River Nore

The River Nore (Irish: An Fheoir) is a 140-kilometre (87 mi) long river located in south-east of Ireland. Along with the River Suir and River Barrow, it is one of the constituent rivers of the group known as the Three Sisters. The river drains approximately 977 square miles (2,530 km²) of Leinster. The long term average flow rate of the River Nore is 42.9 cubic metres per second (m³/s) The river rises in the Devil's Bit Mountain, County Tipperary. Flowing generally southeast, and then south, before emptying into the Celtic Sea at Waterford Harbour, Waterford.

Parts of the river are listed as Special Areas of Conservation.

Name

The river is known in Irish as An Fheoir [ənˠ oːɾʲ], possibly referring to féar, "grass." In 1732 John Loveday spelled it Neor and Neure.

Course

The Nore rises on the eastern slopes of the Devil's Bit Mountain in the townland of Borrisnoe, County Tipperary. It then flows south-eastwards to County Laois and County Kilkenny before joining the River Barrow just north of New Ross near the Barrow Bridge. The river passes near Durrow, County Laois then through Ballyragget, the city of Kilkenny and then the villages of Bennettsbridge and Thomastown. It flows through the Mount Juliet estate. Further south, it forms a picturesque V-shaped river valley, particularly notable near the village of Inistioge, the tidal limit. Major tributaries of the Nore include the Dinin, the Breagagh at Kilkenny City, the King's River, the Little Arrigle and the Black Water.

Nore

The Nore is a sandbank at the mouth of the Thames Estuary, England. It marks the point where the River Thames meets the North Sea, roughly halfway between Havengore Creek in Essex and Warden Point in Kent.

Until 1964 it marked the seaward limit of the Port of London Authority. As the sandbank was a major hazard for shipping coming in and out of London, in 1732 it received the world's first lightship. This became a major landmark, and was used as an assembly point for shipping. Today it is marked by Sea Reach No. 1 Buoy.

Lightship

The Nore is a hazard to shipping, so in 1732 the world's first lightship was moored over it in an experiment by Robert Hamblin, who patented the idea. The experiment must have proved successful, because by 1819 England had nine lightships. The Nore lightship was run by Trinity House, General Lighthouse Authority for England (and Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar).

The early Nore lightships were small wooden vessels, often Dutch-built galliots. By the end of the 19th century a larger ship with a revolving light had appeared, but after about 1915 the authorities ceased to use a lightship. Sea Reach No. 1 Buoy as of 2006 marks the anchorage-point of the former lightship, about mid-way between Shoeburyness in Essex and the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. This defines the limit of the Thames and the beginning of the North Sea.

River

A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of water. Small rivers can be referred to using names such as stream, creek, brook, rivulet, and rill. There are no official definitions for the generic term river as applied to geographic features, although in some countries or communities a stream is defined by its size. Many names for small rivers are specific to geographic location; examples are "run" in some parts of the United States, "burn" in Scotland and northeast England, and "beck" in northern England. Sometimes a river is defined as being larger than a creek, but not always: the language is vague.

Rivers are part of the hydrological cycle. Water generally collects in a river from precipitation through a drainage basin from surface runoff and other sources such as groundwater recharge, springs, and the release of stored water in natural ice and snowpacks (e.g. from glaciers). Potamology is the scientific study of rivers while limnology is the study of inland waters in general.