REWT
Rivers of England and Wales, Temporally
Sources
Every dataset registered for use here, who made it, and the credit its licence
requires. This page is generated from conf/sources.yml — the file the code itself
reads — so it cannot fall behind what the build is declared to use. Nothing is typed
here by hand.
An unregistered source is a hard error rather than a warning. A stage that reaches for data with no declaration in the manifest fails; it does not proceed with a note in a log. That rule exists because unattributed provenance is not provenance, and because a credit added later is a credit that was owed in the interval.
Registered is not the same as used, and the difference is worth stating rather than leaving in a column. 16 sources are declared; 8 have been fetched and pinned so far. A declaration comes first — the licence researched, the attribution recorded, the terms settled — and the fetch follows, sometimes by months. So this is the list of what may be used and on what terms, not a claim that every line of it is in the current build.
What each source can and cannot say — a different question, and the interesting one — is argued on Evidence.
The credit each source requires
These strings are obligations, not courtesies. Where a licence specifies the wording of an attribution, the wording is reproduced exactly as the publisher requires it, and it travels with every derived file rather than living only on this page.
What a given release actually owes is narrower than this list, and is published with the
data as published/ATTRIBUTION.md — restricted to the sources that release’s build genuinely
consumed, because crediting a registered-but-unused source is itself a false statement about
where the data came from. Both are generated from the same manifest, and each is checked
against it rather than against the other: two renderings that agree with one another and
disagree with the manifest is exactly the case that credits the wrong people.
- ADA Administrative Boundaries: Internal Drainage Districts in England
- © Association of Drainage Authorities copyright and/or database right 2020. All rights reserved.
- Canal & River Trust navigation structures (locks, aqueducts, culverts, weirs)
- Contains Canal & River Trust information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
- EMODnet Digital Bathymetry (DTM)
- Contains EMODnet Bathymetry data. EMODnet Bathymetry Consortium (2024): EMODnet Digital Bathymetry (DTM 2024), licensed CC BY 4.0. (Assembled by this project from the publisher’s citation guidance rather than quoted from a stated attribution string — so it is our reading of what is required, and a correction to it is welcome.)
- GB1900 Gazetteer — final raw dump
- GB1900 Gazetteer, Great Britain Historical GIS Project (University of Portsmouth), the GB1900 partners and volunteers. CC0.
- Historic County Borders Project — UK Definition A, simplified
- This mapping made use of data provided by the Historic County Borders Project, https://www.county-borders.co.uk
- Inventory of reservoirs amounting to 90% of total UK storage
- Durant, M.J.; Counsell, C.J. (2018). Inventory of reservoirs amounting to 90% of total UK storage. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/f5a7d56c-cea0-4f00-b159-c3788a3b2b38
- Large Raised Reservoir (Registered information)
- © CNC/NRW. Contains Natural Resources Wales information © Natural Resources Wales and Database Right. All rights Reserved.
- LIDAR Composite DTM 2022 - 1m
- © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2026
- LiDAR for Scotland Phases 1-6, and the Scottish Land LiDAR Programme 2025 capture
- Contains Scottish Government LiDAR data. Phase 1: Crown copyright Scottish Government, SEPA and Scottish Water (2012). Phase 2: Copyright Scottish Government and SEPA (2014). Phase 3: Crown copyright Scottish Government, SEPA and Fugro (2020). Phase 4: Crown copyright Scottish Government and Fugro (2020). Phase 5: Crown copyright Scottish Government and Fugro (2021). Phase 6: Crown copyright Scottish Government and Fugro (2022). Scottish Land LiDAR Programme: Crown copyright Scottish Government (c) Crown copyright and database right (2025).
- Mills of Britain (Historic Waterpower Britain, Data S1)
- Jonell, T.N., Jones, P., Lucas, A., Naylor, S. (2024). Limited waterpower contributed to rise of steam power in British ‘Cottonopolis’. PNAS Nexus. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae251 — data CC BY 4.0. Records in the 1893-1914 layer derive from the GB1900 Gazetteer (Great Britain Historical GIS Project, University of Portsmouth, the GB1900 partners and volunteers, CC0).
- National Library of Scotland historic OS map tilesets
- Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
- OS Boundary-Line
- Contains OS data © Crown Copyright and database rights 2026.
- OS Open Rivers
- Contains OS data © Crown Copyright and database rights 2026.
- OS OpenMap - Local
- Contains OS data © Crown Copyright and database rights 2026.
- OS Terrain 50
- Contains OS data © Crown Copyright and database rights 2026.
- Welsh Government / NRW LiDAR DTM 1m (2020-23)
- © CNC/NRW. Contains Natural Resources Wales information © Natural Resources Wales and database right. All rights reserved.
Every registered source
| Source | Made by | Licence | Terms |
|---|---|---|---|
| ADA Administrative Boundaries: Internal Drainage Districts in England | Environment Agency, on behalf of the Association of Drainage Authorities | Open Government Licence v3 | open, redistribution permitted |
| Canal & River Trust navigation structures (locks, aqueducts, culverts, weirs) | Canal & River Trust | Open Government Licence v3 | open, redistribution permitted |
| EMODnet Digital Bathymetry (DTM) | EMODnet Bathymetry Consortium | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) | open, redistribution permitted DO NOT USE FOR NAVIGATION |
| GB1900 Gazetteer — final raw dump | Southall, Humphrey; Aucott, Paula; and the GB1900 volunteers (2018) Great Britain Historical GIS Project, University of Portsmouth |
CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain dedication) | open, redistribution permitted |
| Historic County Borders Project — UK Definition A, simplified | Historic Counties Trust | Free of charge for all personal, educational, non-commercial and commercial use; no specific permission required. Acknowledgement requested, not required. | open, redistribution permitted |
| Inventory of reservoirs amounting to 90% of total UK storage doi:10.5285/f5a7d56c-cea0-4f00-b159-c3788a3b2b38 |
Durant, M.J.; Counsell, C.J. (2018) NERC Environmental Information Data Centre |
Open Government Licence v3.0 (SPDX ogl-uk-3.0) | open, redistribution permitted |
| Large Raised Reservoir (Registered information) | Natural Resources Wales | Open Government Licence v3, with NRW copyright acknowledged | open, redistribution permitted |
| LIDAR Composite DTM 2022 - 1m | Environment Agency / Defra | Open Government Licence v3 | open, redistribution permitted |
| LiDAR for Scotland Phases 1-6, and the Scottish Land LiDAR Programme 2025 capture | Scottish Government (served by JNCC) | Open Government Licence (version not stated in the publisher’s metadata) | open, redistribution permitted |
| Mills of Britain (Historic Waterpower Britain, Data S1) doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.24042087 |
Jonell, Tara N.; Jones, Peter; Lucas, Adam; Naylor, Simon (2024) figshare, for the University of Glasgow / University of Wollongong / National Library of Scotland |
CC BY 4.0 for the mill point layers; the 1893-1914 layer is GB1900-derived and its authors require redistribution under CC0 1.0 | open, redistribution permitted |
| National Library of Scotland historic OS map tilesets | National Library of Scotland | Not established. NLS’s per-layer re-use table lists 29 of 34 layers as CC-BY; the England-and-Wales six-inch and one-inch layers are NOT on it, and no term is stated for them elsewhere. | open, redistribution not established |
| OS Boundary-Line | Ordnance Survey | OS OpenData licence (os.uk/opendata/licence) — OGL-equivalent, attribution required | open, redistribution permitted |
| OS Open Rivers | Ordnance Survey | Open Government Licence v3 — attribution required | open, redistribution permitted |
| OS OpenMap - Local | Ordnance Survey | Open Government Licence v3 — attribution required | open, redistribution permitted |
| OS Terrain 50 | Ordnance Survey | OS OpenData licence (os.uk/opendata/licence) — OGL-equivalent, attribution required | open, redistribution permitted |
| Welsh Government / NRW LiDAR DTM 1m (2020-23) | Welsh Government / Natural Resources Wales | Open Government Licence v3, with NRW copyright acknowledged | open, redistribution permitted |
What the terms mean here
Redistribution is the field that matters, because it governs the only thing this project does that a reader sees: publishing a derived file. Permitted means a dataset built on that source can be released openly under this project’s own terms, with the attribution above carried through. Not established means it cannot — the source may be read and worked against, but nothing derived from it may be published until a term is found or granted.
1 of the 16 is not settled, and the manifest says so rather than leaving it to be discovered:
- National Library of Scotland historic OS map tilesets. Not established. NLS’s per-layer re-use table lists 29 of 34 layers as CC-BY; the England-and-Wales six-inch and one-inch layers are NOT on it, and no term is stated for them elsewhere.
Until that is resolved, such a source is usable for reading the ground and unusable for anything published — a distinction the Evidence page sets out in full, because it shapes how this repository is arranged rather than merely what it ships.
use_constraint is narrower than a licence and is not one. Where it appears, the
publisher permits redistribution but forbids a purpose — the bathymetry carries
DO NOT USE FOR NAVIGATION, which is why the sea structure built from it is named for the
clearance it was measured at rather than for anything a vessel could do with it.
Status is about this project, not about the source. Verified means these bytes have been fetched here and their checksum recorded, so a rebuild gets the same input or fails loudly. Unverified means the declaration has been researched and the fetch has not yet happened — the terms are established, the file is not yet pinned.
Why the list is short
It is short on purpose. Every source here is one whose licence permits an open derived release, and several obvious candidates were rejected on exactly that test rather than on quality: share-alike gazetteers that would carry their terms into everything downstream, and a national navigation dataset that can be read and measured but whose derivatives cannot be shared. The reasoning for each is recorded on Evidence, including the ones this project would have liked to use.
Generated from conf/sources.yml by tools/docs/sources_page.py.
To correct an attribution, edit the manifest and regenerate — an edit to the page is
overwritten at the next build.
| Evidence | what each source can and cannot say, and on what terms |
| Methodology | how they are assembled, and why the order matters |
| The scale of the work | what the sources cover, and what they leave to volunteers |