Bow Creek (England)

Bow Creek
Bow Creek (tidal) (far left) meets the Limehouse Cut (canal, right), at Bow Locks on the Lee Navigation (centre); with a view of London's Docklands
Country	England
Basin features
Main source	Confluence of Prescott Channel and Channelsea River at Bow Locks
River mouth	River Thames, Leamouth
Physical characteristics
Length	2.25 miles (3.6 km)

Bow Creek is a 2.25-mile (3.6 km) long tidal estuary of the English River Lea and is part of the Bow Back Rivers. Below Bow Locks the creek forms the boundary between the London Boroughs of Newham and Tower Hamlets, in East London.

The River Lea rises in the town of Luton in Bedfordshire, and flows to the east and then the south to reach the River Thames at Leamouth. The final 2.25 miles (3.62 km) are known as Bow Creek, and follow a meandering route across a low-lying area formerly called Bromley Marsh, but now occupied by gas works and trading estates. The river is one of the oldest navigations in the country, but the creek is tidal, providing insufficient depth for navigation at low tide.

Use of the river for navigation is recorded in documents dating from 1190 and, in 1424, it became the first river in Britain where improvements were authorised by an Act of Parliament. Another act of 1571 allowed the Lord Mayor to make cuts and improvements to the river and to construct towing paths on both sides of it. This work is thought to have included a new cut between Old Ford and Bow Locks, which is known as Bow River and, like Bow Creek, is not subject to tolls for those using it. During the great plague of 1665, bargemen on the river continued to supply food to the population of London and were granted permission to navigate the Thames without having to ask a Thames Lighterman for assistance, in recognition of the risks they had taken.

Because of the importance of the river for navigation, the engineer John Smeaton was asked to survey it and to suggest how it could be improved in 1765. He produced a report in 1766, which recommended replacing the flash locks with more modern pound locks, and more significantly for Bow Creek, making a new cut from Bow tidal gates to the Thames at Limehouse. Although only a little further to the west, access at Limehouse avoided the long loop around the Isle of Dogs for traffic heading towards London. The cut was to be opened on 2 July 1770, but failure of a side wall delayed the event until September and a bridge collapsed into it in December. Traffic began to switch to the new cut, which was too narrow to allow barges to pass one another, and so a programme of widening it, which was completed in September 1777, was carried out. The channel now ends in Limehouse Basin.