River Leen

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The River Leen rises in the Robin Hood Hills just outside Kirkby-in-Ashfield. It then flows through the grounds of Newstead Abbey, skirts Hucknall, goes through Papplewick and on through Bestwood Country Park, and following the route of the Leen Valley into suburban and urban Nottingham, passing through Bulwell, Basford, Radford, and Lenton before joining up with the River Trent. From Lenton onwards the course of the Leen has been quite radically altered on a number of occasions but the river's present course is believed to follow much the same route as it did originally.^[1]

Leen is a corruption through various renderings of the Celtic word llyn, "lake" or "pool", and Anglo‐Saxon hlynna, meaning "streamlet". Some of the surrounding villages derived their name from the River Leen. Lenton, ton being the Saxon word for "village"; and Linby, by being the Danish equivalent of ton.

The University of Nottingham's Jubilee Campus 'opens up' the river's urban route, as it is brought out of the concrete channel originally built to prevent the flooding of the now-demolished Raleigh cycle factory. The river now passes directly through the heart of the campus, meandering and formed into large lakes before leaving the campus to the south, back under a culvert and through Lenton.