New book marks a milestone in the history of Lynn river

The bi-centenary of a man-made stretch of the River Great Ouse at Lynn is celebrated in a book due to be published later this month.

It has the intriguing title Three Million Wheelbarrows and the author is Kathleen Saunders who had spent the last four to five years researching the history of the Eau Brink Cut.

The Cut is the two-and-a-half mile channel which diverted the original Great Ouse river from its original long semi-circular course directly to the sea at Lynn and was completed in 1821.

Kathleen moved to Clenchwarton 30 years ago with her husband Paul and their family and regularly crossed the Great Ouse on her way to and from Lynn and into Norfolk.

She became fascinated by the river and its changing moods seeing it switch from mild and peaceful one day to wild and angry the next. “To me, it developed a personality”, she said.

She began to investigate its background and found it had a rich history with tales of ground breaking engineering feats, human achievement and some conflicts and dissent thrown in along the way.

Her book explains how River Great Ouse frequently flooded vast areas of rich farmland on its course through East Anglia to the port of Lynn.

Fenland landowners planned to improve drainage by straightening the major bend in the river to hasten its flow. But it wasn't all plain sailing and there was bitter opposition from Lynn merchants who feared it would result in currents so violent that ships would be endangered and the harbour destroyed and their livelihoods put at risk.

Part of Kathy's book is narrated by the Ouse itself. It chronicles its resistance to man’s control while engineers offered radically conflicting solutions to the problem. Its evocative commentary frames a story of human frailty overwhelmed by concerns that subversive ideas drawn from the American and French Revolutions would take hold in the Norfolk countryside.

Measures to counteract social unrest in Britain following the Napoleonic Wars finally resolved the fate of the River Great Ouse and its Eau Brink Cut.

Even now, the river continues to offer a cautionary message about the perils of accelerating natural change and the consequences of man’s activities on the environment.

Although this is Kathy's first book, the former hospital pathology technician has written local history articles in the past. This story began in 1775.

She said: “There are a vast amount of sources of information and I dipped in and out of it for four to five years and finally it has been turned into a book.

And that intriguing title? “That would be giving too much away,” she said. “We should let the book explain.”

Three Million Wheelbarrows is being published by Mousehold Press, at Norwich, and will retail at £9.95.