River Cherwell Research Articles

Technical visit: Banbury flood alleviation scheme

The British Dam Society was invited to undertake a site visit to the Banbury flood alleviation scheme, organised by committee member and project site supervisor, John Hopkins of Black & Veatch, the scheme’s designers. The visit to the site, located just upstream of the town of Banbury on the River Cherwell, took place on 7 September 2011 with 17 visiting members hosted by the project site team.

C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces and the Transformation of Love

C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces and the Transformation of Love Nancy Enright (bio) Psyche to Orual: You are indeed teaching me about kinds of love I did not know. It is like looking into a deep pit. I am not sure whether I like your kind of love better than hatred. Oh, Orual—to take my love for you . . . and then to make of it a tool, a weapon, a thing of policy and mastery, an instrument of torture—I begin to think I never knew you. Whatever comes after, something that was between us dies here. 1 In Oxford on the parklike grounds of Magdalen College, where C. S. Lewis was a tutor in English literature for many years, there is a tree-lined path called Addison's Walk, alongside a small stream that runs eventually into the River Cherwell by Oxford's botanical gardens. This walkway is well known among those interested in Lewis and the other Inklings—the group of Oxford-based Christian writers who met regularly to discuss their works and read them aloud to each other—for Addison's Walk was the setting for an important conversation Lewis had with J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson. At that time an agnostic, Lewis was deeply interested in Tolkien's argument that, while Christianity's central story bears a resemblance to various myths of a dying and rising god, it is unique [End Page 92] in being "the true myth," the one instance where the story for which humanity has a deep longing to be true actually entered into historical reality. It is natural, Tolkien argued, that other myths reflect this story, for they spring out of the innate human longing for it. After this conversation, Lewis, always a lover of myth, wrote to a friend: "I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ—in Christianity. My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it." 2 As a Christian, Lewis wrote works of theology, literary criticism, and fiction, the latter almost always connected with myth in one form or another, whether written for children, such as the Narnia series, or for adults, such as his space trilogy and Till We Have Faces. This last work, written in the mid-1950s, has been acknowledged by Lewis as "his best" (though at other times he said Perelandra, the second book of the space trilogy was his best), and he dedicated it to his wife, Joy Davidman (Gresham). 3 In Till We Have Faces, more than in any other work of fiction, Lewis delved into the world of classical myth, retelling the very well-known story of Cupid and Psyche. Revealing what he recognized as the story's intrinsic Christian message, Lewis tells the story from the point of view of neither of the two main characters but from that of one of the original myth's villains, Orual, the sister of Psyche. This change allows Lewis to explore not only romantic love (eros) existing between Psyche and her god-lover Cupid, but also affection (storge) and friendship (philia). Lewis's telling of the myth both celebrates and critiques all human loves, particularly the love of Orual for Psyche (a love combining both storge and philia), showing that any love, like all that is human, must be redeemed and transformed in order to be saved. In fact, Lewis's version of the myth of Cupid and Psyche is an embodiment of the lessons conveyed in his famous theological work, The Four Loves, 4 showing in the love of the two sisters, even more so than that between the two lovers, both the beauty and dangers of human love and, despite the dangers, the enormous power of God's love to transform it. [End Page 93] According to both Lewis and Tolkien, myth is a most appropriate vehicle for conveying such a message, for it reflects the human desire for truth and for the divine. In his poem "Mythopoeia" Tolkien describes how myth is a vehicle for divine truth: "The heart of man is not compound of lies, / but draws some wisdom from the...

C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces and the Transformation of Love

C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces and the Transformation of Love Nancy Enright (bio) Psyche to Orual: You are indeed teaching me about kinds of love I did not know. It is like looking into a deep pit. I am not sure whether I like your kind of love better than hatred. Oh, Orual—to take my love for you . . . and then to make of it a tool, a weapon, a thing of policy and mastery, an instrument of torture—I begin to think I never knew you. Whatever comes after, something that was between us dies here. 1 In Oxford on the parklike grounds of Magdalen College, where C. S. Lewis was a tutor in English literature for many years, there is a tree-lined path called Addison's Walk, alongside a small stream that runs eventually into the River Cherwell by Oxford's botanical gardens. This walkway is well known among those interested in Lewis and the other Inklings—the group of Oxford-based Christian writers who met regularly to discuss their works and read them aloud to each other—for Addison's Walk was the setting for an important conversation Lewis had with J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson. At that time an agnostic, Lewis was deeply interested in Tolkien's argument that, while Christianity's central story bears a resemblance to various myths of a dying and rising god, it is unique [End Page 92] in being "the true myth," the one instance where the story for which humanity has a deep longing to be true actually entered into historical reality. It is natural, Tolkien argued, that other myths reflect this story, for they spring out of the innate human longing for it. After this conversation, Lewis, always a lover of myth, wrote to a friend: "I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ—in Christianity. My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it." 2 As a Christian, Lewis wrote works of theology, literary criticism, and fiction, the latter almost always connected with myth in one form or another, whether written for children, such as the Narnia series, or for adults, such as his space trilogy and Till We Have Faces. This last work, written in the mid-1950s, has been acknowledged by Lewis as "his best" (though at other times he said Perelandra, the second book of the space trilogy was his best), and he dedicated it to his wife, Joy Davidman (Gresham). 3 In Till We Have Faces, more than in any other work of fiction, Lewis delved into the world of classical myth, retelling the very well-known story of Cupid and Psyche. Revealing what he recognized as the story's intrinsic Christian message, Lewis tells the story from the point of view of neither of the two main characters but from that of one of the original myth's villains, Orual, the sister of Psyche. This change allows Lewis to explore not only romantic love (eros) existing between Psyche and her god-lover Cupid, but also affection (storge) and friendship (philia). Lewis's telling of the myth both celebrates and critiques all human loves, particularly the love of Orual for Psyche (a love combining both storge and philia), showing that any love, like all that is human, must be redeemed and transformed in order to be saved. In fact, Lewis's version of the myth of Cupid and Psyche is an embodiment of the lessons conveyed in his famous theological work, The Four Loves, 4 showing in the love of the two sisters, even more so than that between the two lovers, both the beauty and dangers of human love and, despite the dangers, the enormous power of God's love to transform it. [End Page 93] According to both Lewis and Tolkien, myth is a most appropriate vehicle for conveying such a message, for it reflects the human desire for truth and for the divine. In his poem "Mythopoeia" Tolkien describes how myth is a vehicle for divine truth: "The heart of man is not compound of lies, / but draws some wisdom from the...

River water quality of the River Cherwell: An agricultural clay-dominated catchment in the upper Thames Basin, southeastern England

The water quality of the River Cherwell and a tributary of it, the Ray, are described in terms of point and diffuse sources of pollution, for this rural area of the upper Thames Basin. Point sources of pollution dominate at the critical ecological low flow periods of high biological activity. Although the surface geology is predominantly clay, base flow is partly supplied from springs in underlying carbonate-bearing strata, which influences the water quality particularly with regards to calcium and alkalinity. The hydrogeochemistry of the river is outlined and the overall importance of urban point sources even in what would normally be considered to be rural catchments is stressed in relation to the European Unions Water Framework Directive. Issues of phosphorus stripping at sewage treatment works are also considered: such stripping on the Cherwell has reduced phosphorus concentrations by about a factor of two, but this is insufficient for the needs of the Water Framework Directive.

Hydrological impacts of floodplain restoration: a case study of the River Cherwell, UK

Abstract. This paper investigates the impacts on floods of hypothetical changes to river channel geometry by construction or removal of embankments to prevent water spreading onto the floodplain at high flows. A numerical model is applied to the River Cherwell between Oxford and Banbury to simulate changes to flood hydrographs. Embanking the river increases the peak flows downstream by 50-150%. Restoring the river channel through the floodplain to pre-engineered dimensions reduces peak flow by around 10-15% and increases peak water levels within the floodplain by 0.5-1.6 m. These results suggest that floodplain rehabilitation, in terms of embankment removal or returning the channel to pre-engineered dimensions, can be a valuable part of the flood management strategy of a catchment. Both measures lead to increased inundation of the floodplain, which can be positive for ecological restoration. Keywords: floodplains, hydrological impacts, rehabilitation, flood frequency

Seasonal export of phosphorus from a lowland catchment: upper River Cherwell in Oxfordshire, England

The export of phosphorus from a lowland catchment, the River Cherwell in southern England, was measured over a period of 1 year. The results describe total phosphorus concentrations in the water and river discharge at 4-day intervals. These were used to estimate the load of total phosphorus exported from the catchment. These annual loads were compared with exports estimated from sewage inputs and diffuse inputs calculated from land-coverage data, with assigned phosphorus export coefficients for particular land uses. The method was further developed to examine seasonal changes in phosphorus exports by predicting monthly losses using annual export coefficients normalised with respect to the relative hydraulic runoff for a particular month. The results show a strong seasonal dependence of total exports, with retention of phosphorus in the river system in the spring to early autumn and release of stored material during the winter. This pattern remained true, even with 50% increase in the main land-cover export and a similar increase in treated sewage exports.

Estimation of seasonal flood risk using a two‐stage transformation

Hydrological time series are often asymmetric in time, insomuch as rises are more rapid than recessions, as well as having highly skewed marginal distributions. A two‐stage transformation is proposed for deseasonalized series. Rises are stretched, and recessions are squashed until the series is symmetric over time. An autoregressive moving average (ARMA) model is then fitted to the natural logarithms of this new series. The residuals from the ARMA model are represented by a double mixture of Weibull and exponential distributions. The method is demonstrated with 24 years of daily flows from the River Cherwell in the south of England, and a 40‐year record from the upper reaches of the Thames. Seasonal estimates of flood risk are given, and these can be conditioned on catchment wetness at the time of prediction.

The origin of Ot Moor, Oxfordshire, England

Ot Moor, a sub-basin of the River Ray catchment, developed during the late Wolstonian to Devensian period. Previously, water drained at various times through four gaps, three westward into the River Cherwell and the fourth southwards into the River Thame. Up to the late Devensian, the area was drained by at least two major streams which deposited lithologically distinct sediments, thus enabling their former courses to be defined. The southerly gaps were abandoned before the deposition of the First Terrace deposits. During the late Devensian, Ot Moor was drained by the Eastern Ray which flowed out of the basin through the Oddington Gap-Islip ‘Gorge’ features. The Eastern ray subsequently captured the Northern Ray diverting it into Ot Moor and abandoning the Hampton Poyle Gap. The Ray catchment has a rapid run-off and is subject to frequent flooding. As the base level of erosion was lowered, three gaps were abandoned leaving only the Islip ‘Gorge’-Oddington Gap outlet. Further downcutting revealed resistant Cornbrash thereby restricting the escape of flood waters. The consequent back-ponding led to the deposition of a wide tract of alluvium, which encompasses Ot Moor and extends up the tributary streams, locally enclosing outcrops of older drift deposits and Jurassic strata.

May I Read You a Few Lines from Pepys' Diary?

MAY I READ YOU A FEW LINES FROM PEPYS' DIARY? / Tom Andrews for Guy Davenport and Charles Wright The green is everywhere, over Hinksey Hill and Cumnor, through the path-lining trees of Addison's Walk, past stray deer and coughing cows, the full fern and sprawling leaves, and Greyhound Meadow on the River Cherwell, over which looms Magdalen Tower of Magdalen College, Oxford. A green greener than any particular. Here, in gray stone walls overlooking this green, CS. Lewis, the Christian Platonist, tutors, gives lectures, writes his letters, his sermons, his poems, his essays, presides over the Oxford Socratic Club and enjoys the verbal swordplay of his friends. Opposition, Barfield reminds him, is true friendship. Rain and more rain on the cobblewalks. The drops pocking the ponds, singing on the lawns, the girl in the sunbonnet blue a study in the curious watershyness of Americans as she ducks the drops under the arched umbrella of a stranger. I beg your parden! snorts the stranger. Bloody tourists. Here he has thought to use Aquinas as an epigraph for the second chapter of his book on pain. Would not the tidbit from Scotus do? No. Aquinas it will be. Nothing which implies contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God. Here he has read in the mornings, cherishing the old, scorning the new, the new critics, the new novelists, the new poets. I would like my love to die and the rain to be falling on the graveyard and on me walking the streets mourning the first and last to love me Chopin on the rickety piano. The Preludes. Mrs. The Missouri Review · 255 Kirkpatrick of Great Bookham of Surrey playing. Waves make one kind of music on rocks and another on sand and I don't know which of the two I'd rather have. Young Jack Lewis sitting at a teakwood desk writing Arthur Greeves, friend and defender of the homely. Of Tristram Shandy: It gives you the impression of an escaped lunatic's conversation while chasing his hat on a windy day. . . John Henry Cardinal Newman preached here. Church of St. Mary the Virgin, University Church. Lewis, reading glasses leaning into his broad nose, stands behind the pulpit, an absolutely attentive, overcrowded congregation before him. Outside, the autumnal red of the tall trees gleans the green of the lowcut lawns. He has stared through his windows in Magdalen at this red, this green, as he wrote these words. Looking now to the deer chewing cud on the grass, now to his notebook. And nothing, not even a gable or a spire, to remind me that I am in a town. Twaddle, he says to a student. Occam's razor to Plato's beard. A connection every undergraduate knows, or is laughed at. Jack, initially disappointed with his students, came to expect not so much. Do you see, now, why this is twaddle? There is so much to see, to feel, to learn. No, sir, not yet I don't. The rain on the roof, like a distant cock's crowing. How can it be that the rain falls as the sun shines? Well now, Jack says. What are we to do with you? An American reader writes him a long letter, in admiration for The Discarded Image. P.S. Are you the sibling of Wyndham Lewis, whom Eliot called more primitive yet more civilized than his contemporaries? Thank you indeed, Jack writes. My dear brother Warnie is, I'm afraid, every bit as primitive and as civilized as his contemporaries. Memory in Augustine. A rooting out, sleuthing the soul and the past for the directive hand, God's fingerprint. Christians are wrong, but all the rest are bores. Jack raises a wine glass to his lips but does not drink. Show me, he says to his brother Warnie, this machine, this motorcycle. The rough road rises and dips, shears the countryside in two. A 256 · The Missouri Review Tom Andrezos gold sun sets on the tilled green. When I set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, but when we reached the zoo I did. 1914. A recurring dream. Philosophers, orderers and cataloguers...

STUDIES ON THE BIOLOGY AND CONTROL OF VAUCHERIA DICHOTOMA FOUND IN FRESHWATERS IN BRITAIN

Summary. Vaucheria plants collected from a ditch near Crowland and from the River Cherwell at Oxford in the first week of October 1970 were identified as V. dichotoma Ag. A nutrient medium is described which allows the growth and the production of organs of sexual reproduction of this alga. Preliminary studies on the control with diquat show that it must be exposed to a concentration of 2 mg/1 for 6 h for the herbicide to be effective. The presence of mud reduces the rate at which chlorophyll disintegrates and hastens the inactivation of diquat. Etudes sur la biologie et la destruction de Vaucheria dichotoma. Ag. dans les eaux doucei de Grande‐Bretagne

A British Freshwater Nemertine

ON July 12, 1944, while collecting planarians in the Cam at Cambridge, we found a small orange-coloured worm in the leaf axils of Glyceria aquatica stems. Afterwards many more were found. The general structure, including the proboscis, showed clearly that it was a nemertine. The only freshwater nemertine previously recorded from Great Britain was a single specimen found by Benham1 in the River Cherwell, of which, however, there is no full description. There is also a single record of a freshwater nemertine from Ireland in Co. Dublin2. The present record is therefore of interest.

Nature Reserve at Oxford

THE University of Oxford has accepted, as a gift from Mr. and Mrs. H. Spalding, eighteen acres of meadow land on the left bank of the River Cherwell opposite the walk known as Mesopotamia. This land is to be maintained as a nature reserve, to preserve in perpetuity a piece of water meadow, characteristic of the Oxford basin, for the enjoyment of the public, and to afford facilities for observation of the plants and animals inhabiting this type of land. The meadow land includes a small triangular area at its south end which, surrounded by old hedges, might, if suitably planted, develop into a woodland plot tempting to nightingales, which at present are not audible from Mesopotamia. The area is at two levels, that nearer the river being liable to flooding. The blight of suburban extension has already threatened that part farthest from the river with untidy neglected fields and huts, and the preservation of Mr. and Mrs. Spalding's gift will protect Mesopotamia from further spoliation of the river. Administrative control is to be vested in the Curators of the Parks who, in consultation with a committee of naturalists, will manage it in such a way as to carry out the objects of the gift. It will require enclosure, supervision, proper maintenance of drains and the continuance of traditional agricultural usage by annual mowing, and closure to grazing of at least certain parts.

On a New Section of Fossiliferous Upper Cornbrash of North-Eastern Facies at Enslow Bridge, near Oxford

In a recent account of the stratigraphical distribution of the English Cornbrash we pointed out that positive evidence of the existence of Upper Cornbrash was lacking over an extensive area of outcrop north and east of Oxford. All that we were then able to say (1932, p. 123) was: “Over this area the Lower Cornbrash alone forms a surface feature or appears in any of the exposures. The thin representative of the Upper Cornbrash, seen in the Long Handborough and Kidlington quarries and during the construction of the Woodstock railway, if it is present to the north-east of Oxford, has nowhere been encountered nearer than Bedford, 50 miles distant.” We had previously stated, however, in an analysis of the fauna of the South-Western area, including the Oxford district: “The record is still far from complete; new exposures in the area will furnish additional facts.” Such an exposure has now come into existence, and the Upper Cornbrash thereby revealed, although but a thin formation, has proved so richly fossiliferous, and the light thrown on questions previously doubtful is so illuminating, that we consider a description of the section should be made known without delay. The quarries at Greenhill, near Enslow Bridge on the River Cherwell, about nine miles north of Oxford, have been famous since the days of Buckland as a hunting ground for Cornbrash fossils; but although they have been visited by many generations of collectors, no fossils indicative of the Upper Cornbrash have hitherto been recorded. When describing the

I.—A Bronze Cauldron front the River Cherwell, Oxfordshire, with notes on cauldrons and other bronze vessels of allied types

The bronze cauldron here illustrated (pl. 1) has recently been added to the British prehistoric collections in the Ashmolean Museum. It was acquired from the person into whose hands it passed almost immediately after discovery, but of the conditions of discovery it has been impossible to ascertain more than that it was found by some bathers in the bed of the River Cherwell at Shipton-on-Cherwell. Chance was indeed kind when it allowed a vessel of a highly interesting class to be rescued from the mud in which it had lain in a comparatively shallow stream for over two thousand years, in what must, in view of the extreme fragility in relation to its size, be regarded as a quite remarkable state of preservation.

Akeman Street and the River Cherwell

The exact course of the Roman road called Akeman Street in the neighbourhood of the river Cherwell, some 9 miles north of Oxford, for a distance of a little over a mile, has long remained uncertain. The road is traceable from the west as far as the south-east corner of Tackley Park, and from the east as far as the north-west corner of Kirtlington Park. Between these two fixed points the road is, conjecturally, marked on the Ordnance Survey map merely by two parallel dotted straight lines, drawn with the aid of a ruler.

Woodeaton

Woodeaton is a small Oxfordshire parish, four miles north-east of the centre of Oxford city and a little west of the wide marshy level of the ‘Plain of Otmoor.’ It stands on a low, detached and rounded hill, 315 feet above sea level, and 120 feet above Otmoor. In old days it must have been difficult of access, for Otmoor spreads away to the east of it; low pastures along the river Cherwell close it in on the north and west, while south-westwards, too, the land is low-lying and marshy. Even to the south-east a marshy hollow separates it from the wooded slopes of Beckley and Elsfield, once part of Shotover Forest. However, the well-known Roman road which connects Dorchester (Oxon.) with Alchester, and which passes along the foot of Shotover, and traverses the village of Beckley and the plain of Otmoor, runs within two miles of Woodeaton; in dry seasons it may have helped those who wished to get to the spot.

Occurrence of a Fresh-water Nemertine in Ireland

IN NATURE, 1902 (vol. xlvi., p. 611), Prof. Benham records the discovery of a fresh-water Nemertine living in the River Cherwell, at Oxford. He found only a single immature specimen, which was accidentally destroyed before the specific title was definitely determined. I have recently (October) obtained numerous sexually mature specimens of a Nemertine, living among weeds in the Grand Canal, at Clondalkin, co. Dublin.

Note on the Occurrence of a Freshwater Nemertine in England

A FEW days after reading M. de Guerne's “History of Freshwater Nemerteans,” published in the August number of the Annals, I happened upon a specimen of the group amongst the roots of some water plants, which I collected in the river Cherwell, close to Oxford. I was, at the time, searching for the cocoons of a new Rhinodrilid worm, of which a description will shortly appear. The gathered roots, with the cocoons, were placed in a bottle of water, in order that the worms might hatch out. On examining the bottle two days later, namely, on September 5, I noticed a small bright orange animal, about half an inch long when extended, creeping amongst the cocoons. Further observation with the microscope showed that it was a species of Tetrastemma. Unfortunately the animal was crushed before I had done more than sketch the general appearance and make some few observations, and I have not yet succeeded in finding more specimens; so that I am unable to state how far it agrees with or differs from the previously known freshwater forms enumerated by M. de Guerne, most of which are included by Silliman and later authors under the title Tetrastemma aquarum dulcium.

On a New Peritrichous Infusorian (Cyclochæta spon-gillæ)

ABSTRACT The Infusorian figured Pl. XII was originally found by my friend Mr. W. H. Poole, of Magdalen College, while engaged in examining a fine fresh-water sponge (Spongilla fluviatilis) taken from the river Cherwell. He was good enough to give me the first specimen as well as another he found subsequently. These two, together with others obtained by myself from the same sponge, form the subjectmatter of the present paper.