Talk:River Pang

Farnborough

The article says:

The river's flow source is near the village of Compton; although in times of high rainfall its effective subterranean source can be traced back to Farnborough, some four miles to the north-east.

Is this the Farnborough that is west of Compton?

Jim Craigie (talk) 18:21, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Removed uncited content

Some of the information on source is not supported by the cited sources. As was pointed out over three years ago by Jim Craigie, the heading to Farnborough is wrong. That is probably just a silly error by somebody, but more worrying is that I cannot see anything on the OS maps (the only cited source) for any watecourse that flows from either Farnborough or Roden Downs. As this information was introduced by an anonymous contributor, I cannot seek clarification, so I have removed it.

I suspect the information is probably correct, and the OS has simply not mapped these intermittent watercourses, but it is so local that I doubt we will be able to find a citable source for it. So removal is sad, but necessary. Incidentally, this discrepancy has already been pointed out outside the WP community, at [1]. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 17:24, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

The original contributor 86.152.82.78 made other edits which show some local knowledge of Compton, so I was reluctant to remove his contribution on the source of the Pang. He asserted that Farnborough was the effective subterranean source so this would not be shown on OS maps, and could conceivably be true. However, I'm not aware of any significant watercourse coming off Roden Downs, so River Roden could at best be a small intermittent stream.

I can confirm from personal knowledge that "whilst at other times it may be as far downstream as Hampstead Norreys" is true. In recent years there has usually been some flow all year round at grid reference SU534756 which I had thought might be the result of outflow from the Sewage works slightly upstream at grid reference SU532758 because in the past few years the Pang has been dry at grid reference SU531760 during the winter months, but flows during spring, summer and autumn. This is curious, as it is the opposite to the behaviour described in this article. This year there was no flow at grid reference SU534756 from December 2010 to February 2011, and flow only returned at grid reference SU531760 a week ago. Sadly I can't find any references to cite for this unusual behaviour.

The insertion on 11 October 2006 by Keef30 "However, possibly due to climate changes and heavy water extraction, the River Pang rarely flows between Compton and Hampstead Norreys at all." was correct at the time, but Thames Water were then required to reduce the quantity of water abstracted at Compton and consequently flow returned to the upper reaches of the Pang. This was reported in the Newbury Weekly News at the time, but there doesn't seem to be an online reference.

Jim Craigie (talk) 18:32, 3 April 2011 (UTC)