ABSTRACT
The first systematic river gauging in Britain was carried out by Captain W. N. McClean in 1912 in Scotland but by the time of publication of the first Surface water year book of Great Britain, which referred to the water year 1935–6, there were still only 27 gauging stations, seven of which had been set up by McClean (Boulton 1966). During the 1950s and 1960s, however, there was a rapid expansion of the gauging network so that by the end of 1973 the re-named Surface water: United Kingdom (DOE 1978c) listed 1205 gauging stations. The rapidity of recent growth is illustrated in Figure 1.1 by the bar graphs of starting dates of gauging station records and by the fact that the average length of record to 1973 of gauging stations in the United Kingdom was only 11.6 years.
