Charts of our River

Merged with Maps of our locality

For the benefit of future local historians and to feed those afflicted with curiosity, the relevant maps and charts we have found and used are listed here. For our book, we have regarded maps as dealing with the land and charts with the water.  They are reproduced here only as small images to give a sense of content as we could not do them justice. Some are available by consulting the Book Notes on our website. If the reader has or is aware of, other relevant charts or maps our group is eager to learn of them.

1539 Richard Cavendish?: A coloured chart of the coast of Essex and Suffolk, from the Naze to Bawdsey showing the course of the Stour, Orwell, and Deben. Does not show the village nor name the Deben.

1801 Thames Estuary Chart by William Heather: Notes our presence but no detail.

1845 Deben survey. This was so interesting that it became a separate section. (Crossref)

1885 6″ OS maps of Deben showing flow are in storage at the Record Office pending their move. These should show something of interest, if only for swimmers or absolutely fanatical sailors, when available. Reference EF12/3/5/15.

1926 Regatta Chart: Ink on paper. 10″ to the mile, depths in fathoms. Magnetic North arrow. By TNW (T.N.Waller almost certainly) A nicely traced chart from the Waldringfield and Hemley Boating and Sailing Club showing the Regatta Course. Some nice categorisations of mud and shows locations but not names of beacons. It shows Girling and Plum Tree hards. There are terrestrial points of interest including the Post Office, Shop, Bakery, and Telegraph Office in Newbourne. TNW must have enjoyed producing this chart as the level of detail is much greater than required. Once again we are in his debt.

1944 There is a series of military charts of the coast including one for the Orwell chart.  Sadly, it appears that the Deben was not covered in this series.

1945 Moorings Chart: 30 inches to the mile: Ink on paper with a watercolour wash. Scale bar. Magnetic North. Shows beacons. This has names on the moorings. A very attractive chart with decorative fish. Again the work of someone who enjoyed their work, ‘E. Nunn’s mooring chart received with “approbation’ stated the WFC minutes... Courtesy WFC. 

1945 WFC Fairway mooring

1976 Moorings Chart: Ink on tracing paper. Scale bar, offset from North-South. Shows numbered moorings although needs to be matched with an index. A well produced, practical chart. Courtesy WFC. 

1976 Peter Fraser’s Plan of Waldringfield Moorings

Deben Tidal Flow Chart. This came to the group from Andrew Haig who most likely acquired it through his WFC role. The chart divides the river into four sections and runs from HW-6 to HW+6. It does not state the port to use but Harwich is a reasonable assumption. Other than the 1885 chart mentioned above no other tidal flow charts are known of the river. These would be of use to swimmers if they were reliable but not of much concern to others.

Tidal Chart Village HW plus 2

1976 Imray Chart of Deben with IALA Buoyage shows names of reaches.

1981 & 1993 Stanfords “The East Coast: Cromer to Harwich” with IALA Buoyage. No names shown on the reaches.

During the 21C Bathymetry data from Multi-Beam Sonar has become publicly available and has been used in some of the charts in our book. See our website.