River Aire

[The Parksider]

Just noticed on the Tithe map how belle Isle beck used to run from below Middleton naturally across the Thwaite gate and into the river. You'd be hard pressed to find it now although a bit may still be open by Balm Road (a trip for me)But on the Tithe map it runs into the river Aire flowing just by the start of Thwaite Gate at the bottom of Pepper Rd/Lane.The Aire is not there today!! and poring through old maps it's clear that at some time these wonderful engineers the Victorians seem to have dug a new bit of river east of the canal and filled in the Aire at Thwaite gate!!! Today the area that used to be almost cut off by canal and river is known as Gibralter Island.Belle Isle beck on the Tithe map is constantly drained by the broom colliery then various mills and factories as it flows to the Aire for their industrial use.It's first port of call after the mine is to fill Hunslet Lake. Has any stream in Leeds been so much raided for mining, pleasure and industry as this??Anyone know why the Victorians re-routed and filled in such a mighty river???

[Uno Hoo]

I don't have a definitive answer, but I guess it would be to do with flow when the Aire & Calder Navigation was excavated. I'm familiar with the stretch as a boater, and on approaching Knostrop Lock towards Leeds on the canal, altho' the river is on the right, what is now a backwater providing moorings for one or two boats always looks to me like the natural course of the waterway. Similarly, when passing through the flood lock at the head of the last canalised stretch before Leeds, at the head of the island, there's a broad sweep of water to the left, which I've always assumed to have been a canal basin, but again looks as though it could have been the natural sweep of the river. Obviously the river alone was not deep enough in all its stretches fo be navigable, hence the cuts to provide sufficient depth, but these of course have to be fed with water. If you're right in what you say the Tithe Map shows, it may be that the original river course was too shallow and slow moving to provide the flow for depth in the cut, so a new course may have been made - there's certainly a powerful race alongside Knostrop Lock - and the wheel at Thwaites Mill needed plenty of water power as well.The other possibility is that the river flow was never a problem as I've hypothesised above, and that the digging of the cut to Knostrop could have altered the original course of the river sufficiently to cause a flood hazard, so it was decided to divert the river. I must say that until I read your post I had no idea that the course of the river had ever been different to its present one, so I'm interested to read your account of the Tithe Map.