Waveney, River

The River Waveney rises at Redgrave Fen and the flows eastward towards Great Yarmouth. For much of its course it provides the border between Norfolk and Suffolk - however just south of St Olaves the border turns right to follow the southern side of Fritton Decoy and the Waveney flows on to Breydon Water.

The nature writer Richard Mabey now lives at Snow Street near Roydon. He moved here after fifty years living in his family home in the Chiltern hills. The move to Norfolk helped him to recover from clinical depression and inspired his moving memoir Nature Cure (2005). The book deals candidly with his illness and how the flat, watery lands of Norfolk helped to reconnect him again with the natural world. During the worst period of his illness, he was confined to the same hospital in Northampton as the poet John Clare. Mabey is a friendly with Mark Cocker - another talented nature writer who lives at Claxton in the Yare valley.

After Roydon, the river flows past the market town of Diss - where the poet John Skelton was once the rector of St. Mary's Church. It then heads on past Redenhall - where the playwright Arnold Wesker found inspiration for his play Roots.

At Homersfield there is a unique concrete bridge - which was the first to be built anywhere in the UK.

Homersfield Bridge

At Bungay the river circles Outney Common in a large loop and is overlooked by The Bath House - a large white cottage which was once owned by Lilias Rider Haggard - the daughter of Sir Henry Rider Haggard. The Haggard family also lived at nearby Ditchingham House. Lilias was a talented writer in her own right and was the author of a trilogy of books about the county: Norfolk Life, Norfolk Notebook and Country Scrapbook -written during and just after WW2. The tower of Bungay Church was once clearly visible from the house but is now partly obscured by Clays Printing works. It is at Clays that the Harry Potter books are printed.

The Bath House (photograph by Linda Bailey)

The Lincolnshire poet Jean Ingelow (1820-1897) wrote a charming poem called The Waveney featuring the river in its upper reaches.
 

Listen to me -
There is a little river, fed by rills
That winds among the hills,
And turns and suns itself unceasingly,
And wanders through the cornfields wooingly,
For it has nothing else to do, but play
Along its cheery way:
Not like great rivers that in locks are bound,
On whom hard man doth heavy burdens lay,
And fret their waters into foam and spray.
This river's life is one long holiday
                                          All the year round.

See complete poem

The novelist James Blyth, who lived at Fritton, set many of his works against the background of the River Waveney - in particular its reed beds and wide flood plain. Shortly after Fritton, the Waveney merges with the River Yare at Breydon Water.

Links:

Waveney Valley Blog

Redgrave and Lopham Fen