Nether Bridge and Miller Bridge, requiring the removal of of spoil, which was reused as the base for a business park. A large lagoon was also constructed to the north of the town to act as a gravel trap. Despite the work, Kendal was again inundated in 2015, when flows in the river far exceeded the design flow of the channel. The Environment Agency published plans for a new set of defences to protect the town in 2018. The river is a Special Area of Conservation, particularly because it supports populations of the endangered white-clawed crayfish. It also supports populations of three types of game fish, and the upper reaches have become important for the rearing of juvenile salmon since fish passes were constructed to allow fish to negotiate the weirs on the river in 1986. Name The origins of the name of the River Kent are uncertain. The name is thought not to belong to the Germanic languages, and therefore to be Brittonic; but a precise etymology has not been identified. Course The River Kent rises in the Lake District National Park as a series of streams to the north of the hamlet of Kentmere, which flow rapidly downhill and into the Kentmere Reservoir. The reservoir was completed in 1848, to regulate the flow on the river for the benefit of the mills further downstream. Lingmell Gill rises from similar sources to the east, and flows into the reservoir. The river below the reservoir is supplied from a pipeline through the earth dam, with a controlling valve on the upstream slope of the dam, and when water levels are high, from a spillway at the western edge of the dam. As the river descends toward Kentmere, it is joined by Skeel Gill and Bryant's Gill, Ullstone Gill, Nunnery Beck, Kill Gill and a number of other unnamed tributaries. The river is crossed by Low Bridge, which carries a minor road to the settlement of Kentmere, and in then joined by Hall Gill. It broadens out as it flows through Kentmere Tarn, which was drained in the early 1840s to provide agricultural land. The draining was a major factor leading to the building of Kentmere Reservoir. Prior to draining, it had provided habitat for algae called diatoms, which formed a layer of diatomite on the bottom of the tarn when they died. From the 1930s until 1971, diatomite was extracted