River Great Ouse
— — the slow water that drains the fen.
Not only on a wall.
“The fourth-longest river in the United Kingdom, running roughly 230 kilometres from the chalk uplands of Northamptonshire through Bedford and Ely to The Wash on the Norfolk coast. The lower river is fen — drained, embanked, and walked by herons. Above Ely the cathedral rises from the flat the way it always has, and the water carries the sky more than its own colour.
River Great Ouse, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Great Ouse rises near Syresham in Northamptonshire and flows roughly 230 kilometres east and north through Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Norfolk, before reaching the sea at King's Lynn on The Wash. It is the fourth-longest river in the United Kingdom. The lower reaches cross the Fens — a region drained for agriculture from the seventeenth century under the engineering of the Dutchman Cornelius Vermuyden — and most of the river below Earith now runs between raised embankments. Major towns on the river include Buckingham, Bedford, St Neots, Huntingdon, St Ives, and Ely.
The Ouse system carries one of the largest drainages in England by catchment area. Below Earith, the river splits into the Old Bedford River and the New Bedford River, two parallel artificial channels cut in 1637 and 1651 to bypass the meandering natural course and drain the fen for farmland. The Great Ouse Flood Protection Scheme, completed in 1964, manages the tidal stretch below Denver Sluice. Inland, the navigable river runs continuously from Bedford to The Wash, used today by narrowboat and cabin cruiser traffic rather than the commercial barges that once carried fen produce to market.
Ely Cathedral, set on a low rise above the river at the centre of the old Isle of Ely, has stood in its present form since the early twelfth century and is reached on foot from the riverside moorings on a fifteen-minute walk. Downstream, the Ouse Washes between the two Bedford rivers form a 24-kilometre wetland that holds internationally important populations of wintering swans and wildfowl, protected as a Ramsar site since 1976. Upstream, the river crosses Bedfordshire under listed bridges at Bedford, Great Barford, and St Neots.