The old course of the River Jordan through Little Bowden

The flooding of the River Jordan earlier this week has had me looking at old Ordnance Survey maps. As I suspected, Rectory Lane has this long curve because it used to follow the river.

And the shot below, taken outside the old thatched house on Scotland Road below - I remember it as a shop in the 1980s and it may once have been Little Bowden Post Office - shows how high the pavement once is there. I suspect that's because the road used to flood regularly.

Little Bowden used to be two settlements. One was by the church and the other, called Scotland End, was at the Northampton Road end of Scotland Road. Presumably because of regular flooding, the old shop was about the only building between them.

As far as I can tell from the maps, the radical straightening of the Jordan took place about 1920 - this needs more research. And I've found an old newspaper report that says that, before the railways came to Harborough, the Jordan used to flow through the fields near Gores Lane and join the Welland further east than it does now.