Editing River Ouse, Sussex (section)

===Lower river===
[[File:Southease Swing Bridge - geograph.org.uk - 1092218.jpg|thumb|right|Southease swing bridge dates from 1880. It no longer opens.]]
Several attempts were made to improve the tidal river below Lewes. In March 1730, the engineer John Reynolds had surveyed the state of the timber pier at Newhaven, and reported to Parliament. An act of Parliament{{which|date=August 2024}} was obtained in 1731, and the Harbour Commissioners employed him to carry out renovation work, at a cost of £3000. Over the next four years, piers were repaired and extended to control the channel, but Reynolds sluice at Piddinghoe, constructed between 1731 and 1733 and designed to hold back the water so that it could be used to scour the channel, failed and was removed in 1736.{{sfn |Skempton |2002 |p=571}}

The act of Parliament{{which|date=August 2024}} obtained in 1791, to straighten the channel below Lewes, was managed by Trustees and the Commissioners of the Lewes and Laughton Levels. Funding came from tolls on the river, and a drainage charge for landowners within the levels. There were clauses in the act to ensure that tolls could not be varied significantly without corresponding variations in the land drainage rates.{{sfn |Priestley |1831 |p=489}} The work on straightening and enlarging the lower river was carried out between 1791 and 1795, and Jessop's plans were overseen by a schoolmaster and civil engineer from Lewes called Cater Rand.{{sfn |Brent |1993 |p=21}} The provision of a bridge at Southease was a requirement of the act, as the re-routing of the river divided farmland.<ref name=Southease/> In practice the costs to the landowners on the levels were too high, and another act of Parliament{{which|date=August 2024}} was obtained on 20 June 1800, which repealed the river tolls, and replaced them with higher tolls, to redress the balance.{{sfn |Priestley |1831 |pp=489-490}}

From 1783, [[John Ellman]], better known for his agricultural achievements, became the Expenditor for the Lewes and Laughton Levels, and as well as carrying out the tradition role of collecting the water scot tax and spending it, he worked tirelessly to organise and supervise work on the Glynde Reach and the lower Ouse, which enabled a 120-ton ship named ''Kitty'' to unload stone at Lewes Bridge in the late 1820s. He retired in 1828, and the following year the river flooded, but the results of the improvements were seen when the meadows drained in just 48 hours. Tapsfield's Shallow, near to Lewes Bridge, was finally removed by the engineer [[William Cubitt]] in 1838.{{sfn |Brent |1993 |p=21}} Work on the west breakwater, a huge construction to protect the mouth of the river and enable ships to access the port of Newhaven at all states of the tide, began after a tramway link was constructed in 1866. It was completed in 1889, and the tramway was subsequently used to maintain the breakwater, until the tracks were lifted in 1963. For many years the locomotive used on the tramway was No. 72 ''Fenchurch'', now preserved on the [[Bluebell Railway]], which runs from {{rws|Sheffield Park}} on the upper river to {{rws|East Grinstead}}.{{sfn |Blackwell |2002}}