London Road, some railway sidings serving a goods depot, and the main line into Sheffield railway station, before it joined the Sheaf near Saxon Road. History Historically the stream formed part of the boundary between the ancient kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia. Later and until the beginning of the 20th century the stream formed the boundary between Yorkshire and Derbyshire. In 1957, the section from Albert Road to the railway culvert was enclosed in a culvert. The scheme was planned by the city engineer, H Foster, and was designed to reduce flooding of homes in Heeley and Meersbrook, and to carry additional water away from new housing in the Gleadless Valley. The culvert was about long, and although it broadly followed the existing line of the river, the bends were ironed out where possible, providing a much straighter course. At the start, it ran through concrete pipes which were in diameter, but then ran through rectangular castings of various sizes. As part of the work, the original culvert under Chesterfield Road and the railway was strengthened. The drop in level of the river bed between the two ends of the culvert was handled by constructing several staircases, down which the water flowed. The culvert was designed to take a maximum flow of per minute. Water quality The Environment Agency measure water quality of the river systems in England. Each is given an overall ecological status, which may be one of five levels: high, good, moderate, poor and bad. There are several components that are used to determine this, including biological status, which looks at the quantity and varieties of invertebrates, angiosperms and fish. Chemical status, which compares the concentrations of various chemicals against known safe concentrations, is rated good or fail. The Environment Agency do not publish separate data for Meers Brook, but the river is included as part of the River Sheaf data. Water quality was as follows in 2019. The river is only rated moderate for ecological status due to the fact that the channel has been heavily modified by human activity. Like many rivers in the UK, the chemical status changed from good to fail in 2019, due to the presence of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE), perfluorooctane sulphonate (PFOS) and mercury compounds, none of which had previously been included in the assessment. Bibliography References Rivers of Sheffield fr:Meersbrook