River Trent

The Trent is third in the list of longest rivers in the United Kingdom. Its source is in Staffordshire, on the southern edge of Biddulph Moor. It flows through and drains the North Midlands into the Humber Estuary. The river is known for dramatic flooding after storms and spring snowmelt, which in the past often caused the river to change course. The river passes through Stoke-on-Trent, Stone, Staffordshire, Rugeley, Burton-upon-Trent and Nottingham before joining the River Ouse, Yorkshire at Trent Falls to form the Humber Estuary, which empties into the North Sea between Kingston upon Hull in Yorkshire and Immingham in Lincolnshire. The wide Humber estuary has often been described as the boundary between the Midlands and the north of England. Name The name "Trent" is possibly from a Romano-British word meaning "strongly flooding". More specifically, the name may be a contraction of two Romano-British words, tros ("over") and hynt ("way"). This may indeed indicate a river that is prone to flooding. However, a more likely explanation may be that it was considered to be a river that could be crossed principally by means of fords, i.e. the river flowed over major road routes. This may explain the presence of the Romano-British element rid (cf. Welsh rhyd, "ford") in various place names along the Trent, such as Hill Ridware, as well as the Old English‐derived ford. Another translation is given as "the trespasser", referring to the waters flooding over the land. According to Koch at the University of Wales, the name Trent derives from the Romano-British Trisantona, a Romano-British reflex of the combined elements *tri-sent(o)-on-ā- (through-path-augmentative-feminine-) ‘great thoroughfare’. A traditional but almost certainly wrong opinion is that of Izaak Walton, who states in The Compleat Angler (1653) that the Trent is "... so called from thirty kind of fishes that are found in it, or for that it receiveth thirty lesser rivers." Course The Trent rises within the Staffordshire Moorlands district, near the village of Biddulph Moor, from a number of sources including the Trent Head Well. It is then joined by other small streams to form the Head of Trent, which flows south, to the only reservoir along its course at Knypersley Reservoir. Downstream of the reservoir it passes through Stoke-on-Trent and merges with the Lyme, Fowlea and other brooks that drain the six towns of the Staffordshire Potteries to become the River Trent.