Caroline Crampton

The watery life of the capital

Following a now well-trodden path in the riparian canon, Tom Chivers, armed with a Streetfinder map and a few friends, walks the course of several of the lost rivers of London

Boys bait their lines on the River Wandle, one of London’s lost rivers, which flows from Carshalton Pond through the inner city to the Thames. Credit: Getty Images 
issue 04 September 2021

To write about London and its rivers is to enter a crowded literary field. Many aspects of watery life in the capital have been documented for public consumption over the past 150 years, from Hilaire Belloc’s lament for the river’s lost monasteries in The Historic Thames to Peter Ackroyd’s doorstop, London: A Biography.

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