River Stour

The River Stour winds for 98 kilometres through Wiltshire and Dorset before reaching the English Channel. Its catchment covers 1,240 square kilometres and the name comes from Old English meaning ‘fierce’. In winter 2014 the river flooded at Christchurch and a hundred residents had to leave their homes. Archaeologists have found Lower Palaeolithic handaxes up to half a million years old in gravel pits along the lower valley. Medieval Welsh tales place a battle on the Stour where Queen Gwendolen defeated King Locrinus and became Britain’s first queen regnant. Thomas Hardy and William Barnes both wrote poems that mention the river’s dark pools. The river rises in artificial lakes at Stourhead and flows south through Blackmore Vale past Gillingham and Sturminster Newton. At Wimborne Minster it meets the Allen and later the Avon before entering Christchurch Harbour. The Stour Valley Way follows the river for most of its length, and the 18th-century White Mill near Sturminster Marshall is open to visitors.