Rivers lost and found

[shewhomust]

Last month sovay set off a discussion about the lost rivers of London; she had found this map, and wants a story called "The Lost Rivers of London". I'm hoping she'll write one.

Meanwhile, there's an update in Saturday's Guardian. The Wandle (Miss Wandle in JBS Haldane's story The Magic Collar Stud) has been restocked with trout and is being promoted as a heritage walk. The Quaggy (which wins the prize for Best Name, although, modestly, it also goes under the name Kyd Brook) has acquired a Friends group, who are campaigning - with some success - to release it from its concrete channels and return it to its natural state.

Now there's a move, not, I suspect, entirely serious, to uncover the Tyburn. James Bowdidge, founder of the Tyburn Angling Society, admitted in an interview in London's Evening Standard that the main drawback was how much had been built over the Tyburn since the eighteenth century:

Buckingham Palace would probably have to go, and so would the House of Commons, as well as other chunks of prime West End real estate such as Lansdowne House - former home of Pitt the Younger - now the Lansdowne Club and Berkeley Square House.

On the other hand, the Standard has a picture of South Molton Street as it could be, with a river running along it, which almost makes that sound worthwhile. Not much hope of reinstating the Fleet river, then, I suppose (I was very disappointed when then new underground line was caled the Jubilee, instead of the Fleet, line).

Last word on this subject, as always, goes to U.A. Fanthorpe.

Comments

[durham-rambler.livejournal.com]

I used to play in the Quaggy as a boy, it ran at the end of the house my grandmother shared with my aunt and uncle.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Pull down Buckingham Palace and the House of Commons! It would be a small price to pay for getting the Tyburn back.

London's Rivers

[(Anonymous)]

Re: Rivers Lost and Found - There is an excellent book called The Groundwater Diaries by Tim Bradford, who walks the routes of London's hidden rivers with a witty commentary on what he finds on the way. PUblished by Flamingo (Harper Collins Publishers) in 2004: ISBN 0 00 713083 X
http://thesmoke.net/gd/

regards
Harry Halibut/FLickr