Rivers of Norfolk | 2017 - 2020
The idea to follow the rivers of Norfolk from source to sea began, like all rivers do, in a small way. A friend asked me to draw his two favourite Norfolk rivers, the Nar and the Stiffkey. A combination of his obvious passion for them and their quiet beauty got me thinking.
Exhibitions at Norwich Castle Museum and Abbott & Holder. Publication of Rivers of Norfolk book.
I wondered why I had never properly looked at Norfolk’s rivers before. I had never bothered to wonder about the stream under the bridge that I crossed, never considered where it had come from or where it was going, never asked its name. I had never peered into the water and wondered why it was clear or why it wasn’t. Spurred on by an alphabetical list of the ‘Rivers of Norfolk’ that sounds like an Old English poem of all things watery and damp, I followed 38 named rivers and streams, ditches and trickles. For almost 4 years, I drew them as I followed them, from source to mouth (or sometimes from mouth to source), making over 200 pastel drawings.
With coast on two sides and twin rivers marking the county boundary it was an inadvertently neat project. All but one river, the mighty Great Ouse, rise and end within Norfolk. From peaty Broadland dyke to flinty Breckland beck, fen to sparkling chalk stream, Norfolk’s rivers are all different. Through drawing and talking to the people I’ve met along the way I’ve learnt about drainage, sewage, over abstraction, canalisation, sea defences, fishing and boating and restoration. I’ve written about it all in Rivers of Norfolk.
Ainse Ant Babingley Beeston Beck Blackwater Bure Burn Chet Cong Gadder Gaywood Glaven Great Ouse Gur Beck Hagon Beck Heacham Hor Hun Ingol Little Ouse Mermaid Mun Nar Panford Beck Penny Spot Beck Scarrow Beck Spring Beck Stiffkey Tas Tat Thet Thurne Tiffey Tud Waveney Wensum Wissey Yare
