On the Itchen Navigation, the canalised section of the river Itchen that enabled barges to move between Southampton and Winchester, there is a rather fine pool of clear, rushing water, where the flow of the river is squeezed through a race that, presumably, originally fed a lock of some kind, although it's hard to imagine how a barge of any useful size ever got through it. Seasonally, it goes from being a deserted pool of frigid water, as above (November this year), to a densely populated pool of slightly less frigid water when, in the summer, it becomes a favourite spot for local teens to congregate, light barbecues, and generally thrash about in the water.
One of our regular perambulations takes us past this pool, or rather across it, as there are narrow bridges at both ends that used to operate as sluice gates. It's an oddly compelling spot, one of those locations that seems to focus the landscape around it, like Wallace Stevens's famous jar in Tennessee. Naturally, I photograph it most times I pass by: something worthwhile always seems to be going on there, even if it's only the light broken and scattered on the surging water. Several of the better shots from my England and Nowhere book were taken here in summer 2015, not least these two:
The outlier
The headless man
But sometimes the best way to conjure the spirit of place is via a ring. So here's that pool on the Itchen Navigation...
... and here's a meadow beside the Axe. I think I can feel another little project announcing itself...
2 comments:
What does the word "barge" mean to you?
To Americans it means, essentially, a large floating box. In Great Britain, at least historically, it means something rather more general. In particular, the Thames Barge is nothing whatever like an American Barge, being instead a rather large sailboat with a number of particular features that made it: easy to handle, suitable for shallow waters, and capable of carrying a fair bit of cargo. In particular they're quite narrow as these things go.
The primary meaning is the same, according to the OED:
A long flat-bottomed boat for carrying freight on canals and rivers, either under its own power or towed by another.
But there are secondary meanings, also from OED:
A long ornamental boat used for pleasure or ceremony.
A boat used by the chief officers of a warship.
Mind you, the typical semi-ornamental "narrow boat" that is found on our Industrial Revolution era canals is a very different proposition to the sort of "floating box" seen on a river like the Rhine, and no doubt even more so in the US.
Mike
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