Text 1: Giving the river room, by Lena Morris

An original contemporary magazine feature.

I have been sent to admire a river, but at first I cannot find it. Beyond the station, traffic circles a roundabout and two blocks of flats face a strip of newly planted grass. Then I notice a narrow channel of brown water sliding between pale stone banks. This, apparently, is the River Wren.

Until last winter, this section of the Wren ran through a concrete tunnel beneath the road. Now three hundred metres of it have been brought back into daylight. There are reeds in wire cages, saplings tied to posts and signs identifying creatures that have not yet arrived. It feels less like nature than a stage waiting for its actors. Even the bends in the river look carefully ironed into place.

Arun, the engineer showing me around, is patient with my suspicion. The low ground beside the channel, he explains, is meant to flood after heavy rain. The old tunnel forced water onwards; this open space can hold it temporarily. I look at the neat paths, the spotless benches and a wooden platform labelled RIVER VIEW. ‘So this is controlled flooding?’ I ask. Arun smiles. ‘It is controlled space. The flooding makes its own decisions.’

As if summoned to demonstrate, rain begins drumming on our hoods. Within minutes, the Wren darkens and fattens. Water crawls over the lowest path and spreads across the grass. Two walkers retreat, annoyed, but Arun stands watching like a host whose difficult guest has finally arrived. The tidy park becomes a shallow brown lake. Reeds bow flat. Twigs spin in the current. For the first time, the place does not look designed.

Under the shelter, I meet Mrs Daoud, who has lived opposite for forty years. She remembers hearing the buried river through the drains after storms: ‘You could hear it rushing, but you never saw where it went.’ Now she brings her grandson to look for insects along the bank. Today they find only a crisp packet snagged in a branch, which he removes with great ceremony.

By the time the rain eases, the water has begun to withdraw. A grey bird steps from behind the reeds and stabs its beak into the mud. The engineers have not returned the old river: its course has been chosen, its banks reinforced and its freedom measured out between roads. Yet I no longer think the project is simply pretending to be wild. The Wren has been given a room and a set of rules, but, within them, it is moving with an energy no plan can quite contain.

Text 2: A survey of the Wren, by Edmund Vale

An original report written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this report, written in 1868, a surveyor considers a proposal to place part of the River Wren in a brick tunnel.

I was instructed to examine that portion of the Wren which passes through the eastern district and to determine whether enclosing it would protect the neighbouring streets from flood. I arrived prepared to meet a river. What I found was a prisoner being blamed for the condition of its cell.

Workshops crowd both banks, their walls standing so close that the water receives only a thin allowance of daylight. Pipes discharge into it from every direction. Pieces of timber, broken baskets and household refuse lodge against the bridge supports until the river pushes them loose. The Wren proceeds not with the cheerful noise of a country stream but with a thick and secretive movement.

Rain had fallen throughout the previous night. At Narrow Lane, the channel could carry no more, and the water had entered six houses. I saw a woman lifting a chair from her cellar while her daughter collected spoons from the steps. Their distress allows no room for picturesque opinions. Whatever its former character, the Wren is now a danger to those obliged to live beside it.

The proposed tunnel would give the water a direct course beneath the district. Brick walls would prevent the banks from collapsing, while a covered channel would permit a new road to be laid above. These are considerable advantages, and I record them without hesitation.

Yet farther north, beyond the last workshop, I came upon a reach that had escaped confinement. Willows stood at the edge, and three boys were sailing a box with a paper flag. Here the same water that had invaded the houses carried clouds in its surface. I remembered fishing in such a stream when I was their age and wondered whether the Wren had become our enemy, or whether we had first denied it room and then punished it for trespassing.

My recommendation remains that the tunnel should be built. Families cannot be asked to surrender their homes for the sake of a pleasant view. Nevertheless, the town should understand what it is choosing. We shall gain a road, firmer banks and, I believe, fewer flooded rooms. We shall also take a living thing, already injured by our buildings, and teach it to pass beneath us in darkness.

Both texts describe encounters with the River Wren at different times.

Compare:

• how the writers’ attitudes towards the river develop
• how the writers present attempts to control the river

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