River Soar - Description

Description

It rises near Hinckley in Leicestershire and is joined by the River Sence (Wigston) near Enderby before flowing through Leicester (where it is joined by the Grand Union Canal at Aylestone), Barrow-on-Soar, beside Loughborough, and Kegworth, flowing into the Trent near Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire. Its major tributary, the once navigable River Wreake, joins it near Syston.

The Soar has been made navigable to boats and several shortcuts have been built. The section between Loughborough and Leicester was made navigable in 1784, and the Grand Union Canal connected it south to the southern canals network and to London, in 1814.

According to legend, the body of King Richard III of England was thrown into the Soar after his death. The bridge carrying the A47 across the Soar at Leicester is known as 'King Richard's Bridge'.

It is believed the name "Leicester" is derived from the words castra (camp) of the Ligore, meaning dwellers on the 'River Legro' (an early name for the River Soar). In the early 10th century it was recorded as Ligeraceaster ("the town of the Ligor people"). The Domesday Book later recorded it as Ledecestre.

Read more about this topic:  River Soar

Famous quotes containing the word description:

    Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month’s labor in the farmer’s almanac, to restore our tone and spirits.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.
    Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)

    As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)