Aerial photograph of fields, with a less-than-straight country lane passing up close to the right hand side. In the top of the frame a modern farmhouse and buildings stand on right of the road. Most of the land is pasture, with two arable fields visible. The crop there is sparse, with large bare patches. The brook wiggles across the upper half of the picture, serpentine in a landscape of straight boundaries. It is narrow and from this height and angle the water surface cannot be discerned. The spring is centre right, its own water course straight and running upwards,toward the brook. The spring is in the greenest of the meadows, with the low humps and bumps of the lost village around.
Calceby brook and spring, the source of the Great Eau
Almost stationary water in a narrow stream in a flat landscape
The Great Eau at Barfen Farm
near to Gayton le Marsh
Tidal river between snowy banks, seen from an overbridge with a helpful notice
Tidal outflow of the Great Eau

The Great Eau is a river in Lincolnshire, England, rising from the Chalk Streams of the Lincolnshire Wolds and running to Saltfleet Haven on the coast. It is joined by its companion stream, the Long Eau.[1]

The placename element Eau for a river is common in Lincolnshire and comes not from the French, but from Old English Ea – a river, related to modern Germanic Aa.[2]

References

  1. ^ "Steeping, Great Eau and Long Eau CAMS area overview" (PDF). The Steeping, Great Eau and Long Eau Catchment Abstraction Management Strategy. Environment Agency. January 2007. p. 3. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 September 2012. Retrieved 18 May 2013. (map)
  2. ^ Partridge, Eric (5 September 1977). Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. Routledge. p. 129. ISBN 9780415050777. Retrieved 18 May 2013.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Great Eau.


53°25′N 0°13′E / 53.417°N 0.217°E / 53.417; 0.217


Rivers and watercourses of Lincolnshire
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