London’s lost rivers

I found my first of London’s many lost rivers when I walked across Holborn Viaduct, looked down at the sweep of Farringdon Road below and realised that it had to be the path of a river, not just a road. Indeed, I was soon to learn that the river Fleet runs directly beneath, coursing down to meet the Thames by Blackfriars Bridge.

The Fleet is perhaps the most famous of London’s lost rivers; it was once large enough for boats to navigate it, and an anchor has been discovered as far up as Kentish Town. As for the lower stretch of the Fleet, its earliest recorded cargo were the stones that built the old St Paul’s Cathedral in the early 12th century, but by the 18th century it had degenerated into the Fleet Ditch, so filthy that Alexander Pope, in his poem The Dunciad, wrote that children swam ‘where Fleet-ditch, with disemboguing streams/ Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames.’

The innocuous grey tarmac of Farringdon Road covers a wealth of river-related stories and secrets. What makes London’s lost rivers quite so tantalising is that they are not entirely lost — traces remain, offering us clues to what lies beneath. Sometimes, as with Farringdon Road, it is the shape of a street which gives the river away. The meanders of Marylebone Lane and Pimlico’s Tachbrook Street echo the course of the river Tyburn below. Further west, Bollo Brook followed the winding course of Bollo Lane, explaining why this street is the boundary between the boroughs of Hounslow and Ealing. Occasionally there is a plaque to commemorate the river’s passage; there used to be one for the Fleet on the wall of Nando’s in Kentish Town, but alas it is now painted over.