TQ0371 : Sweeps Ditch at Staines

Just east of the footbridge which joins Two Rivers Shopping Centre to Church Street, and where the Colne and Wraysbury rivers meet is a small section of a dried up water channel. This was from where the River Colne originally fed Sweeps Ditch.
Sweeps Ditch was an ancient man-made mill stream or defence ditch which flowed through Staines. In Roman & Medieval Times it formed the western and northern boundary of Town Island (sometimes referred to as High Street Island). However, with the building of the Elmsleigh Shopping Centre and the redevelopment of the town centre in the 1970s, the water source was cut. A new water source was provided by Thames Water in 1982, when it installed a pump house in the Riverside car park and this takes water from the Thames. However, the stream no longer goes through the centre of the town, instead it goes underground in a pipe across Thames Street and South Street and re-emerges to the south-east of the town centre, before flowing east and south to rejoin the Thames over a mile downstream near Penton Hook Lock.