page_title: River Rother, East Sussex
section_title: Early developments
hierarchical_section_title: River Rother, East Sussex / History / Early developments
caption_attribution_description: English: Development of the River Rother, East Sussex, England during the seventeenth century
context_page_description: The River Rother flows for 35 miles through the English counties of East Sussex and Kent. Its source is near Rotherfield in East Sussex, and its mouth is on Rye Bay, part of the English Channel. Prior to 1287, its mouth was further to the east at New Romney, but it changed its course after a great storm blocked its exit to the sea. It was known as the Limen until the sixteenth century. For the final 14 miles, the river bed is below the high tide level, and Scots Float sluice is used to control levels. It prevents salt water entering the river system at high tides, and retains water in the river during the summer months to ensure the health of the surrounding marsh habitat. Below the sluice, the river is tidal for 3.7 miles.
  The river has been used for navigation since Roman times, and is still navigable by small boats as far as Bodiam Castle. It flowed in a loop around the northern edge of the Isle of Oxney until 1635, when it was diverted along the southern edge.
context_section_description: The river is known to have been used for shipping in Roman times, when it was navigable to Bodiam and possibly further upstream. There are records of small boats reaching Etchingham during Saxon and Norman periods. Stone for building Bodiam Castle was transported along the river in the fourteenth century, and iron was shipped from Newenden or Udiam in the sixteenth century. A century later, an iron store was erected at Udiam. Maytham Wharf served Rolvenden, while Tenterden was served by Small Hythe.
  The Isle of Oxney is an area of higher land to the west of Appledore, which is isolated from high ground to its north and south. The valley around the northern edge of it was known as the Upper Levels, while that to the south was called the Wittersham Levels, and had its own Commission of Sewers. The Rother had been routed around the northern side of the Isle since the 1330s, when the Knelle Dam was built at the western end of the Wittersham Levels. The sea was prevented from entering the levels by the Wittersham Sea Wall, built across the eastern end of the valley. This enabled some of the levels to be used for agriculture all year round, although some was only suitable for summer grazing. A perennial problem with the river was that the tides deposited large quantities of silt in the channel, and during the summer months the flow of the river was insufficient to scour the silt away. As a result, some 3,000 acres (1,200 ha) of the Upper Levels were "drowned lands" by 1629, meaning that they were persistently flooded, and another 2,000 acres (810 ha) were only usable in the summer months.
  From the 1600s onwards, much effort and expense had been spent trying to drain the Upper Levels, including the construction of the Great Freshwater Sluice below Appledore. Its purpose was to limit the inflow of the tide, and to control the outflow of the river. The works were not particularly successful, and negotiations were started with the Commissioners of the Wittersham Levels to divert the river through those levels. After initial reluctance, an agreement was reached in February 1631. The western end of the levels, from Kent Wall to the Knelle Dam, was to be used as an "indraught", essentially a holding reservoir for river water and some sea water, which would be released in a controlled way to scour the main channel. An embanked channel called the New Salt Channel was constructed across the levels between Kent Wall and a new sluice in the Wittersham Sea Wall. The river was flowing to the south of the Isle by 4 May 1635, an on 4 October, the navigation was also routed along the new channel, reducing its length by 5 miles (8 km). The former channel to the north became known as the Reading Sewer.
  Disaster occurred on Lady Day 1644, when an exceptionally high tide flooded the Upper Levels, and broke through the walls of the New Salt Channel. The Commissioners authorised the construction of a new sea sluice at Kent Wall, and work began in May 1646, but in September, they decided that it should be built at Blackwall instead. The height of Knelle Dam was regularly adjusted, in an attempt to manage the amount of water that still flowed along the Appledore Channel, and the conflicting needs of navigation and drainage. The Great Freshwater Sluice below Appledore deteriorated, and failed in 1650. A new sluice with three channels was built in 1669. The financial burden on the Upper Levels as a result of the sea entering the Wittersham Levels was huge, as they had to pay rent on all land that was not available to its original owners, and so in 1671, an agreement was reached that the sea would be excluded from the levels. Work began in 1680 to enclose areas of land on both sides of the valley, and was largely completed by 1684. The work included a new embanked channel for the Rother, which was built along the southern edge of the valley. It was called the Craven Channel, and ended at Craven Sluices.
  When repairs to Craven Sluices were necessary in 1684, the water was temporarily diverted into Scots Float Channel. This worked well, and a regulating pe
caption: Developments of the Rother during the seventeenth century, showing the new route to the south of the Isle of Oxney
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