RIVER LEA

Lea Valley reservoirs near Walthamstow, North London.

The Lea is a tributary of the River Thames. The Lea flows southward from its countryside source on the dip slope of the Chiltern Hills to its industrial mouth where it joins the Thames near Wapping and London Docklands and opposite Greenwich in East London.

The Lea is the largest tributary to join the north bank of the Thames. Much of its lower course has been considerably modified to form the Lea Navigation, a canal system designed to allow it to take large barges.

The Lea has been a lifeline for north east London in many ways. It was one of the first rivers to be canalised and this attracted to its banks a wide range of industries. The banks of the Lea from Tottenham to Enfield became one of the largest centers of the furniture industry in Britain. This industry depends heavily on timber and the Lea provided the cheapest way to get imported timber from London Docks. Closer to the Thames, chemical industries gathered by the river banks in part to make use of the river water for processing, and in part to use the river for transporting raw materials and finished products. This was the industry that was once notorious for its pollution of the Lea.

By contrast, the Lea is also a vital source of drinking water for London. A series of great reservoirs fill the Lea floodplain up-river from Clapton, reaching north of Enfield. More water is stored here than in any other London reservoir system.

Further up-river still there are areas of open water, now used for recreation space, but created when gravel was extracted from the floodplain for the building of London.

The whole valley is now far less industrialised than it has been for two centuries and a long swathe up river from the once flood-prone Hackney Marshes has been reclaimed and rehabilitated as part of the Lea Valley Regional Park.

Although many people think of the Lea as a London river, its source is far to the north in gently rolling land laid down at the end of the Ice Age. Its headwaters reach north up to Harlow and Bishops Stortford and west to Hertford, and close to Stevenage and Luton. In this way the river system passes close to no fewer than three of the New Towns built to house people from the overpopulated East End of London.

School projects within the Lea Basin

This picture is from Honilands Primary School, Enfield. Click the picture to be taken to their site which gives an excellent demonstration on how to provide detailed and accessible information on a small stream (the Turkey Brook).