Katherine’s Brook. I say ‘connects’ in the loosest possible sense, because barely a drop of water has flowed through it in living memory. Along its entire length – about half a mile – it should really be a fast-flowing little river that takes the excess flow from the main river into Katherine’s Brook, which in turn will rejoin the main river some 3 miles downstream. Instead the stream was a morass of fallen trees, roots, bushes, debris and mud.
I parked up close to the junction of the main river, where there is a set of hatches, built long ago, to control the flow of water into North Stream. Back in July, when we had first conceived the restoration plan, those hatches were almost invisible. On the river side a thick margin of reeds had choked what would have been the funnel-shaped entrance to the river. Today, the weeks of work had revealed three upright pillars of limestone, about the size of a tall man, set into the bank. They are slightly pockmarked in places, but generally washed smooth by centuries of water. The fronts of the pillars are V-shaped to deflect the current, and running down each inside edge is a groove into which are slotted oak boards – these regulate the amount of water that flows from the main river into North Stream. The oak is newly sawn, a lovely bright honey yellow that would, in a few months, turn to a silver grey. But for now their newness is proof that the hatches are repaired and ready to play their part in the rebirth of North Stream.
With everything Gavelwood has to offer – miles of main river, side streams and hundreds of acres of water meadows – North Stream might seem an unlikely candidate for the first step in the restoration. At first glance, if you noticed it at all, it looks marginal. It is not very wide – a reasonably agile person with a short run-up could leap it in most places – and is fairly straight, without any particular features that catch the eye. My suspicion is that given a few more years it would have disappeared entirely to become