page_title: River Ouse, Sussex
section_title: Inundation and drainage
hierarchical_section_title: River Ouse, Sussex / Inundation and drainage
caption_attribution_description: English: Cliffe Cut, River Ouse Taken from the cliff on Chapel Hill near the golf club and looking down onto the town. The stretch of river in the foreground is Cliffe Cut undertaken when the Ouse was canalised in the late 1790s. The original course of the river meandered to the east by the boathouse next to Hilman Close, the circular set of flats. Beyond the river can be seen the Heart Of Reeds which can be found 291632 along with an opposite view. It was also at this point that Britain's worst ever avalanche occurred on Christmas Eve 1836 when a 15 foot snowdrift perched on this cliff top collapsed onto houses below killing 8 people. The current Snowdrop Inn below is named after this event. Other views which can be taken in include the castle to the right and the downs at Kingston ridge on the left hand side.
context_page_description: The Ouse is a river in the English counties of West and East Sussex. It rises near Lower Beeding in West Sussex, and flows eastwards and then southwards to reach the sea at Newhaven. It skirts Haywards Heath and passes through Lewes. It forms the main spine of an extensive network of smaller streams, of which the River Uck is the main tributary. As it nears the coast it passes through the Lewes and Laughton Levels, an area of flat, low-lying land that borders the river and another tributary, the Glynde Reach. It was a large tidal inlet at the time of the Domesday book in 1086, but over the following centuries, some attempts were made to reclaim some of the valley floor for agriculture, by building embankments, but the drainage was hampered by the buildup of a large shingle bar which formed across the mouth of the river by longshore drift.
  In 1539, a new channel for the entrance to the river was cut through the shingle bar, and meadows flourished for a time, but flooding returned and meadows reverted to marshland. The engineer John Smeaton proposed a solution for the drainage of the valley in 1767, but it was only partly implemented.
context_section_description: When the Domesday book was produced in 1086, the Ouse valley was probably a tidal inlet with a string of settlements located at its margins. In later centuries the river was draining the valley sufficiently well for some of the marshland to be reclaimed, by building embankments to create highly prized meadow land. However, by the 14th century the Ouse valley was regularly flooding in winter, and frequently the waters remained on the lower meadows through the summer. In 1422 a Commission of Sewers was appointed to restore the banks and drainage between the coast and Fletching, around 20 miles (32 km) inland, which may indicate that the Ouse was affected by the same storm that devastated the Netherlands in the St Elizabeth's flood of 1421. Drainage became so bad that 400 acres (1.6 km²) of the Archbishop of Canterbury's meadow at Southerham were converted into a permanent fishery (the Brodewater) in the mid-15th century, and by the 1530s the entire Lewes and Laughton Levels comprising over 6,000 acres (24 km²), were reduced to marshland again.
  Part of the problem of flooding was caused by longshore drift creating a huge shingle bar across the river mouth, which had gradually moved eastwards to Seaford, some 2 miles (3.2 km) from its position in Roman times. The bar prevented the river from draining effectively, and made it difficult for ships to enter the estuary. Prior Crowham of Lewes Priory sailed to Flanders and returned with two drainage experts. In 1537 a water-rate was levied on all lands on the Levels to fund the cutting of a channel through the shingle bar at the mouth of the Ouse, below Castle Hill at Meeching, to allow the river to drain the Levels. This canalisation created access to a sheltered harbour, Newhaven, which succeeded Seaford as the port at the mouth of the Ouse.
  The new channel was completed by 1539 and drained the Levels so that much of the valley floor could be reclaimed for pasture. However, shingle continued to accumulate and so the mouth of the Ouse began to migrate eastwards again. In 1648 the Ouse was reported to be unfit either to drain the levels or for navigation. At some time between 1676 and the publication of an Admiralty chart in 1698, the river flowed along the back of the shingle bar and broke through into the sea about 0.5 miles (0.8 km) further to the east, at the site of a tide mill. The outlet at Newhaven had been reinstated by 1731, when the Newhaven Harour Commissioners were established by Act of Parliament. The engineer John Reynolds carried out some work for them on the piers at the entrance to the river, and constructed a sluice across it at Piddinghoe between 1731 and 1733, working for the Drainage Commissioners, but that was short lived, as it was damaged in 1736 and taken down rather than repaired. By the 18th century the valley was regularly inundated in winter and often flooded in summer.
caption: This straightened tidal stretch of the River Ouse just south of Lewes is called Cliffe Cut. It was made when the Ouse was canalised in the late 1790s. The original course of the river meandered in the foreground.
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