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The Forest of Arden covered the area where Coventry was to be built. For a very long time, the ground was so wet and boggy that people didn’t want to even travel through it, let alone live there. However, eventually some Saxons decided it would be a good place to start a nunnery. Saint Obsurga, was the lady who founded this in AD 700. The nuns needed all the basics to survive, which of course included a supply of water, so they settled on the banks of the Sherbourne. As the years went by, other people joined the nunnery and a small settlement grew up. This was the start of Coventry.
More people, meant more food was needed and crafts people to produce day to day items. Once again, the river was of vital importance, providing water for livestock and crops, and for the production of leather, woollen cloth, clay from the river bed for pottery and much more besides. As the population grew, watermills were built to make the most of the free power provided by the flowing river. Their waterwheels turned grinding stones to make flour and lifted giant hammers for “fulling” woollen cloth to make it softer and less likely to shrink. At the peak of the medieval period there were 13 watermills along the Sherbourne, despite it being only 9 miles long.
It is hard to understand just how important watermills were for hundreds of years from the medieval period, but they were absolutely central to daily life and to trade. They provided food for people and animals; grinding barley, peas, wheat, rye and rolling oats. Malt mills were also used in the production of beer. Beer was a staple of everyday life, with workers often being paid partly in beer. The production of woollen cloth, rolling sheet metal, or rods also used waterwheels, so manufacturing and trade was heavily dependant on waterpower.
However, the Sherbourne is a small watercourse, mostly flowing slowly through a relatively flat landscape. Its power is therefore fairly limited. In order to overcome this challenge, the people of Coventry embarked on various engineering projects, adding extra channels, and dams to control the water’s flow; holding it back and releasing it on command. The more watermills that were built, the more engineering had to happen, so that every mill had enough water power to turn their waterwheels. Despite the best efforts, the mills at the top of the river would always have the most control over the flow, so the other mills depended on them and had to wait for them to release their dams. Many arguments happened over who had the water.
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Coventry, like many medieval cities, gained huge wealth and power off the back of the wool trade. However, the people of Coventry went one step further, not only did they weave the cloth, but they also dyed it. This in itself wasn’t especially different, but the way in which Coventry dyed blue cloth and yarn was what set it apart. Blue dye came from a plant called woad, which was grown in England and which many people used, but Coventry dyers imported it from the South of France. It was said that the higher sunshine levels produced more intense pigments. They then used water from the Sherbourne to dilute the powered dye and submerge the cloth or yarn. Coventry Blue dye was said to be more colourfast (it wouldn’t wash out or fade) than other blue dyed cloth from other places, and so everyone wanted it. It was exported all over the world and made Coventry merchants very rich indeed. The Coventry football team are named after this trade; the Sky Blues!
By the 1500s pretty much every trade had its own guild. Craftsmen would pay to be a member and the guild would act in the best interests of the craft. They would ensure quality control, fair pricing and taxes, and even influence government on outside imports that might threaten local trade. The bigger guilds would also provide financial support for widows, if their husband had been a member and had died. Like all of society at this time, a connection to God, was considered critical for prosperity in this life, and access to heaven in the next. Therefore, the richer guilds also built or owned chapels. The Weavers Guild built the Chapel of St James and St Christopher on the banks of the Sherbourne in Spon End, in the late 1300s.
St George’s Chapel, on the river bank at Gosford Street, was bought by the Guild of Shearman in 1429 and at Charterhouse, St Anne’s Chapel was owned by the Trinity Guild, one of the most powerful guilds in Coventry, in 1485.
Religion, trade and power were all connected for centuries. By the mid-1400s Coventry was the fourth most important city in the country and even held parliament here twice. It was a site for pilgrims to travel to throughout the medieval period. The Chapel of St James and St Christopher being one of the last places pilgrims would stop at before entering the city. Pilgrim badges were discovered in the Sherbourne at Palmer Lane, dating from this time. These badges were like souvenirs and were usually made in large numbers, often with images of a saint.
Life centring around the river had a down side. Many of the trades that made the city rich, used the river as a place to not only gather water from, but also to wash waste into. The animal skins were washed of muck and hooves, tails and so on were trimmed off and thrown into the river, to prepare them for tanning. The concoction of chemicals that the skins cured in, was also rinsed off in the watercourse. Dyes were rinsed into the water, too. The prosperity of the city and the resulting population expansion meant there was more human and animal waste and domestic rubbish, most of which got thrown into the Sherbourne, too. The Leet Book in 1421 records regulations that try to improve the sanitation and protect the water supply, with strict rules banning people from sweeping rubbish into the Sherbourne, or be fined. People valued good sanitation and those failing to follow the rules were looked down on.
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Despite these attempts to keep the water course clean, the river got increasingly polluted. By the 1800s it was considered filthy and disgusting. This was the century when science was beginning to make the link between dirty water and waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhoid.
Spon End was poor and overcrowded, and the Sherbourne, which ran through the heart of it, regularly flooded the area with filthy water. A particularly big cholera outbreak there in 1838 was attributed to the river. Rivers are always meant to flood. The phrase “floodplain” is a demonstration of the fact that rivers break their banks often and spread out sideways. This natural process only started to become a problem, when people began to build structures on or very near the river. Suddenly, these buildings were at risk during floods and so too were the people living and working in them. Added to the poor choice of location, the way in which water was allowed to flow had also been changed to accommodate the watermills and later to drain fields for farming. A period of straightening the river, to remove all its bends, was popular for a few decades in the last 100 years. This was a flawed way of trying to tackle the flooding problem. “Let the water pass through faster” was the thinking, but all this does is create pinch points where the water hits an obstacle.
Blockages in the river have been removed for hundreds of years in Coventry, again following the idea that water needs to move away faster. The 1421 Leet Book, again describes rules for property owners on the river banks to remove obstacles quickly, or be fined. However, for millions of years, rivers had had fallen trees and other blockages, which all slow the water down and let the rivers behave naturally and far more gently than we see now people have interfered.
On New Year’s Eve 1900 into New Year’s Day 1901, the Sherbourne broke its banks and cause one of its biggest floods. Early photographs capture the height of the water and the extent of the damage.
As industry changed from water power to steam power and combustion engines, the Sherbourne was no longer needed to drive the city’s success and worse than that, it was the cause of death, disease and damage to property.
A newspaper article of 1847, suggested that it should be turned into “a nice wholesome sewer” and to change its purpose to solely transporting waste away from the residents.
Bit by bit, the Sherbourne was buried underground in the city centre, until all that’s left on view inside the ring road is a few meters, set in a deep concrete channel.
After falling out of favour, the city once again turned to the river to save it in times of need, during the Second World War. The devastation of the 1940 bombing meant a great deal of water was needed for fighting fires. The Sherbourne was there, but now a smaller trickle than in previous centuries. In 1942, a series of five new sluice gates, were installed at points along the river in the city centre. The idea was to be able to drop the gates and dam up water behind them, to provide quick water storage should it be needed again. In addition to the sluice gates, some sections of the river were also lined with concrete, creating giant water tanks. These structures replaced the earlier wooden planks that were dropped in or lifted out by hand, to try to dam the water, but which had proved difficult to use and unreliable.
Of the five sluice gates, only two now remain. One is off Humber Road and is largely intact, and the other is in the grounds of Charterhouse. This is slightly less complete, but you can still see the frame for winching the concrete gates up and down with. Charterhouse has public access and you can visit this piece of history any time you like. The gate off Humber Road is on private property, so unfortunately is not usually accessible for visiting.
Today, the river is starting to come to our rescue once again, this time for our health and happiness. The link between spending time in nature and our health is well known these days. The Sherbourne Valley Project is working hard to improve the river for wildlife, and for visiting, making it cleaner, brimming with wildlife and easier to enjoy. As a society, we have lost the connection to nature that we once took for granted and our health has gone downhill. With its route flowing through the heart of a city, the Sherbourne can be that life line for us once again and will return to being part of our everyday lives. If we take care of it, it will take care of us.
