XV The Lost Rivers of London
London is deficient in two conditions to render it picturesque: it lacks diversity of surface, and it lacks water. In so vast an expanse of ground as is covered by London, Ludgate Hill and Notting Hill are mere molehills.10 As to water, it has the Thames, but that is accessible at short and broken intervals only. There is the Embankment from Blackfriars to Westminster; a short bit at Chelsea, and the Albert Embankment. But the City people during the day have no time to waste on their Embankment, and in the evening they are gone to the suburbs, and so this grand promenade is given up to occasional country cousins’ visits, and to permanent ruffianism. For, of course, no one from the more northern parts of London ever thinks of coming so far to take a stroll on that Embankment, from which nothing is to be seen but mud-banks in the near prospect, as by a perverse arrangement of nature it is generally low water when you want to take a walk; on the opposite bank only dismal wharves present themselves. As to the Chelsea Embankment, that is patronized by the dwellers in that region only, if they do not neglect it altogether, as people generally do who live in a rather picturesque locality. The less we say about the Albert Embankment the better; its characteristics are dingy hovels and smoke-belching pottery chimneys on one side, smoke and cinders from passing steam-barges and penny steamers on the river, and a dreary outlook on the opposite side, scarcely relieved by the Tate Gallery, which, for reasons unknown to the general public, but self-evident to those who can see the wire-pulling behind, has been pitched, like a King Log, into the Pimlico swamp. All other parts of the river are inaccessible to the public, and therefore as good as non-existent for the Londoner.
Thus much for the Thames. As to other pieces of water to be found in public parks, they are mere ponds, and of benefit only locally. As to public fountains, which form the peculiar charm of so many Continental cities, where the melodious splash of water is heard day and night, London possesses none. True, there are two squirts in Trafalgar Square, and the Shaftesbury fountain is making asthmatic efforts to assert itself, whilst the Angel at the top seems to be shooting Folly as it flies all around him in the savoury purlieus of the Haymarket. The small drinking fountains found here and there are evidences of philanthropy, which may be grateful to children and tramps, to horses and dogs, but do not add much to the aquatic features of London. There are canals, it is true, but they are private property, and so fenced, hoarded, and walled in, as to be of no use to the public. And as a rule their water is so dirty that no one with a nose would walk by the side of them, even if allowed to do so.
But London was not always so deadly level and so waterless as it is now. In ancient days there were high hills and deep valleys in the very heart of it. From the river Lea to the river Brent on the northern side of London there were numerous rivulets and brooks descending from the northern heights through the City and its western outskirts into the Thames, brooks and rivulets which at times assumed such dimensions as to cause serious inundations. It was the same in the south of London, where from the Ravensbourne to the Wandle similar watercourses reached the Thames from the southern hills.
All those brooks between the four rivers we have named, and which alone are still existing, have totally disappeared. What were their features, when they still flowed from northern and southern heights, and what were the causes and the process of their disappearance, we now intend to investigate, by proceeding from east to west, and taking the northern shore of the Thames first.
The site on which the Romans founded London was the rising ground on the northern bank of the Thames, from the present Fish Street Hill, or Billingsgate, to the Wallbrook. At a later date of their occupation they extended the City eastward to the Tower, and westward to the valley of the Fleet. Then the valley of the Wallbrook divided the City into two portions of almost equal size. To the north the buildings extended to the present Aldgate and to Moorfields, and westward to Newgate and Ludgate. The wall which encompassed the town began at the Tower, and in a line with various bends in it terminated at the Arx Palatina, somewhere near the present Times office. On the east of the town, where the country was flat, there was a marsh, extending to the river Lea. To the north-west were dense forests stretching far into Middlesex, and abounding with deer, wild boar, and other savage animals. This forest was partly the cause of the many brooks, which in those days watered London from the northern heights; it being a well-known fact that trees absorb and retain moisture.
It is doubtful whether there were any Roman buildings west of the Fleet; Fleet Street and the Strand certainly were then undreamt of, and did not come into existence till centuries after the Romans had left our island. To the west of the present Strand, the ground lying very low, it was frequently inundated by the river, and there are persons still living who can remember Belgravia and Pimlico as a dismal swamp. Westminster Abbey stood on an island, which rose above the marshy environs, and even as late as the times of Charles II. occasional high tides converted the palace of Whitehall into an island.
The great forest of Middlesex above mentioned came close to the City wall; it had, in fact, occupied a portion of the site on which the City was built, and as much of it had been cut down, and so much space cleared, as the builders required for their operations. But the nature of the forest ground could not be as readily changed. It was still full of moisture, and numerous rills continued to flow through it. Now, one of the most important of them was the Langbourne.
This watercourse, so called because of its length, took its rise in ground now forming part of Fenchurch Street. It ran swiftly through that street in a westward direction, across Grass, now Gracechurch Street, into and down Lombard Street—where many Roman remains have been discovered—to the west of St. Mary Woolnoth Church, where it turned sharply round to the south and gave name to Sherbourne Lane, so termed of sharing or dividing, because there it broke into a number of rills and so reached the Thames. From this watercourse Langbourne Ward took its name. Thus says Stow, but he adds that in his day (1598) this bourne had long been stopped up at the head, and the rest of the course filled up and paved over, ‘so that no sign thereof remaineth more than the name aforesaid.’
Some modern historians, Mr. Loftie, for instance, deny the existence of the Langbourne altogether. ‘Stow says that the Langbourne rose in Fenchurch Street and ran down Lombard Street. It does not seem to have occurred to him that the course indicated is up hill,’ Mr. Loftie objects. But Fenchurch Street was then, as it is now, considerably higher than the outfall of the Langbourne into the Thames, and what do we know of the then levels of the streets through which it was said to have run? Upwards of thirty feet under the present level of Lombard Street Roman remains have been found, and the Langbourne, as we know from various documents, was covered in as early as the latter part of the twelfth century, a time when building increased rapidly under Fitz-Alwyn, the first Mayor of London; moreover, the fenny condition of Fenchurch Street is said to have been due to the overflowing of the Langbourne at its source. Mr. Loftie says that the original name of the Langbourne was Langford; but a ford implies a watercourse, and not a mere ditch or artificial trench, which, receiving the drainage of the immediate locality, fell into the Wallbrook, as Mr. Burt would have us believe. If the Langbourne never existed, whence did Langbourne Ward derive its name?
Proceeding westward, we come to a much more important stream, namely, the Wallbrook.
No more striking instance of the changes which Time will effect in the topographical aspect of a locality can be found than that which the disappearance of the Wallbrook has produced within the limits of its own course and in its surroundings. Where now a smooth expanse of asphalte paving covers firm ground (except where rendered treacherously dangerous by sewer-like railway tunnels, in which human beings are shot to and fro like so many rats enclosed in traps in a drain!), extending from Princes Street right across to the Mansion House, and to and down the street called Wallbrook, there, centuries ago, yawned a wide ravine with precipitous sides, at the bottom of which flowed the brook called the Wall-brook, because, rising in the upper fenny grounds of Moorfields, it entered the city through an opening in the wall, somewhere near the northern end of the present Moorgate Street. The brook, towards its southern termination, must have been of considerable width, for barges could be rowed up to Bucklersbury—a fact commemorated by Barge Yard, formerly a kind of dock, but now solid ground, opening into Bucklersbury. The width of the Wallbrook near its outfall was no doubt increased by tributaries, which, flowing from the opposite portion of the City, found an exit on the western bank. There is no doubt that there was a watercourse along the line of Cheapside; the fact is stated positively by Maitland. He says: ‘At Bread Street corner, the north-east end, in 1595, one Thomas Tomlinson causing in the High Street of Chepe a vault to be digged, there was found at fifteen feet deep a fair pavement, like that above-ground, and at the further end, at the channel, was found a tree, sawed into five steps, which was to step over some brook running out of the west towards Wallbrook. And upon the edge of the said brook there was found lying the bodies of two great trees, the ends whereof were then sawed off, and firm timber as at the first when they fell. It was all forced ground until they went past the trees aforesaid, which was about seventeen feet deep, or better. Thus much has the ground of this city been raised from the main. And here it may be observed that within fourscore years and less, Cheapside was raised divers feet higher than it was when St. Paul’s was first built, as appeared by several eminent marks discovered in the late laying of the foundation of that church.’ The mention of Cheapside as a highway does not go back to very early times. In the eleventh century it must have been a mere bog; for, when in 1090 the roof of Bow Church was blown off by a tempest, the rafters, which were twenty-six feet long, penetrated more than twenty feet into the soft soil of Cheapside. The course of the brook just mentioned west of Bread Street is not known; it is doubtful whether it struck off northward by about Gutter Lane, and so towards springs known to exist near Cripplegate, or whether it came from further westward, from the springs which supply the ancient baths in Bath Street (formerly called Bagnio Court), north of Newgate Street.
But we must return to the Wallbrook itself; and, first, as to its course. After entering the City through the opening in the wall, it curved eastward, ran along Bell Alley, crossed Tokenhouse Yard and Lothbury, close by St. Margaret’s Church, curved westward again, passing through ground now covered by the north-west corner of the Bank of England; crossing the present Princes Street and the Poultry, it ran under what is now the National Safe Deposit, whence, by an almost semicircular bend, it reached Cannon Street, which it crossed, turning westwardly towards St. Michael’s Church, and crossing Thames Street, flowed past Joiners’ Hall into the Thames. There were various bridges over the said watercourse. There was one close to Bokerelsberi (Bucklersbury), which in 1291 four occupiers of tenements adjoining the bridge were ordered to repair, according to clauses in their tenancies. There was another over against the wall of the chancel of the church of St. Stephen, which it was the duty of the parishioners to repair, as they were ordered to do, for instance, in 1300. At Dowgate Hill, at the outfall of the Wallbrook into the Thames, there was discovered in 1884 an ancient landing-stage, a Roman pavement in tile, set upon timber piles, with mortised jointing. The stage stood on the left bank of the Wallbrook, facing not the Thames, but the brook. It was twenty-one feet below the present level of Dowgate Hill, and below the churchyard of St. John’s. A large quantity of stout oak-piling was also in situ, and the sill of the bridge which crossed from east to west at this spot was seen very plainly. Another landing-stage appears to have existed on the brook at a spot now covered by the National Safe Deposit: it consisted of a timber flooring supported by huge oak timbers, and running parallel with the stream. Adjoining this were evidences of a macadamized roadway, which extended in a line with Bucklersbury, until it reached the apparent course of the brook. Upon the opposite side similar indications appeared, so that here also a bridge may have existed. Another bridge seems to have spanned the brook near London Wall, in Broad Street Ward, with yet another a little more south. It appears that in the year 1300 both these bridges required repairs, and that the Prior of the Holy Trinity, who was liable for those of the first, and the Prior of the New Hospital without Bishopsgate, who was bound to do those of the second, were in that year summoned by the Mayor and Aldermen of London ‘to rebuild the said bridges and keep them in repair.’
When in the seventies the National Safe Deposit Company dug down some forty feet into the ground, and reached the ancient course of the Wallbrook, they found in its bed, among other debris, enormous quantities of broken vessels and kitchen utensils. No doubt the careless cooks and housemaids of the ancient Romans found the brook handy for getting rid of the evidences of mishap or recklessness; but their successors on the banks of the stream seem to have treated it with even greater disrespect. In the records of the City we find constant references to the disgraceful condition of the Wallbrook. In 1288 the Warden and Sheriffs of the City of London had to order that the watercourse of the Wallbrook should be made free from dung and other nuisances, and that the rakes should be put back again upon every tenement extending from Finsbury Moor to the Thames. In 1374 the Mayor and Aldermen granted to Thomas atte Ram, brewer, a seven years’ lease of the Moor, together with charge of the watercourse of Wallbrook, without paying any rent therefor, upon the understanding that he should keep the said Moor well and properly, and have the Wallbrook cleansed for the whole of the term, clearing it from dung and other filth thrown therein, he taking for every latrine built upon the said watercourse twelve pence yearly. And if, in so cleansing it, he should find aught therein, he should have it for his own. But it would seem that Thomas atte Ram did not properly perform his contract, for at the expiration of it, namely in 1383, we find by an Ordinance of the Common Council that, ‘whereas the watercourse of the Wallbrook is stopped up by divers filth and dung thrown thereinto by persons who have houses along the said course, to the great nuisance and damage of all the City, the Aldermen of the Wards of Coleman Street, Broad Street, Chepe, Wallbrook, Vintry and Dowgate, through whose wards the said watercourse runs, shall inquire if any person dwelling along the said course has a stable or other house, whereby dung or other filth may fall into the same; or otherwise throws therein such manner of filth by which the said watercourse is stopped up, and they (the Aldermen) shall pursue all such offenders. But it shall be lawful for those persons who have houses on the said stream to have latrines over it, provided they do not throw rubbish or other refuse through the same... and every person having such latrines shall pay yearly to the Chamberlain two shillings for each of them.’
With such arrangements, and the constant increase of buildings on the brook, and the decrease of water supplied to it by the springs in Moorfields, which were gradually being laid dry, the Wallbrook, from a clear stream, became a foul ditch, an open sewer, so that it was found necessary to convert it into a covered one in reality. The brook was filled up with all kinds of debris and partially bricked over, so that when Stow wrote (in 1598) he was obliged to say: ‘This watercourse... was afterwards vaulted over with brick, and paved level with the streets and lanes... and since that houses also have been built thereon, so that the course of Wallbrook is now hidden underground, and thereby hardly known.’ The stream was covered in at least three centuries before the covering in of the Fleet river, but its course can still be traced by the many important buildings which lined its banks. Commencing at its influx to the Thames, there were along its course on the western side the halls of the Innholders, the Dyers, the Joiners, the Skinners, the Tallow-chandlers, and the Cutlers; the churches of St. John, St. Michael, St. Stephen (which originally stood on the western side), St. Mildred, and St. Margaret; also the Grocers’ and the Founders’ Halls, the estates of the Drapers and Leathersellers, and in Bucklersbury Cornet’s Tower, a strong stone tower which was erected by Edward III. as his ‘Exchange of money there to be kept.’ In the sixteenth century it seems to have come into the possession of one Buckle, a grocer, who intended to erect in its place a ‘goodly frame of timber,’ but, ‘greedily labouring to pull down the tower,’ a part thereof fell upon and killed him.
In 1835 a curious discovery, the import of which was then unsuspected, was made close to the Swan’s Nest, a public-house in Great Swan Alley, Moorgate Street. A pit or well was laid open, in which was found a large quantity of earthen vessels of various patterns. This well had been carefully planked over with stout boards; the vases it contained were placed on their sides, embedded in mud or sand, which had settled so closely round them that a great number were broken in the attempt to extricate them. A coin and some iron implements were also found in the well, which was about three feet square, and boarded on each side with narrow planks about two feet long. The object with which these vessels, etc., had been deposited in this well was not at the time surmised, but it was made clear by a subsequent discovery. When the National Safe Deposit Company’s premises, already referred to, were built, a similar wooden framework was discovered at a depth of about thirty feet below the present level of the street. It was of oak, and about three feet square, and the contents of the box were similar to those found at the Swan’s Nest. Fortunately this find came under the observation of Mr. John E. Price, F.S.A., and Honorary Secretary of the London and Middlesex Archæological Society, who recognised the remains as those of an arca finalis, a monument employed by the Roman surveyors to indicate the situation of limits of public or private property, answering to a landmark or boundary stone. Similar structures, occasionally of stone or tiles, have been discovered in other parts of England, as also on the Continent. It is therefore evident that the box found higher up the stream was also such an area.
To return once more to Wallbrook. A bridge across it we have not yet mentioned was Horseshoe Bridge, situate where the brook crossed Cloak Lane, which was a famous shopping-place of the ladies of those early days, fancy articles being mostly on sale there. It is, however, time to leave the Wallbrook; let us part from it with such a picture on our minds as will leave a vivid and pleasant impression. Remember that its banks were favourite sites for villas, as is proved by all the evidences of wealth and luxury of the ancient dwellers on the Wallbrook ravine and adjoining streets, now buried fathoms deep underground, which have been found on and near the banks of the river. ‘A villa in beautiful grounds on the Wallbrook to be let’—think of that!
From the valley of the Wallbrook the ground of the City rises gently towards St. Paul’s, and Panyer’s Alley, the highest point; thence it falls almost precipitously towards the valley of the Fleet River, so precipitously, indeed, that one of the descents from the Old Bailey to Farringdon Street obtained the name of Breakneck Steps. When the increase of the population of the old City rendered it desirable to seek new habitations, the citizens looked across the river Fleet, and saw the opposite Holborn, Back, and Saffron Hills as yet unoccupied, stretching out as open country—though roads had begun to be established thereon, such as Field Lane, then in the fields—and began to erect dwellings on the western bank of the river. This led to the erection of bridges; we think Holborn Bridge was the first to be built. But before we enter into an account of the bridges, it is necessary to speak of the river itself.
The Fleet, then, which once formed so important a feature of London topography, took its rise in the dense clay of the district just below Hampstead; at Kentish Town its volume was increased by an affluent from Highgate Ponds; it then made its way through the hill near College Street—whence some writers infer that the name of Oldbourne, by which the river was known for some distance, was really a corruption of Hole-bourne—and entered the valley formed by the hills of Camden Town and the Caledonian Road, pursuing its course to Battle Bridge—since 1830 known as King’s Cross—where it received an affluent from the west, which rose in the high ground to the south of the Hampstead Road. From Battle Bridge the river bent round to the east, and flowed through the grounds of Bagnigge Wells, once the residence of Nell Gwynne, and thence, still with an easterly trend, past the walls of the House of Correction, thence across Baynes Row, where it received another western affluent, taking its rise at the western end of Guilford Street. Thence it flowed to the northern end of Little Saffron Hill, and in this part of its course it sometimes was called the River of Wells, because it was fed by a number of wells or springs, all situate in Clerkenwell, and known as Clerks’ Well, Skinners’ Well, Faggs’ Well, Loder’s Well, Rad Well, and Todd’s Well, this latter a corruption of its proper name, God’s Well, from which Goswell Street took its name. The river thence flowed down the valley between the old City and the Holborn hills, and here it occasionally went by the name of Turnmill Brook, because of the mills which here stood on its banks. On its eastern side was a street called Turnmill Street, which in later days acquired a very bad reputation, its inhabitants being abandoned characters. Originally it was a respectable street, the houses having gardens going down to the river, which was fenced on both sides. In its southward course the river presently reached Holborn Bridge, where it received the affluent called the Hol-bourne, which rose somewhere near St. Giles’. The existence of this brook is denied by some topographers, but it is distinctly shown in a very old map of the manor of Blemundsbury (Bloomsbury), reproduced in Mr. W. Blott’s ‘Chronicle of Blemundsbury,’ 1892. And we see no reason for doubting the correctness of the map, and therefore adopt the Holbourne as a fact. The Fleet then passed under Chick Lane, afterwards called West Street, which crossed the river at right angles, and in quite recent times was the refuge of thieves, burglars, and other criminals; and means of concealment and of escape by way of the river were revealed when, in the forties and fifties, West Street was pulled down for the improvements then in progress in that locality. After passing under Holborn Bridge, the river was known as the Fleet, not because of the fleetness of its course, as some writers would have it, for it never had much of that quality, but because of the flood or high tide it participated in with the rise of the Thames.
Having thus traced the river from its source to its mouth, we may describe the bridges which crossed it.
In the northern part of its course the river, where it passed through what in the early days was still country, was no doubt here and there crossed by bridges, but they were probably wooden bridges of light construction, as the traffic was but limited. The first solid bridge we have any record of is the one which existed at Battle Bridge, which derived its name from the battle between Suetonius Paulinus and Boadicea, the Queen of the Iceni, which is said to have been fought on the spot, and from the brick bridge which in early times there crossed the Fleet. Originally it was built of wood, but at an uncertain date later on it was replaced by one of brick, consisting of a number of arches. Battle Bridge, from the lowness of its situation, was exposed to frequent inundations. In the Gentleman’s Magazine, May, 1818, we read: ‘From the heavy rain which commenced yesterday... Battle Bridge, St. Pancras, and part of Somers Town was inundated. The water was several feet deep in many of the houses, and covered an extent of upwards of a mile. The carcases of several sheep and goats were found... and property was damaged to a very considerable amount.’ Various Acts were passed at the beginning of this century for the improvement of the locality: the river was completely arched over, and in 1830 the spot assumed the name of King’s Cross from the ridiculous structure erected in the centre of the cross roads; it was of octagon shape, surmounted by a statue of George IV. The basement was for some time occupied as a police-station, then as a public-house, and the whole was taken down in 1845, and a tall lamp erected on the spot.
The Fleet was next crossed by an ornamental, somewhat rustic bridge in the grounds of Bagnigge Wells; of course it disappeared with the gardens and buildings of the Wells in 1841. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Clerkenwell, from an almost rural became an urban district, streets began to cross the Fleet, such as Baynes Row, Eyre Street Hill, Mutton Hill, Peter Street, and others. The next old bridge we came to was Cow Bridge, by Cow Lane, or the present Cow Cross. It dated from the middle of the sixteenth century. Stow, writing, it will be remembered, in 1598, says: ‘This bridge being lately decayed, another of timber is made by Chick Lane.’ In the time of Elizabeth the ground from Cow Cross towards the Fleet River, and towards Ely House, on the opposite bank, was either entirely vacant or occupied with gardens.
We next come to Chick Lane, afterwards known as West Street. Stow, writing in 1603, refers to Chicken Lane, ‘toward Turnmill Brook, and over that brook by a timber bridge into the field.’ This must have been Chick Lane, which was really a bridge of houses, the most noticeable of which was one which once had been known as the Red Lion Inn, and which at its demolition is supposed to have been three hundred years old. For the last hundred years of its existence it was used as a lodging-house, and was the resort of thieves, coiners, and other criminals. Its dark closets, trap-doors, sliding panels, and secret recesses rendered it one of the most secure places for robbery and murder; openings in the walls and floors afforded easy means of getting rid of the bodies by dropping them into the Fleet, which for many years before its final abolition was only known as the Fleet Ditch. The history and description of the houses in West Street were rendered so well known at the time of their demolition that we need not enter into them here; besides, they are beyond the scope of our inquiries.
South of Chick Lane was Holborn Bridge, which was built of stone, and, according to Aggas’ map of London in 1560, had houses on the north side of it. The date of its original foundation is not given in any chronicle, but it must have gone far back, probably was coeval with the building of London Bridge, since it was on the great highway from east to west. At first it was, like all the other bridges on the Fleet, constructed of wood; after its erection in stone, with a width of some twelve feet, it seems to have been gradually widened to accommodate the increasing traffic. According to Mr. Crosby, a great authority on the antiquities of the Fleet valley, Holborn Bridge consisted of four different bridges joined together at the sides. Yet in 1670 the bridge was found to be too narrow for the traffic, and it had to be rebuilt, so that the way and passage might run in a ‘bevil line’ from a certain timber-house on the north side, known by the name of the Cock, to the Swan Inn. Wren built the new bridge on the north or Holborn side accordingly, and the name of William Hooker, Lord Mayor in 1673-74, was cut on the stone coping of the eastern approach. What was meant by the ‘bevil line’ is to us obscure, and we are not much enlightened by what Sir William Tite says, who in 1840 was present at the opening of a sewer at Holborn Hill, and saw the southern face of the old bridge disinterred. ‘The arch,’ he says, ‘was about twenty feet span. The road from the east intersected the bridge obliquely, and out of the angle thus formed a stone corbel arose to carry the parapet.’ Of course, with the disappearance of the Fleet Ditch the bridge also vanished.
The next bridge we come to started from Fleet Lane on the east side to Harp Alley on the Holborn side. As it was about half-way between Holborn and Fleet Street bridges, it was sometimes called Middle Bridge. It was built of stone, with a stone rail and banister, and was ascended by fourteen steps, and as high as Bridewell and Fleet bridges, to allow vessels with merchandise to pass under it. It had been erected in 1674, and disappeared with the other bridges on the covering in of the Fleet.
The Fleet Bridge, which we reach next, joined Ludgate Hill to Fleet Street. This bridge was, in 1431, repaired at the charges of John Wels, Mayor. It was destroyed by the Great Fire, and the new one erected in its stead was of the breadth of the street, and ornamented with pineapples and the City arms. But though larger in breadth, it had not the length of the old bridge, the channel having then been already considerably narrowed. The bridge was taken down in 1765.
To the south of Fleet Bridge the river was spanned by a building, which seems to have been a dwelling or a warehouse. It is distinctly shown on Aggas’ map.
Bridewell Bridge, the last over the Fleet before its entering the Thames, and the last built (in the sixteenth century), was at first a timber bridge, between Blackfriars and the House of Bridewell, on the site of the Castle Mountfiquet, which originally stood there. In 1708, or thereabouts, it was replaced by one of stone, much higher than the street, being ascended by fourteen steps. It was for foot passengers only. It was pulled down in 1765.
We may now conclude our account of the Fleet with a few statements concerning the vicissitudes it passed through.
A great many antiquities—British, Saxon, and Roman—have been found in the bed of this river, such as coins of silver, copper, and brass, but none of gold; lares, spur rowels, keys, daggers, seals, medals, vases, and urns. An anchor, three feet ten inches in height, encrusted with rust and pebbles—a sketch of which is given in the October number of the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1843—is said to have been discovered near the site of Holborn Bridge, which may be genuine, as ships are known to have ascended so far up the river in the fourteenth century. But early in that century already the river was choked up ‘by the filth of the tanners and others, and by the raising of wharves, and especially by a diversion of the water in the first year of King John (1200) by them of the New Temple for their mills without Baynard’s Castle, and by other impediments, the course was decayed, and ships could not enter as they were used.’ Upon this complaint of Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, the river was cleansed, the mills removed, and other means taken for its preservation; but it was not brought to its former depth and width, and so was soon filled with mud again. The scouring of the river seems to have been necessary every thirty or forty years, at a great expense to the City. We find that it was so cleansed in 1502, and once more rendered navigable for large barges, but the dwellers on its banks would continue to make it the receptacle of all the refuse, and the wharves built on its banks proved unsuccessful, as vessels could not approach them. Consequently, in 1733 the City of London, seeing that all navigation had ceased, and that the ditch, as it was then called, was a danger to the public on account of its unsanitary state, and because persons had fallen in and been suffocated in the mud, began covering it in, commencing with the portion from Fleet Bridge to Holborn Bridge, and the new Fleet Market was erected on the site in 1737. The part from Fleet Street to the Thames was covered in when the approaches to Blackfriars were completed between 1760 and 1768. One stubborn citizen, however, would not surrender a small filthy dock; a barber, from Bromley, in Kent, was, in 1763, found in it standing upright and frozen to death.
Like all brooks descending from hills, the Fleet was liable to sudden increases of volume, causing inundations.11 The melting of snow and ice by a sudden thaw and heavy and long-continued rains have frequently turned the Fleet into a mighty and destructive torrent flood. In 1679 it broke down the back of several wholesale butcher-houses at Cow Cross, and carried off cattle dead and alive. At Hockley-in-the-Hole barrels of ale, beer, and brandy floated down the stream. In 1768 the Hampstead Ponds overflowing after a severe storm, the Fleet grew into a torrent, and the roads and fields about Bagnigge Wells were inundated; in the gardens of the latter place the water was four feet deep; in Clerkenwell many thousand pounds’ worth of damage was done. In 1809 a sudden thaw produced a flood, and the whole space between St. Pancras and Pentonville Hill was soon under water, and for several days people received their provisions in at their windows. In 1846 a furious thunderstorm caused the Fleet Ditch to blow up. The rush from the drain at the north arch of Blackfriars Bridge drove a steamer against one of the piers and damaged it. The water penetrated into basements and cellars, and one draper had £3,000 worth of goods ruined. From Acton Place, Bagnigge Wells Road, to King’s Cross, the roads were impassable. In 1855 the Fleet, as one of the metropolitan main sewers, became vested in the then newly-established Metropolitan Board of Works. Shortly after the Metropolitan Railway was planned, and in 1860 the work was commenced. One of the greatest initial difficulties the engineers of that enterprise had to contend with was the irruption of the Fleet Ditch into their works; the Fleet gave, as does the last flare of an expiring candle, its ‘last kick,’ made a final effort to assert itself. The ditch, under which the railway had to pass two or three times, suddenly though not unexpectedly filled the tunnel with its dark foetid liquid, which carried all before it; scaffoldings constructed of the stoutest timbers and solid stone and brick walls and piers. But the Metropolitan Board of Works and the railway company, by gigantic and skilfully-conducted efforts, succeeded in forming an outlet for the flood into the Thames; the damage was made good, and the work was successfully carried out.
Here we take our leave of the Fleet, and proceeding westward, find nothing to arrest our steps till we come to a spot which once went by the name of the Strand Bridge; not Waterloo Bridge, which originally was so called, but a ‘fair bridge,’ as Stow calls it, erected many hundred years ago over a brook which crossed the Strand opposite to the present Strand Lane, and descended from the ponds in Fickett’s Fields, part of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, now all built over. This bridge probably disappeared about the year 1550, when an Act was passed for paving the streets east and west of Temple Bar, and ‘Strand Bridge’ is specially mentioned in the Act; the paving of the Strand seems to have done away with the brook and the bridge over it. The name of Strand Bridge was also given to the landing-stage at the bottom of Strand Lane, which descends in a tortuous line from the Strand down to the Thames. In this lane there is at the present day the old Roman bath, which, it is supposed, is supplied from the well which gave its name to Holywell Street, and which supply never fails.
There are no written records or other traces of any brook descending from the northern heights through London west of the Strand, till we come to the Tyburn.
This brook, like the Fleet, took its rise near Hampstead, but turning westward, and receiving several tributary streamlets, it ran due south through the Regent’s Park, where it was joined by another affluent from the site of the present Zoological Gardens, from which point it turned to the west and crossed the Marylebone Road opposite Gloucester Terrace, and after running parallel with it for a short distance it took a sharp turn to the east, following the hollow in which the present Marylebone Lane stands, the windings of which indicate the course of the brook. On reaching the southern end of High Street, it again turned to the south, crossed Oxford Street, ran down part of South Molton Street, turned west again to the south of Berkeley Square; thence it flowed through the narrow passage between the gardens of Lansdowne House and Devonshire House, whose hollow sound seems to indicate the existence of the watercourse below. It next crossed Piccadilly, ran due south through the Green Park, passed under Buckingham Palace, directly after which it divided into three branches, one of which ran through the ornamental water in St. James’s Park, whence it fell into the Thames: the middle branch ran into the ancient Abbey at Westminster, where it turned the mills the monks had erected there. But from old maps it appears that this arm of the Tyburn, at a point a little north-west of the Abbey, threw out a branch which in a northerly course rejoined the park, and then in a curved line to the east reached the Thames at a point not far from Westminster Bridge, and to the north-east of it. The spot where this branch touched St. James’s Park was close to Storey’s Gate. Now last year (1898) when the ground was being excavated for the foundations of the new Institute of Mechanical Engineers, the workmen came upon the piles and brickwork of an ancient wharf. The structure was wonderfully well preserved; it had evidently been well constructed, probably by the monks, and may have been for the accommodation of the fishermen bringing their goods to the monastery. But at present, and until further information is obtained, if ever it is obtained, we can only form conjectures as to the purposes of the wharf; but its discovery on that spot is curiously illustrative of the history which still lies hidden under our streets.
We have yet to mention the third branch of the Tyburn, which started south of Buckingham Palace. It ran in a southerly direction across Victoria Street, for a short distance skirted the Vauxhall Bridge Road, then crossed it and ran through the marshy grounds then existing down to the Thames a little to the west of Vauxhall Bridge.
Such was the course of the Tyburn. Of the bridges that once must have crossed it not a vestige remains; but we have the record of one which was at the spot which is now Stratford Place, and where the Lord Mayor’s Banqueting-house stood, to which he resorted when he, the Aldermen, and other distinguished citizens went to inspect the head conduits from which the City conduits were supplied, on which occasions they combined pleasure with business, hunting the hare before and the fox after dinner. The Tyburn must at one time have been a stream of considerable size; in the year 1238 it was so copious as to furnish nine conduits for supplying the City with water. It had rows of elms growing on its banks, and as it generally, but erroneously, is supposed to have flowed past the southern corner of the Edgware Road, the name of Elm Place was given to a street (now pulled down) west of Connaught Place. How this error arose we shall show when speaking of the West Bourne. On the Tyburn stood the church of St. Mary la bonne; by the vulgar omission of letters ‘burn’ became ‘bone,’ hence Marylebone. The Tyburn, like the other brooks already discussed, is now a mere sewer.
Proceeding still further west, we come to the Westbourne, which, like the other brooks, rose in the northern heights above London. Around Jack Straw’s Castle at Hampstead various rills sprang from the ground, which, forming a united stream a little north of the Finchley Road, that stream, flowing west towards the spot known as West End, continued its western course till it reached Maygrove Road; it crossed that road, and taking a sudden turn south, it ran through Kilburn down to Belsize Road, south of which a small lake was formed, by its confluence there with a considerable tributary in the form of a two-pronged fork and its handle, coming from the lower southern heights of Hampstead. From the lake the Westbourne flowed in a westerly course, and near Cambridge Road received another affluent from the high ground where Paddington Cemetery now stands; still running west at Chippenham Road, its volume was further increased by the reception of a stream coming from the neighbourhood of Brondesbury, and from this point it ran due south, but with many windings, through Paddington, and across the Uxbridge Road, through part of Kensington Gardens, through the Serpentine in Hyde Park and across the Knightsbridge Road, and what was then called the Five Fields, a miserable swamp, and formed the eastern boundary of Chelsea till it discharged itself into the Thames, west of Chelsea Bridge, but divided into a considerable number of small streams.
Such was its course, and from its description we see that it was no insignificant stream, and may assume that the first settlers in those northern parts of London must be looked for on its banks. Like the Fleet, it had various names in different localities; thus at Kilburn it was known as the Keele Bourne, Coldbourne, and Kilbourne; at Bayswater it was called the Bayswater Rivulet; the name of Bayswater itself is supposed to be derived from Baynard, who built Baynard Castle on the Thames, and also possessed lands at Bayswater. At the end of the fourteenth century it was called Baynard’s Watering-place, which in time was shortened to its present appellation.
The bridge which gave Knightsbridge its name was a stone bridge; by whom or when erected is not on record, but probably Edward the Confessor, who conferred the land about here on the Abbots of Westminster, also built the bridge for their accommodation. The road was the only way to London from the west, and the stream was broad and rapid. The bridge was situated in front of the present entrance into the Park by Albert Gate, and part of it still remains underground, while the other portion was removed for the Albert Gate improvements. In the churchwardens’ accounts of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, are the following entries regarding the bridge:
1630. Item, received of John Fennell and Ralph £ s. d. Atkinson, collectors of the escheat, for repair of Brentford Bridge and Knightsbridge.... 23 6 4
1631. Item, paid towards the repairs of Brentford
Bridge and of Knightsbridge, etc....... 24 7 10
The Westbourne was occasionally a source of inconvenience and even danger to the inhabitants of Knightsbridge. After heavy rains or in sudden thaws it overflowed. On September 1, 1768, it did so, and did great damage, almost undermining some of the houses; and in January, 1809, it overflowed again, and covered the neighbouring fields so deeply that they resembled a lake, and passengers were for several days rowed from Chelsea to Westminster by Thames boatmen.
On the site now covered by St. George’s Row, Pimlico, there stood in the middle of the last century a house of entertainment known as ‘Jenny’s Whim.’ A long wooden bridge over one of the many arms of the Westbourne led up to the house. The present Ebury Bridge over the Grosvenor Canal, which this river-branch has become, occupies the site of this old bridge. ‘Jenny’s Whim’ had trim gardens, alcoves, ponds, and facilities for duck-hunting; in the gardens were recesses, where, by treading on a spring, up started different figures, some ugly enough to frighten people, a harlequin, a Mother Shipton, or some terrible animal. Horace Walpole occasionally alludes to ‘Jenny’s Whim’; in one of his letters to Montagu, he says: ‘Here (at Vauxhall) we picked up Lord Granby, arrived very drunk from Jenny’s Whim.’ Towards the beginning of this century ‘Jenny’s Whim’ began to decline; at last it sank down to the condition of a beershop, and in 1804 it was finally closed. The origin of the name is doubtful. Davis, the historian of Knightsbridge, accepts the account given him by an old inhabitant, that it was so called from its first landlady, who directed the gardens to be laid out in so fantastic a manner as to cause the noun to be added to her own Christian name. Other reports say that the place was established by a celebrated pyrotechnist in the reign of George I.; but that does not account for the name.
Like other London rivers, the Westbourne in the end became a sewer; it was gradually covered up; of the two chief branches by which it reached the Thames, the eastern one became the Grosvenor Canal, and the western the Ranelagh Sewer. The canal was crossed by several other bridges, Stone Bridge being one of them.
We stated above that the Westbourne formed the western boundary of Chelsea; its eastern boundary was also a river, or rather rivulet, which it appears never even had a name, though in one old map I find it called Bridge Creek. It rose in Wormwood Scrubs, skirted the West London and Westminster Cemetery, and entered the Thames west of Battersea Bridge, where, in fact, there is still a creek going some distance inland. The rest of the stream has been absorbed by the West Kensington Railway. No vestige of it remains, and it has no history.
Brook Green took its name from a brook which once rose near Shepherd’s Bush, but it has no records.
The next river we should come to, if we pursued our journey westward, would be the Brent; but as that is still existing—how long will it continue to do so?—it does not enter into the scope of our investigations.
Having now given an account of all the extinct brooks north of the Thames, we will cross that river and see what watercourses formerly existed on the Surrey side.
The southern banks of the Thames, being low and flat, originally were a swamp, continually overflowed by the river—Lambeth Marsh commemorates that condition of the locality. Down to Deptford, Peckham, Camberwell, Stockwell, Brixton, and Clapham did the flood extend. But by the gradual damming up of the southern bank of the Thames, the erection of buildings on the Surrey side, and the draining of the soil, the latter was gradually laid dry, and the numerous rivulets which meandered through the marsh were reduced to three between the still-existing rivers—namely, the Ravenscourt to the east, and the Wandle to the west. The first brook, again going from east to west, is the Neckinger, which rose at the foot of Denmark Hill and adjacent parts, and, after passing in two streams under the Old Kent Road, united north of it, and reached the Thames at St. Saviour’s Dock, which, in fact, is the enlarged mouth of the old river. But according to some old maps we have consulted, it had a branch running in a more easterly direction, and entering the Thames at a point near the present Commercial Docks Pier. But of this latter branch no trace remains, whilst the northerly course to the Thames is indicated by various roads, such as the Grange and the Neckinger Roads. The brook ran past Bermondsey Abbey, up to the gates of which it was navigable from the Thames. The Grange Road took its name from a farm known as the Grange, and here the Neckinger was spanned by a bridge. When Bermondsey Abbey was destroyed, a number of tanneries were established on the site, which took their water from the Neckinger, in connection with which a number of tidal ditches, to admit water from the Thames, were cut in various directions. Near the Upper Grange Road stood a windmill, and at the mouth of the Neckinger a water-mill, the owner of which shut off the tide when it suited his purpose, which led to frequent disputes between him and the tanners. But in time the latter sank artesian wells, the mill was driven by steam-power, and the water of the Neckinger being no longer required for manufacturing purposes, the river was neglected and finally built over. The Neckinger Mills had been erected in the last century by a company to manufacture paper from straw; but, this enterprise failing, the premises passed into the hands of the leather manufacturers. A street to the east of St. Saviour’s Dock, and parallel with it, is still known as Mill Street. There was another bridge over the Neckinger where it crossed the Old Kent Road, near the spot where the Albany Road joins the latter road. It was known as Thomas-a-Watering, from St. Thomas, the patron of the dissolved monastery or hospital of that name in Southwark. The bridge was the most southern point of the boundary of the Borough of Southwark, and in ancient days the first halting-place out of London on the road to Kent. Chaucer’s pilgrims passed it on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas-a-Becket at Canterbury:
‘And forth we riden...
Unto the watering-place of St. Thomas,
And then our host began his hors arrest.’
Deputations of citizens used to go so far to meet royal or other distinguished personages who came to visit London. From the end of the fifteenth century the spot was set apart for executions, and numerous are the records of criminals who were hanged there until about the middle of the last century.
In 1690 two very handsome Janus heads—i.e., heads with two faces—were discovered near St. Thomas-a-Watering. They were found near two ancient piers of a large gate—Janus was the God of Gates. One was taken up and set up on a gardener’s door; but the other, being embedded in quicksand, from which springs flowed out pretty freely, was left. Dr. Woodward, who founded the Professorship of Geology in the University of Cambridge, afterwards purchased the head which had been saved, and added it to his collection of curiosities. At the beginning of this century there was still a brook running across the Kent Road on the spot mentioned above, with a bridge over it, and the current from the Peckham and Denmark hills was at times so strong as to overflow at least two acres of ground. East of the Mill Street above mentioned there is a spot which has been rendered famous by Dickens in ‘Oliver Twist’—namely, Jacob’s Island. As the description he gives of it is known to everyone, we need not here repeat it; it applies, partially only, to the locality now.
It is, or to speak correctly was, a ‘Venice of drains.’ But it was not always so; in the reign of Henry II. the foul, stagnant ditch, which till recently made an island of this pestilential spot, was a running stream, supplied with the waters which were brought down in the Neckinger from the southern hills. On its banks stood the mills of the monks of St. John and St. Mary, dependencies of the Abbey of Bermondsey, which were worked by it. In those days the neighbourhood consisted of blooming gardens and verdant meadows. Close to Jacob’s Island were Cupid’s Gardens, a kind of Ranelagh on a small scale, but still a very pleasant place of public entertainment. Tanneries, and many still more objectionable trades now carried on in the locality, were then undreamt of.
Many of the horrors of Jacob’s Island are now things of the past. The foul ditch, in whose black mud the juveniles used to disport themselves, undeterred by the close proximity of the unsavoury carcasses of dead dogs and cats, is now filled up and turned into a solid road. Many of the tumble-down houses have been pulled down—in fact, the romance of the place is gone.
Let us proceed westward; we come to the once important Effra, which remained a running stream till within the sixties, when it, like others, became a mere sewer. It rose in the high grounds of Norwood, and ran down Croxted Lane, till within the last two or three years a perfectly rural retreat; at the Half Moon Inn at Herne Hill it received an affluent, which rose between Streatham Hill and Knight’s Hill. Skirting the park of Brockwell Hall, it ran along Water Lane, past the police-station in the Brixton Road. Here it took a sharp turn to the north, and ran parallel to the Brixton Road, access to the houses on the eastern side being gained by little bridges, till it reached St. Mark’s Church, where it took a sharp turn to the west. But before reaching that point, a branch of the river, at a spot somewhere between the present Clapham and South Lambeth Roads, in what used formerly to be called Fentiman’s Fields, turned in a northerly direction towards the South Lambeth Road, flowing through what was then Caroon Park, afterwards the Lawn Estate, a portion of which has recently become Vauxhall Park. The river ran along the lane leading by the side of the present Vauxhall Park to the Crown Works of Messrs. Higgs and Hill, at the corner of the lane turning almost at right angles up the South Lambeth Road towards Vauxhall Cross. As in the Brixton Road, little bridges here gave access to the houses on the eastern side of the South Lambeth Road. According to an old map, this branch of the Effra sent off another across the South Lambeth Road and a Mr. Freeman’s land, lying between it and the Kingston Highway, as the Wandsworth Road was then called, and thus reached the Thames. The main stream, which we left at St. Mark’s Church, continued its course along the south side of the Oval, sending off in a north-westerly direction a branch which fell into a circular basin, probably on the spot where the great gas-holders now stand in Upper Kennington Lane. It then turned towards Vauxhall, where it passed under a bridge, called Cox’s Bridge, and fell into the Thames a little northward of Vauxhall Bridge.
At Belair, one of the show-houses of Dulwich, a branch of the Effra ran through the grounds; the Effra itself also traversed the Springfield Estate near Herne Hill, now given up to the builders. The river there appears to have been much wider than elsewhere, and in depth about nine feet, with banks shaded by old trees. The present writer remembers the Effra as a river, and was told by a gardener, now deceased, who had worked on the Caroon Estate, which extended from the present Dorset Road to the Oval, for more than fifty years, that he had often seen the Effra along Lawn Lane assume the proportions of a river, wide and deep enough to bear large barges, which statement gives countenance to the tradition that Queen Elizabeth frequently in her barge visited Sir Noel Caroon, the Dutch Ambassador, who lived at Caroon House, on the site of which stand the mansion and factory of Mark Beaufoy, Esq., who is also the owner of the Belair House above-mentioned. Dr. Montgomery, sometime Vicar of St. Mark’s, and now Bishop of Tasmania, in his ‘History of Kennington,’ says that, in 1753, the whole space occupied by the Oval and a number of streets was open meadow through which the Effra meandered at will. It was a sparkling river running over a bright gravelly bottom, and supplied fresh water to the neighbourhood. A bridge crossed the Effra at St. Mark’s, and was called Merton Bridge, from its formerly having been repaired by the Canons of Merton Abbey, who had lands for that purpose. Curiously enough, the author from whom we take this, Thomas Allen, in his ‘History of Lambeth,’ published in 1827, when the Effra was yet a running stream, refers to it only on the above occasion, when he calls it a ‘small stream.’ ‘Et c’est ainsi qu’on écrit l’histoire.’
One more ‘lost river’ remains on our list, the Falcon Brook, which, rising on the south side of Balham Hill, flowed almost due north between Clapham and Wandsworth Commons to Battersea Rise, which it crossed, after which it turned sharply to the west, ran along Lavender Road, crossed the York Road, and discharged itself into the Thames through Battersea Creek, which is all that now remains of the river, except the underground sewer which represents its former course. Once many pleasant villas stood on its banks; at the present day the entire valley through which it flowed is covered by one of the densest masses of dingy streets to be seen anywhere near London. Nothing remains to recall even its name, except the Falcon Road, and a newly-erected public-house which has supplanted the original Falcon, a somewhat rustic building, which, however, harmonized well with the then surroundings, which were of a perfectly rural aspect, such as, looking at the present scene, we can scarcely realize. But it can be seen in a rare print of the river, engraved by S. Rawle, after an original drawing by J. Nixon. He was an artist, who, passing the Falcon, which was then kept by a man named Robert Death, saw a number of undertaker’s men regaling themselves after a funeral on the open space in front of the inn. They were not only eating and drinking and smoking, but indulging in various antics, endeavouring to make the maids of the inn join in their hilarity. This scene, and the queer coincidence of the landlord’s strange name, induced Nixon to make a sketch of it, which was engraved and published in 1802, the following lines from Blair’s poem ‘The Grave’ being added to the print:
‘But see the well-plumed hearse comes nodding on,
Stately and slow, and properly attended
By the whole sable tribe, that painful watch
The sick man’s door, and live upon the dead,
By letting out their persons by the hour
To mimic sorrow, when the heart’s not sad.’
A cantata was also published about the same time, supposed to be sung by undertakers’ merry men, to celebrate the pleasure and benefit of burying a nabob, and drink to their
‘...next merry meeting and quackery’s increase!’
Here we close our journey and our records at a funeral. Well, the finale is not inappropriate. Have we not been attending the funerals of so many gay and bright and sparkling, joyfully leaping and rushing, and sometimes roaring, brooks and rivers, descending from the sunny hillsides, finally to be buried in dark and noisome sewers? And the lost river, alas! is but too often the type of the lost life. But moralizing is not in our line—we think it sad waste of time; it is no better than doctors’ prescriptions. We would rather remind the reader, who in these notes may miss elegance of style and picturesqueness of description, that such qualities were incompatible with the compactness of details the space at our command imposed upon us. Besides, a more florid style must borrow something from imagination; but here we had only to deal with facts, and if the reader finds as much pleasure in studying as we did in collecting them, though the labour was great, he will not regret the time bestowed on their perusal.
Notes
10 The highest point north is Hampstead Hill, 400 feet above sea-level; to the south Sydenham Hill, 365 feet; Primrose Hill, about 260 feet; Herne Hill, about 180 feet; Denmark, about 100 feet; Orme Square, 95 feet; Broad Walk, 90 feet; North Audley Street, 83 feet; Tottenham Court Road, 85 feet; Regent Circus, 90 feet; Cornhill, 60 feet; Charing Cross, 24 feet; Euston Road, 90 feet; Cheapside, 59 feet; Farringdon Street, 28 feet; St. Katherine’s, Regent’s Park, 120 feet; Camberwell Green, 19 feet.
11 Wherever there are such brooks the same phenomenon appears. Visitors to Nice may have witnessed the sudden rise of the Paillon, and the Birsig at Basle, usually a fine thread of water, has repeatedly risen five or six feet high in the market-place of that town.