Drink!

[Boreades]

My local expert on all things to do with Mildenhall/Cunetio is Bryn Walters, Director of the Association for Roman Archaeology. It was his group that found the pre-Roman brewery-temple in the nearby Og valley. He reckons some of both the Og and Kennet was canalised at some time. Whether it was the Romans or the Brits who did that is uncertain, but one of the purposes was to make it easier and more productive to grow watercress in the purer chalk stream waters.

[Mick Harper]

Watercress? Sounds a bit twee to me. What else grows best in canalised pure water?

[TisILeclerc]

'A bit twee...'?

Hippocrates was a fan of the stuff and is supposed to have put his hospital next to a supply of the stuff. That was in 400BC so who knows maybe he heard about it from traders coming back from the west country?

It's packed full of all sorts of vitamins and minerals and was nicknamed 'Poor Man's Bread' by the Victorians.

Perfect stuff to go with poached trout in between sticking sarsen stones up in the air I would say.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watercress

http://www.lavenderandlovage.com/2012/0 ... cnics.html

[Mick Harper]

[Boreades]

Those barrels of beer (from the malted barley + spring water) would get a much better ride being floated down stream on a barge than being thumped about being carried over the stoney/bumpy "roman" roads.

Which would make the water works dual purpose.

Or perhaps it was tri-purpose. Those vineyards on the hillsides would need plenty of fresh water too.

[Boreades]

[Mick Harper]

These are all excellently ingenious rationales but, since they apply more or less everywhere, don't come close to explaining the distribution of (classical) chalk streams.

[Boreades]

[Mick Harper]

Not bad at all. On the other hand, aren't other cold grape areas eg Champagne and the Moselle Valley also chalky soils? On the other, other hand aren't these areas quite close to Belgium?

[Boreades]