[unfairytale]

i was talking to the Park Keeper there a few weeks ago he said the lakes have been slowly emptying over the last couple of months due to lack of rain and increased pumping from the station at Drellingore.

[TowerWill]

I wonder if the dredger David Church has started work yet in the Wellington Dock(islesy's photo in 'repairs to dock gate')?The dredger in my boyhood days had a continuous chain and bucket system which was lowered to the sea bed.The noise it made when dredging was a tremendous groaning and squealing sound which could be heard in town.
One thing we did notice while out visiting a friend at Temple Ewell yesterday was that the stream feeding the Kearsney Manor Lake is indeed dry.
This is the stream normally running under the railway viaduct.Another friend, who lives further up the valley at Lydden, told us a couple of weeks ago that a man inspecting a borehole there said the borehole was dry.

[Islesy]

What is interesting to note, is that since Reply#32 by Towerwill, the Dour has started to shift the silt from the mouth of "the bubbles". You can clearly see the shingle base to the river bed now - just goes to show that forcibly holding the water back in the dock contributes to siltation at the mouth of the river.

[TowerWill]

My old Ordnance Survey map (Sheet TR24 First Series) shows the upper reaches of the Dour quite nicely.

[keniff]

Someone has told me that one of the sources of the Dour is Archers Pool in Collards Meadow at Drellingore ??

[unfairytale]

That's The Donkey, public house. Now a private dwelling.

[keniff]

I feel a "before and after" moment coming on - nothing much has changed .

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[TowerWill]

From Google Earth street scenes.
The stream on the left is another tributary of the Dour.This is the one that that runs under Kearsney railway viaduct and into the Manor Lake.I've only cycled along here a couple of times so i'm not very familiar with this spot.This is at Temple Ewell and a bit further upstream is the aptly named Watersend where there was a pond but i can't see it on G.E. now.Anyone remember Watersend Condiments?A part of the OK sauce company their small factory near here made horseradish sauce and mint sauce.I guess that's an old watermill straddling the stream and Mill Street is on the other side of the stream.The mill's history might be in another thread.

[theartist]

my partner who works at kearney manor tells me the sluice and dam wall are under repair, so little water in pond.

[TowerWill]

As far as i could see from a single deck bus via Alkham today the lakes at Bushy Rough and Kearsney Manor were nearly dry.A contrast to unfairytale's photos of 2009-10.A long wet spell is needed again.I wonder what the water level is like in the Kearsney Abbey lake?

[TowerWill]

From Google Earth street scenes.
The course of the stream at Alkham.This is at Hogbrook Hill Lane which is a route from Alkham to Hougham.I don't know if the stream's running in the shot above or if it's just rainwater off the Lane.Some years after prolonged spells of rain i believe the stream also goes over this bridge as well as under it.It may have been in the Dover Express paper that i've seen photos of the nearby pitch flooded by the stream.There is a similar stream in the Elham Valley which when running can be nicely seen from the top deck of a number 17 bus. 

[unfairytale]

This is J. Harman's photo of the pond at Drellingore.


From, Bygone Kent. vol 18 no. 1.

These are my pics of the flooded Alkham Valley near Wolverton from the winter of 2009-10.

[unfairytale]

I expect they're both sources of the Dour although Drellingore is three miles away from where the two sources meet. I've just been looking at a Bygone Kent which shows the lake at Drellingore, I also have some photos of the river running down through the Alkham Valley, I'll scan them later.

  I wonder how often the river would break surface if the pumping station at Drellingore were 'switched off'?

 A Mr G Gough carried out a survey in 1956, his report is at Dover Library, in it he mentions the various sources, Lydden Valley, Alkham Valley, Poulton Valley, Elms Vale and the old spring at Ladywell. These are mostly dry valleys now due mainly to extraction by water companies.

 The pond at Drellingore, he states is fed from a spring a bit further up the valley at Chilton from where water flowed almost constantly, (this was in 1956).

[keniff]

There's a small pond at Drelingore on the Alkham Valley just behind and West of the white pumping station. That's where the Dour bubbles-up.

Another contentious issue ! I have heard several locations for the source of the Dour, Temple Ewell, Kearsney, Drellingore.  I have also been told that the brook / stream at Drellingore is called the Northbourne or Winterbourne, I don't know. The link below may assist

http://www.dover-kent.co.uk/places/river_dour.htm

I will trawl through my books again over the weekend and run a few comparisons

[man-of-kent]

It must be a VERY small pond     I can't see it on the 2007 Google Earth sat image or the 1:25000 OS map. Is it like the official source of the Thames, where water is only visible at times of heavy rain?