| The River Orwell flows through the county of Suffolk in England from Ipswich to Felixstowe. Above Ipswich, the river is known as the River Gipping, but its name changes to the Orwell at Stoke Bridge, about half a mile below where the river becomes tidal by Bobby Robson Bridge on West End Road. It broadens into an estuary at Ipswich, where the Ipswich dock has operated since the 7th century, and then flows into the North Sea at Felixstowe, the UK's largest container port, after joining the River Stour at Shotley forming Harwich harbour.
The large Orwell Bridge carries the A14 trunk road over the estuary to the south of Ipswich.
Name: In the name Orwell, Or- comes from an ancient river-name—probably pre-Celtic; but -well probably indicates an Anglo-Saxon naming. In A tour through England and Wales, written in 1722, Daniel Defoe calls the river "Orwel" (though he does this inconsistently). He also mentions that "a traveller will hardly understand me, especially a seaman, when I speak of the River Stour and the River Orwell at Harwich, for they know them by no other names than those of Maningtre-Water, and Ipswich-Water". The writer Eric Blair chose the pen name under which he would later become famous, "George Orwell," because of his love for the river. A few miles north of the Orwell is another Suffolk river, the Ore, and Orfordness, the village port of Orford with its historic castle. |
