River Coquet

The River Coquet runs through the county of Northumberland, England, discharging into the North Sea on the east coast at Amble. It rises in the Cheviot Hills on the border between England and Scotland, and follows a winding course across the landscape. The upper reaches are bordered by the Otterburn Ranges military training ground, and are crossed by a number of bridges built in the 20th century. It passes a number of small villages and hamlets, and feeds one of the lakes created by extraction of gravel that form the Caistron Nature Reserve, before reaching the town of Rothbury, where it is crossed by a grade II listed bridge. Below the town is Thrum Mill, a Grade II-listed water mill.
It loops around Brinkburn Priory, founded in the 1130s for Augustinian Canons, and its associated mill. At Felton it is crossed by two bridges, one dating from the 15th century, and its replacement, built in 1927, both of which are listed structures. Below the bridges is a sewage treatment works, built in the 1990s. At Brainshaugh, the river passes over a large horseshoe dam, built in 1775 by the engineer John Smeaton to power an iron and tin works, which later became a woollen mill, and subsequently one of the first factories to be powered by hydroelectricity. Before it reaches Warkworth, the river passes over another dam, which is now part of the intake works for Warkworth Water Treatment Works, which supplies drinking water to some 92,000 customers in the region. Below the dam the river is tidal, and Warkworth Castle is built in a loop of the Coquet. The river reaches the sea at Warkworth Harbour in Amble, where there is a Royal National Lifeboat Institution lifeboat station.
The river has been used as a source of power, as a number of mills have been constructed along its length. One of the earliest was on Hepden Burn, a tributary in the upper reaches, which was mentioned in the early 13th century, but was not subsequently developed, due to unrest in the area. Archaeological investigation between 2010 and 2013 revealed one of the few unaltered medieval mill sites in Britain, and pushed the development of the breast-shot water wheel back by three centuries. Although most of the mills were used for grinding corn, some were used for fulling of wool, and that at Brainshaugh for an industrial process. The earliest was at Warkworth, the rent from which was used to provide a light in St Cuthbert's shrine in 1214.
The earliest known reference to the River Coquet is found in the Ravenna Cosmography, which dates from the 8th century. The water quality of the non-tidal river is good ecologically, and only in the final tidal section is the water affected by run-off from agricultural land, reducing the quality to moderate.

Course

The river, which is about in length, rises in the Cheviot Hills close to the contour, to the east of Grindstone Law and to the north of Ravens Knowe. The border between England and Scotland follows it briefly, before turning northwards at Chew Green, where there are the remains of Roman camps on the north bank of the river, the course of Dere Street, locally named as Camelspath, crosses the river, and there are the remains of the medieval village of Kemylpethe. The river continues in a north-easterly direction, where it is joined by Fulhope Burn, Buckham's Walls Burn, Blind Burn and Gable Burn, before it reaches Carshope plantation. It turns to the east, to be joined by Carlcroft Burn, Rowhope Burn and Hepden Burn, and after passing between Barrow Law to the north and Tindale Law to the south, the river turns to the south. The area to the south of the river forms part of the Otterburn Ranges, which has been used as a military training ground since 1911. It is owned by the Ministry of Defence, and public access is restricted.
The Deerbush Burn joins the Dumbhope Burn before they join the Coquet, and the river turns to the south-east, to be joined by Croft Sike and Pathlaw Sike, draining boggy areas to the south, while Usway Burn and Wholehope Burn drain hilly areas to the north. When it reaches the hamlet of Linbriggs, it is joined by the Ridlees Burn and turns to the east. At the village of Alwinton, the Barrow Burn, Hosedon Burn and River Alwin all converge, and the Coquet continues in a south-easterly direction through Harbottle, where there is a Neolithic enclosure and several Bronze Age cairns. At Sharperton, the ford was replaced by a bridge around 1896, since the bridge and a weir just downstream of it appears on the 1897 map, but a ford appears on the 1895 map. The bridge was rebuilt in 1920 using concrete beams, with six spans and parapets with latticework.
The upper Coquet above Alwinton is crossed by a number of bridges, all dating from a bridge-building programme in the 20th century, as prior to 1928, fords were the main means of crossing the channel on this section. Linbriggs Bridge was the first of the new bridges, and consists of a concrete arch spanning a gorge. Subsequent bridges were built with flat decks, and the programme was completed in 1968, when Mackendon Bridge was opened. The 1897 Ordnance Survey map shows three suspension bridges carrying footpaths over the river. There is one at Linbriggs, a second a short distance below Linbriggs and a third at Harbottle.
The Holystone Burn joins the Coquet at Holystone. The village has a Holy Well, with a rectangular stone tank dating from Roman times, but the fact that Bishop Paulinus baptized around 3000 Northumbrians there in the year 627 is now thought to be based on a misreading of the writings of Bede. The well is a grade I listed structure, and there is a Roman road which passed through the well enclosure and then crossed the Coquet on its way from High Rochester fort to the River Aln.
There was a fourth suspension bridge near Hepple, made of iron with a span, which cost £30 when it was constructed. By the time the river reaches Hepple bridge, which consists of modern steel beams resting on piers dating from around 1874, it has dropped below the contour. It turns to the north-east, and then passes the hamlet of Caistron, where there are two large lakes caused by extraction of sand and gravel, which started in 1956. The largest lake covers, and is managed as a nature reserve and fishery. Traffic from the quarry crossed a curious bridge, which consists of large metal tubes laid onto the bed of the river, above which the roadway has been constructed. The river channel has been engineered to make way for the quarrying, as it looped further to the south in 1925, and to the north-east of the first lake is a second smaller lake, fed by the river. Water supply to the upper lake is from Bickerton Burn.

Middle section

The river continues to the south of Thropton where Wreigh Burn joins from the north, and passes through Rothbury, where a bridge dating from the 16th century crosses it. Built as a packhorse bridge, it was made wider in 1759 by William Oliphant, a mason from Rothbury, to accommodate vehicles, and was further widened in the 20th century, when the parapets were removed and a concrete deck constructed on top of the original structure. Unlike many bridges, the earlier phases have not been concealed by later work. It is a scheduled monument and a grade II listed structure. Below Rothbury is a velocity-area gauging station, which measures the river's flow. Its accuracy is enhanced by a mill weir further downstream, and it has been used to collect flow data since 1972. The mean flow between 1972 and 2005 was, but the maximum flow during this period was on 1 April 1992. Just to the east is Thrum Mill, a grade II listed three-storey mill building dating from the 18th and 19th centuries the restoration of which was featured in the Channel 4 television programme The Restoration Man. From 1870 the Rothbury Branch of the Northumberland Central Railway ran along the south bank of the river on its final approach to. Passenger services ceased in 1952 and goods services were withdrawn in 1963. The river continues through the hamlet of Pauperhaugh, where there is a bridge with three segmental arches and a weir on the downstream side. It then loops around a finger of land, which was given by its owner, William Bertram lord of Mitford, to Augustinian canons between 1130 and 1135, who founded Brinkburn Priory. After the dissolution of the monasteries, the main building was derelict until 1858, when it was re-roofed and partly rebuilt, to be used as a parish church. Parts of the original buildings were incorporated into a manor house, which was occupied intermittently until 1953, after which it was given to the Ministry of Public Building and Works. Both the church and the house are now managed by English Heritage and are open for public viewing. Nearby is Brinkburn Mill, built in the 18th century, but re-using medieval masonry. A cottage for the miller was added around 1830. The wheel and stones remain, although it is now used as holiday accommodation.
After passing through Weldon, where there is a mill and a three-arched bridge dating from 1760, which is thought to have been designed by the engineer John Smeaton, the Coquet is crossed by the A1 road. As it approaches Felton, there is a dam, from which a long rock-cut leat on the north bank supplied Felton corn mill. This was first mentioned in the 13th century, but the present building dates from the 18th and 19th centuries. An undershot water wheel drove four sets of stones, used for milling corn, while a second breast-shot wheel drove an oat mill, with two sets of stones, a rotary kiln and a pearl barley machine. There was once a sawmill powered by a third wheel. The site was operational until 1970, but was subsequently converted into homes, and the wheels were broken up. At Felton, the river turns to the north-east, and is crossed by two bridges. The first dates from the 15th century, and has three arches. It was widened in the 19th and 20th centuries, but was disused after 1927, when a new concrete bridge by Considere Constructions, also with three spans, was built to replace it. It is grade II listed because it is one of the earliest bridges of its type produced by the company. Beyond the bridges, a new sewage treatment works was built on the north bank, after it was authorised in 1991. It was designed to discharge of treated effluent to the river each day, and replaced old inefficient works at Felton, Longframlington, Swarland and Thirston.
Near Brainshaugh, the river passes over a horseshoe dam, built in 1775 by John Smeaton for John Archbold of Acton and Edward Cook of Brainshaugh. It is built of squared stone, and was repaired and modified in 1926. The downstream face is vertical, and the water falls. The curved dam has a radius of and supplied a mill race to the south of the river. This originally powered an iron and tin foundry, subsequently converted to a woollen mill in 1791, and becoming derelict in 1884. From 1915, it was used to manufacture a white pigment called Hydrate of Alumina, and became one of the first factories in the country to be powered by hydroelectric power when a Gilkes water turbine was fitted into the millrace. The factory closed in 1930 when its lease was not renewed following pollution of the river. The mill building was converted into flats in 1968. At the eastern end of the site is Factory Bridge, consisting of three segmental arches, which was built of rock-faced stone in 1865. Some railings were added in the 20th century.