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Embankment to Tower Bridge
Like so much civic architecture and engineering in London the Embankment is the work of Sir Joseph Bazelgette. It was built between 1864 and 1870 as part of a bigger land reclamation project that included the construction of sewers and the District Line. Running up a gentle incline from Embankment tube station is Villiers Street, an atmospheric cut-through connecting the river with the Strand. It was home to Rudyard Kipling, who lived at number 43 in 1889 and 1891, and the young Charles Dickens worked for a while at Warren’s Blacking Factory, a place he later imagined as Murderstone and Grinby’s wine warehouse in “David Copperfield”.
The Embankment hugs the Thames as it curves eastwards, downriver towards the City. The City of London is the capital's historic centre and its western boundary is marked on the Embankment by a pair of griffin statues, rescued from the old Coal Exchange which used to stand downriver on Lower Thames Street.
London Bridge has had several incarnations since the first stone bridge was completed in 1209 and the penultimate version was dismantled, shipped and reassembled in America’s Lake Havasu City, Arizona in the late 1960s. Between here and Tower Bridge stands the old Billingsgate fish market. The fish trade moved east to the Isle of Dogs in 1982 and today the building is used for events.
Lost rivers – Not many Londoners realize when they are walking down Marylebone Lane, sitting by the Serpentine, waiting at Sloane Square tube or crossing Farringdon Street that they are within yards of one of London’s lost rivers. There are 11 in all: the Fleet, Walbrook, Tyburn, Westbourne, Counter’s Crook and Stamford Brook all rise in the hills of the north; while the Neckinger, Earl’s Sluice, Peck, Effra and Falcon flow through the marshlands of the south.
To these you can add some really lost rivers – the Old Bourne, Shoreditch, Cranbourne and Langbourne – that are mentioned by ancient chroniclers but have never been located.
The largest lost river was the Fleet which rose in Hampstead and emptied in to the Tames beneath Blackfriars Bridge. Like most of the old rivers, the Fleet was initially used for transport and defence but soon became an open sewer. When this happened it was paved over in sections before being incorporated into Joseph Bazalgette’s sewer system.
East of Fleet is the Walbrook, which runs in two streams from Islington and Hoxton to Cannon Street. West is the Tyburn which flows from Hampstead to Westminster via Oxford Street. At Westminster it splits into two, and once formed Thorney Island, on which Westminster Abbey was built. Next is the Westbourne, a part of which still forms the Serpentine and which crosses the platform at Sloane Square in a pipe before hitting the river at Chelsea Bridge. Counter’s Creek runs from Kensal Rise via Stamford Bridge, to Chelsea, while Stamford Brook goes from Wormwood Scrubs to Hammersmith.
To the south, the Neckinger rises beneath the Imperial War Museum and flows along the New Kent Road, where it meets Earl’s Sluice in Denmark Hill and the Peck in Peckham, before disappearing in to Bermondsey marshland. Less mercurial is the Effra, which rises in Norwood and hits the Thames at Vauxhall, once so mighty that Elizabeth I sailed down it to meet Walter Raleigh. Finally the Flacon begins to Tooting Common and enters the Thames by Battersea Power Station. All of these rivers still exist beneath the pavement in some form, and, after heavy rain, when the tide is low, the dedicated can observe their waters trickling into the Thames.
