The old River Leen and its radical re-routing...

Before and After - The River Leen originally met the Trent at Wilford - shown here as a fisherman's rural idyll in 1840 and below that as today's not so lovely culverted drainage outflow which emerges a little further downstream by Wilford Bridge. But it hasn't always flowed via this route. It's course has been radically altered on a number of occasions. In 1880 it even flowed under the goal posts at Notts County's future football ground at Meadow Lane and joined the Trent two miles to the east of its original route. In today's Tale From Watnall Hall we look at why its course has been changed so dramatically...

Old maps show several different "old River Leen" courses marked with numerous natural bends and meanders as the river makes its lazy way from the Robin Hood Hills in Annesley, through Newstead Abbey and down to Bulwell, Basford and old Lenton where it lapped at the feet of the now vanished Lenton Priory, a magnificent and powerful Cluniac monastery. Modern maps by contrast show an arrow-straight culverted course which only matches the old course at bridges. 

Above - The original Leen flowed into the Trent opposite Wilford village.
Below - The 20th century Leen outflows into the Trent just downstream near Wilford bridge.
In between these times it outflowed miles to the east near Meadow Lane.

The canals and various sewerage and flood prevention works have altered the original course of the Leen fundamentally, diverting it eastwards from Lenton (whose name comes from the river, "Leen town") under Castle Rock towards the East Croft via the Nottingham canal and the Tinkers Leen. The Leen's original course, before William Peverel first altered it in the 11th century, was more like the first picture through the Kings Meadow marshes before flowing south towards Wilford. 

The second picture is the outflow of a 20th century culvert which now takes the Leen along an altogether different route down towards Wilford Bridge.  

Peverel was a  favourite of William the Conqueror, perhaps even his illegitimate son, and was the first Sheriff of Nottingham in 1068. He also built the first Norman castle in Nottingham on Castle Rock and when it was finished diverted the Leen to flow under the ramparts. 

1832 - JMW Turner's painting of the Leen/canal running under Nottingham Castle.
It is quite allegorical with nods to Lord Byron (the Greek flag on a mast)
and the fires burning by the castle (the 1831 Reform Bill riots)

The original course of the Leen is written about in several old Sherwood Forest texts, as quoted in an 1840 guide to Nottingham by historian James Orange... 

"The following extract, taken from a document recording the perambulation of the Forest of Sherwood, in the sixteenth year of Henry III. successor of King John, in the year of our Lord 1232. "The boundaries of the forest came down, according to the course of the Leen, to Lenton, and from thence southward, as the same water was wont of old times to run, into the water of the Trent." Which proves the course of the Leen to have been altered; indeed, the ancient channel remains to this day, and joins the Trent opposite Wilford Church.

"In a perambulation of the boundaries of Sherwood Forest in 1505, the officers started from the King's Castell att Nottingham, "and then by the Ould Trentt to the oulde corse of the watter of Leene (which is the bound between the King's medows and the medow of Wilford)". 

Soon after the conquest, when William de Peverel, natural son of the Conqueror, was Lord of the Manor and Castle of Nottingham, he caused an artificial channel to be cut, into which he diverted the river, from Lenton eastward; and for the convenience of the garrison, caused it to pass close by the Castle, and hence forward, pursuing an easterly direction from the south side of the town, which is its present course."

The Tottle (or "Tuttle") Brook joined this original course of the "Leene" just before it met the Trent at Wilford. 

1880 map superimposed with a modern satellite map
showing another old course of the Leen flowing around 
the future location of Notts County's football stadium (built in 1915),
directly under the goal posts and straight down Meadow Lane!

1806 - engraving from the pages of the book "Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson"
 a biography of the governor of Nottingham Castle during the Civil War

1828 - shows the Leen as a wide canal and what appears to be
the culverted Tinker's Leen to the right

1795 - an engraving from an earlier Turner painting

c.1865 this remarkable early photograph of the castle shows the Leen/canal
flowing right at the foot of Castle Rock. The castle is a derelict burnt out shell after being 
torched by rioters in the 1831 Reform Act protests.

Lenton Priory - once Nottingham's most powerful monastery, it was as large
as Southwell Minster and stood on the banks of the old River Leen 
opposite today's Queen's Medical Centre.

The River Leen flowing in front of Basford's St Leodegarius Church. 
The same view today has railways, tram tracks and road bridges in the picture

Sources

Lenton Times - https://www.lentontimes.co.uk/images/gallery/river_leen/river_leen_listener_50.htm

Notts History - http://www.nottshistory.org.uk/articles/mellorsarticles/wilford7.htm

Tarbolton's sewerage report to the Nottingham Corporation 1875 - https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=s7Fh55IKMtEC&pg=GBS.PA37&hl=en_GB

History and antiquities of Nottingham, Volume 1 By James Orange 1840 -  https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=--kHAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA223&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q=leen&f=false

This 1880 map reveals several old routes of the Leen in blue from Lenton to Wilford and via Castle Rock to East Croft and Meadow Lane...  https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16.4&lat=52.93940&lon=-1.13962&layers=257&b=ESRIWorld&o=88