The river that flows through the marsh is the most low lying part. The bed of the river might well be the bed of the old river before the canal was dug.
But it has no name.
The canal though does. The Kennet and Avon canal.
A Masterpiece of engineering created solely for commerce. The builders didn’t give the environmental impact a second thought. The genius of the construction has been lauded ever since but as it was built 300 years ago nobody knows what ecological damage was caused.
When you realise that the height of the water is much higher than the meadows and the river that flowed through it it’s obvious that the marshes have been robbed.
And along with all that water, which is now just used for a few jolly boaters, and doesn’t even serve the commercial purpose it was designed for, we’ve lost a marsh.
A tiny amount of water does get into the channel with no name.
In order to keep the ditch sweet a small pipe lets some water flow from the canal. It’s not much but it’s all we get. So we’ve got to hang on to it.
That’s what our main dam, Otterdam, does. It holds back water that comes through that little pipe.
The dam is kind of like the dam a beaver might make. Obviously we don’t have the skills the time or the teeth to fully emulate them but we have improvisational talents
We’ve been working on it quite a few times but the drought is getting so extreme we needed to up our game.
So a big posse of Marshians turned up with more buckets and spades.
We dug out some of the nearby clay, filled some buckets with it and emptied them onto the dam.
That made it wider and higher and broader and we plugged a couple of leaks that we discovered.
The end of the day as we wilted under the sun the water level began to rise.
So with a little bit of help we encouraged it to flow into the hole we’d dug the clay from.
And within a few minutes the pond was filling up.
Despite the hosepipe ban we’ve managed to keep the marsh wet, how wet remains to be seen, and we’ve also dug a little pond
Let’s hope the rains come soon. Either rains or beavers. Preferably both.
So that unnamed little ditch might flow and become known as Beaverbrook.
Rural Reading 