This River Ouse is in Yorkshire and flows through York itself; it’s the sixth longest river in the country (when it’s length includes that of the River Ure of which it is a continuation) and has many tributaries, including the Aire, the Derwent, the Don, the Foss, the Nidd, the Rother, the Swale, the Ure and the Wharfe. No-one really knows the meaning of the name, Ouse, and it maybe Celtic in origin, or even older and may mean ‘water’.
When I hear the name Ouse, I always think of the River Great Ouse in Cambridgeshire which I knew very well as a child. ‘My’ River Ouse is longer than the Yorkshire river, it’s the fourth longest in the country, and the River Cam which flows through Cambridge where I used to live is a tributary of it. There is also a River Little Ouse, which flows into the Great Ouse, and this waterway marks the division between the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk.
I didn’t realise that there is yet one other Ouse, one which flows into the sea at Newhaven, which has a strong family connection to me through my father-in-law who was born and lived there for many years before the war. One sad fact I found about this Sussex Ouse was that it is the river in which Virginia Woolf drowned herself in 1941.
Far away from these Rivers Ouse, is another Ouse, a tidal estuary in Shetland, and even further away, in Tasmania there is a tiny town of that name, Tasmania where my great-grandfather was born…. So many connections!
Here’s the lengths of the top six rivers in England: the River Severn, the River Thames, the River Trent, the River Great Ouse, the River Wye and the River Ure/River Ouse in Yorkshire
Lois Elsden 