THE "SILTING UP" OF THE RIVER RODING. 95
across the stream, their branches and roots matted with the hay occasionally
brought down with the flood water, and forming almost impassable dams. Added
to these impediments, another exists in the bushes, which along a large proportion
of both banks, overhang the water densely, and trail their branches into the
swollen current.
" Given the power to do the work, all this could be readily remedied, and a
good foreman with a gang often men under him would, I believe, in four months
restore this section of the river (including the auxiliary stream, just above Ilford
Bridge, and the looped stream opposite the south-eastern point of Wanstead
Park) to its original condition.
" Reverting to the 'Old Mill' on the Chigwell Road, and the narrow channel
existing there. There exist now the depressions of a relieving stream or 'bye
pass' which when the mill was in existence, no doubt aided to convey the water
over a weir from above the mill into the river below it ; this stream was divided,
one branch entering the river at once, behind the mill ; the other, passing the
water through a culvert bridge five feet wide, entered the main stream, lower down.
For all practical purposes this 'bye pass' is now almost useless ; but I strongly
recommend its restoration, as a more economical way of recouping the passage
area now lost to the river, than by widening the channel itself. It is certain that
unless this is done, the greater part of the benefit derived from clearing the river
below it would be lost. But I must point out that assuming this to be accomplished,
the water would be carried down to Ilford with great rapidity and probably the
relief of the upper district, would prove an injury to the lower.
I wish to direct attention to what was anciently designed to meet this very
difficulty, and how in the course of time those wise precautions have been suffered
to decay and become useless.
" The principal bridge at Ilford over the main stream is one of three arches
having a collective capacity of about forty-seven feet in width, but west of this
bridge, at a distance of 100 yards, exists an ancient bridge of two arches,
having an additional collective width of about twenty-five feet. Under these
arches formerly flowed the water delivered in front of it by an auxiliary to the
Roding flowing west of the main stream ; this, after passing the bridge, then flowed
through a wide duct which continued the stream to the broad river, about a quar-
ter of a mile below Ilford Bridge. The western bank of this stream still exists,
but the bed is all silted up, till at the present time the duct has become a mere
ditch, not more than a yard wide in places, and all but utterly useless as a relief.
The effect of this is that the flow of this stream is practically blocked at the
bridge ; it has to recoil and run along the foot of the bridge causeway on the
north side of the road, till it enters the main stream at Ilford Bridge, with the
result of adding a heavy volume to its water, the collective power of which in the
flood of August, 1888, tore up the timbered floor of the main bridge, gored out the
chalk below, and together with the damage it did in its passage along the cause-
way, compelled an outlay in restoration amounting to £196 16s. 6d.1
" But this is not all. The river now navigable from Ilford Bridge, continu-
ing its course to the Thames, is crossed first by the ample bridge of the London
Tilbury, and Southend Railway and then by the River Roding Bridge on the
Barking Road, which is 27ft. 6in. wide, supplemented by two others east and west
of it 11ft. 6in. and 17ft. 6in. respectively ; in all a possible collective available
width of about 56 feet. It then proceeds to the 'Old Abbey Mill' under which it
1 See Mr. D. Radford Sharpe's paper on "The Great Flood in Essex of August 1st and 2nd
1888,"in the Essex Naturalist, ii., pp. 199—205.—Ed.