London’s Other Rivers - The Fleet

Blackfriars Bridge with St Paul's Cathedral behind (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The second part of this article introduces the largest of London’s lost rivers and one which can be considered to be integral to the growth and success of the ancient capital, the Fleet; a river which has been subsumed by the development of central London on the northern banks of the River Thames into which it would have emptied.

River Fleet
Perhaps also the best known of London’s lost rivers, the River Fleet has had a lasting impact on some of London’s most familiar areas and landmarks. As with it’s two cousins to the west, the Tyburn and the Westbourne, the Fleet would have risen from the higher ground of Hampstead where the two ponds of Hampstead and Highgate can still be seen today. On its course it would have flowed through the area we know as Kentish Town, Camden, King’s Cross and Farringdon, following the route of Farringdon Road and New Bridge Street to the site of Blackfriars Bridge.

The river has a rich and long history, from significant Roman settlements, including what is thought to be the oldest tidal mill in the world, to the numerous Anglo-Saxon wells that lined its banks (so much so that the river became known as the river of wells). It was on a bridge over the river near modern King’s Cross that Boudica is even meant to have finally met her end in battle.

However, subsequent centuries of industrial and urban development, due its proximity to the centre of London, led to a degradation in the areas along the river’s banks causing the waterway to become an open sewer. By the end of the 17th century the river had been converted into the New Canal in an attempt to revive it, but, as this failed, its southern reaches were gradually culverted in the mid 18th century due to a lack of use, before Blackfriars bridge was eventually built at the river’s old mouth. The middle section of the New Canal was superseded by the Regent’s Canal in the early 19th century and the uppermost stretches were covered in the late 19th by development of the Hampstead suburbs. Despite all this, the buried river can still be seen emptying into the Thames at Blackfriars and can even be heard through grates just off of Farringdon Road.

Just like many of London’s other lost rivers the Fleet’s presence can be traced back through place names which live on. Many of the streets in the vicinity carry a reference to the river itself or the wells and mills that would have existed along it; most notably of course, Fleet Street, the historical home of the newsprint industry, which approaches the old river valley from the west. The area of Holborn, also just to the west of the river is so named after the bourne (or one of its tributaries), with “Hol” being a derivation of either “old” or “hollow” referring to its valley. Meanwhile, Clerkenwell, on its eastern banks is a noticeable reference back to the river’s old wells. The name of the river itself refers to the Anglo-Saxon term for a tidal inlet, as it would have been, leading off from the tidal Thames.

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