A week or so ago I was fortunate to have a special invitation in the City of London and unusually found myself with time to spare and no tourists with me. I decided to hunt down the River Fleet.
The River Fleet is perhaps the second most important river in the formation and history of London and yet it has largely long vanished from the surface and remembered such as it is perhaps by Fleet Street, the traditional home of the newspaper trade.
In this old post on the Lost and Hidden rivers of London in 2017 you can read about some of the many rivers in London which are now long forgotten.
It’s not that the River Fleet is totally hidden away, one can find it up on Hampstead Heath and a murky and rather dangerous outflow near Blackfriars where it discharges into the Thames.
Due to it becoming a filthy open sewer it was gradually covered up but there is evidence of it all around if one knows where to look. Below is the Holborn Viaduct, the worlds first modern flyover or overpass as some from overseas might call it.
It’s pretty clear that the sides of the bridge are several storeys above the main road. Almost as if there might have been a river here! In fact visit on a very quiet day or during a pandemic and you can sometimes here the river flowing deep beneath.
There are other clues too such as the relatively high water table in this area. A few minutes walk away you have Clerkenwell, you can read about it in Putting the well into Clerkenwell. There are others too which for some reason I haven’t posted here but have no doubt bored people with on my Facebook page. Basically anywhere from Kings Cross to the Thames the Fleet is there or thereabouts.
I often talk about it on my tours as it is integral to some of them, especially the ones that deal with poverty, squalor and invariably crime. I always like to research everything myself, its one of the things that make Ye Olde England Tours unique and I was always a bit dissatisfied that I was rather broad with where the Fleet was where I’d often cross it. I’m sure tourists didn’t mind or notice but a few feet or metres is a big deal, especially when the landscape has changed so much.
I’ve seen one good website for information on the Fleet but there are others that mention where you might catch a glimpse of the River Fleet. At least one has a video but only with a text description of where it is and what rather looks like a photo with a looped audio track of a river flowing.
Probably being mid September and still suffering from a hosepipe ban from the previous year gives an idea that it may well be the very worst time to look for a hidden and much diminished river.
Nevertheless I went off exploring. There are a few narrow lanes and unusual discrepancies in street levels, partly as the river is hidden but also as centuries ago it really was something of a massive valley that impeded travel (unless by boat) and the land level was raised up hugely to try and flatten things out.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever stopped to look down drains in the street in the middle of London. For some reason passersby thought I to be rather odd… if only they knew that I’m both very odd and that I was looking for a river.
One man in his car was parked down a lane. He must have wondered what was going on so I told him as I peered lustfully at various drains around his car. He did agree that there must be the River Fleet somewhere nearby though when I pulled my phone out to take a photo, he drove off. The era of dodgy deals and crime in this once notorious lane no doubt still lives on to a small degree!
I vowed to myself that next time I look for the River Fleet then I’d do so on a weekend and with more than my hunch. And perhaps more suitably dressed as I was off to meet the Lady Mayoress in an hour!
After a few diversion as I always do when I’m out looking for things, I eventually found the natural depression where I’d been looking for. Once known as Hockley in the hole but more about that on another post.
There in a drain outside a very historic pub location was the River Fleet. It was loud and thunderous even without any rain. It was very deep but finding the right spot it was possible to see the waters glistening in the light, if glistening isn’t overstating the brightness a little. It doesn’t show up so well on a camera but you can see it in places during this short video I made.
I’ve always wanted to see the River Fleet, its such an important river and its shaped London in so many ways. In some ways I even earn some of my trade from it just like those who used it centuries and even millennia ago.
Stephen Liddell 