Abbot Ordric's Cut Revisited

Summary

SUMMARY

In the mid eleventh century, in the time of Abbot Ordric of Abingdon, a new channel of the River Thames was dug near Abingdon to ease the passage of boats from Oxford. The Swift Ditch, now a backwater of the Thames between Abingdon and Culham, has previously been suggested as being this ‘cut’. The archaeological discovery of an infilled river channel close to the hamlet of Thrupp, above Abingdon, combined with topographical and historic cartographic evidence and a close reading of the historical account of the channel's creation, allows a new identification of Ordric's cut to be proposed. It is suggested that it is represented by part of a former channel of the Thames known as Thrupp Water, traces of which survive today as a water-filled field ditch to the south of Thrupp.

The history of schemes to improve the navigability of the River Thames, one of Oxfordshire’s major historic transport arteries, has been a subject of abiding interest. The earliest recorded such scheme is that undertaken above Abingdon in the time of Ordric (or Orderic), abbot of Abingdon abbey from 1052 to 1065. During his abbacy, Ordric agreed that a new navigation channel of the Thames should be created near Abingdon, because of difficulties being encountered by boats travelling from Oxford. This was recorded in two medieval Abingdon manuscripts: De Abbatibus and the History of the Church of Abingdon. As this is one of only three clearly recorded instances of the creation of new navigation channels in Anglo- Saxon England it is of some importance. The identification of Ordric's ‘cut’ has already been discussed in detail by John Blair (and, previously, by James Bond). Bob Eeles has also commented on the issue. Blair suggests that Ordric's cut was the watercourse now known as Swift Ditch (Fig. 1). Today, this is a backwater of the Thames, but in the seventeenth century it became the main navigation channel; it had one of the first pound locks on the river, built at some time between 1624 and 1638. The Swift Ditch seemed a good candidate to be Ordric's cut.

Archaeological evidence recovered during gravel quarrying near the hamlet of Thrupp, close to the Thames in the parish of Radley, prompts us to revisit the issue.