London Under

by Peter Ackroyd

                 Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

                 Through caverns measureless to man

                 Down to a sunless sea.

  The Neckinger flows south of the Thames; it has its origin beneath the Imperial War Museum, formerly Bethlem Hospital for the insane, and then runs under Elephant and Castle before following the New Kent Road; it turns north-east into Prioress Street and Abbey Street, the site of Bermondsey Abbey. The monks built a bridge across it here. It then runs northward to the Thames. St. Saviour’s Dock marks the point where it issued into the greater river, where Neckinger Wharf once stood. It is said that pirates were hanged here; the rope that killed them was known as “the devil’s neck cloth” or “neckinger.”

  Its channels, in the lower reaches, formed one of the most notorious London districts. Jacob’s Island was immortalised by Dickens as the home of Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist, and was dubbed in the Morning Chronicle as the “Venice of Drains” and the “Capital of Cholera.” It was a place of filth, rot and garbage. Jacob Street is the only memorial of that tainted past. The Neckinger has in any case always been a symptom of urban squalor. It was used by tanners and hatters in the course of their work so that it was said to resemble the colour of strong green tea. Charles Kingsley visited the neighbourhood of the river in 1849 and exclaimed to his wife, “Oh God! What I saw! People having no water to drink—hundreds of them—but the water of the common sewer which stagnates …”

  Underground water has often been associated with disease; it is perceived to be insidious or threatening, and therefore becomes the cause of ague and pestilence. Just as it may undermine the foundations of houses along its course, so it may break down the health of those who live by or near it. In earlier years the most common ailments were typhoid fever and cholera, but the dwellers by underground streams are now more likely to contract bronchitis or rheumatism. A survey from the last century concluded that those who live beside waterways, whether open or buried, were more likely to suffer from asthma and hay fever.

  There is another interesting phenomenon associated with the lost rivers of London. In his survey entitled The Geography of London’s Ghosts (1960), G. W. Lambert concluded that approximately three-quarters of the city’s paranormal activity takes place near buried waters. Some may conclude that the spiritual properties of the rivers have been confirmed; the ritual activity at the Walbrook, for example, may thereby be justified. The more sceptical will believe that the flowing of buried waters merely creates strange effects of sound.

  Smaller underground streams can be found in the area of South London, among them the Peck and the Earl’s Sluice that join forces before entering the Thames at Deptford. To the west lie the Falcon and the Wandle. The Falcon has two origins, Balham and Tooting, before they unite at Clapham; the underground stream enters the Thames at Battersea.

  The river Wandle is better known, and for much of its length it runs above the ground. It rises in Croydon and in its journey of 9 miles to the Thames it passes through Lambeth and Wandsworth; it helps to form the boundary between Croydon and Lambeth as well as that between Merton and Wandsworth. Wandsworth means the village by the Wandle.

  It was well known for its fish. In 1586 William Camden described it as “the cleare rivulet Wandle, so full of the best trouts.” In The Compleat Angler (1653) Izaak Walton also complimented it on its trout. Lord Nelson used to fish in its waters, where they entered Lady Hamilton’s garden at Merton; she renamed it “the Nile” in his honour. It is still the haunt of fishermen; there is an organisation called the “Wandle piscators.” John Ruskin recalled how “the sand danced and minnows darted above the Springs of Wandel.” It is even commemorated in charming verse:

  The Wandle, by J.B. Watson, c. 1819 (illustration credit Ill.9)

                 Sweet little witch of the Wandle!

                    Come to my bosom and fondle.

                      I love thee sincerely,

                    I’ll cherish thee dearly,

                 Sweet little witch of the Wandle.

  One observer of the rivers in the early twentieth century, Hilda Ormsby, remarked in London on the Thames (1924) that the Wandle “particularly seems to resent being buried alive.” It can be seen as a living thing, therefore, with its own character and its own energies. Yet there are some underground rivers that seem more alive, and more powerful, in their subterranean existence. We will go on a journey along the Fleet.

  It has created its own mythology. A number of poems have been dedicated to it. It rises at two spots on Hampstead Heath before flowing down the Fleet Road to Camden Town. Even its origin has been granted literary associations. Samuel Pickwick read a paper to the Pickwick Club, on 12 May 1827, entitled “Speculations on the Source of the Hampstead ponds, with some observations on the Theory of Tittlebats.” At a later and more melancholy date in his illustrious career Pickwick found himself incarcerated within the Fleet Prison. So he came to know the river well.

  Its name derives from the Anglo-Saxon fleotan, meaning to float, or from the Saxon flod or flood. Technically it might be taken to describe a tidal inlet. It has been known as the River of Wells, also a very accurate description. Its two sources are united north of Camden Town, where in the early nineteenth century the river was more than 60 feet wide; an anchor was found in the riverbed here, suggesting that it was possible for boats to reach upriver into what were then the outskirts of London. It ran south past Old St. Pancras Church towards King’s Cross. The parishioners of St. Pancras complained in the fifteenth century that their church stood “where foul ways is and great waters.” From that point forward the modern streets give a clear indication of its course.

  In vision we see the slopes of the hills and valleys all around us, as we walk along King’s Cross Bridge into St. Chad’s Place before turning right into King’s Cross Road; the adjacent roads here rise up on the left hand, in an area that was once the haunt of wells, springs and pleasure gardens. As we proceed along the valley of Pakenham Street and Phoenix Place and Warner Street, the roads now rise on the right-hand side and we see Eyre Street Hill and Back Hill. This was a place of green banks and gardens, and we can still walk up Vine Hill and Herbal Hill. The river then turns southward into Farringdon Lane and Turnmill Street, where once its current turned three mills. An advertisement for a house to let in that street, in the Daily Courant of 1741, mentions “a good stream and current that will turn a mill to grind hair powder or liquorish or other things.”

  The river goes south-west into Cowcross Street, and flows down Saffron Hill. This is the place where the bishops of Ely cultivated saffron in the fifteenth century and, at a later date, strawberries. The river then plunges into the great valley of Farringdon Road and Farringdon Street and New Bridge Street; it eventually decants into the Thames at Blackfriars. There were two islands or “eyots” in the lower part of its course, before it reached the larger river, testifying to a width of approximately 40 feet.

  Five bridges once spanned the lower part of the Fleet, three of them stone. Holborn Bridge rose where Holborn Viaduct now stands; Holborn is a derivation from “old bourne” or old stream. Turnagain Lane, off Farringdon Street, was a cul-de-sac that led down to the bank of the river, hence its name. To its east rose a gravel hill, on which part of the City was built, and to its west lay a marshy fen that was not completely drained. The Fleet was the western boundary of Roman London, and remained in use as a territorial line for 2,000 years. At the time of the Civil War it became the point where earthworks were erected to defend the City. It still marks the border of Westminster and the City.

  The confluence of the Fleet and the Thames, 1749 (illustration credit Ill.10)

  It was a notable river, t
herefore, flowing through what would become the heart of London. A petition of 1307 states that the Fleet “used to be wide enough to carry ten or twelve ships up to Fleet bridge, laden with various articles and merchandise.” In the twelfth century it was used for transporting stones to help in the building of Old St. Paul’s. It was also employed for conveying hay, and corn, and wine, and wood. Old Seacoal Lane and Newcastle Close bear witness to another London necessity that was discharged at one of the wharves.

  But the curse of the city was already upon it. The slaughter-houses of Smithfield, and the tanneries along its banks, discharged all of their waste products into the waters. It was constantly fouled almost to choking by refuse and silt, and only periodic attempts were made at cleansing. It was scoured clean at the beginning of the sixteenth century, for example, so that boats could once again sail up to Fleet Bridge and Oldbourne Bridge. It was thoroughly cleaned a hundred years later, and again in 1652 when it was clogged “by the throwing in of offal and other garbage by butchers, saucemen, and others, and by reason of the many houses of office standing over upon it.” A “house of office” was a public lavatory. It was now in its lower reaches a brown soup.

  Ben Jonson’s poem “On the Famous Voyage” (1612), celebrates—if that is the word—a journey up the Fleet at the beginning of the seventeenth century:

                 In the first iawes appear’d that ugly monster

                 Yclepèd Mud, which, when their oares did once stirre,

                 Belched forth an aire, as hot as the muster

                 Of all your night-tubs, when the carts doe cluster,

                 Who shall discharge first his merd-urinous load …

                 The sinks ran grease, and hair of measled hogs,

                 The heads, boughs, entrails, and the hides of dogs.

  He goes on to enquire:

                  How dare

                 Your daintie nostrils (in so hot a season,

                 When every clerke eates artichokes and peason,

                 Laxative lettus, and such windie meat)

                 Tempt such a passage? When each privies seate

                 Is fill’d with buttock? And the walls doe sweate

                 Urine and plaisters?

  A hundred years later Jonathan Swift, observing the waters flowing under Holborn Bridge, remarked in “A Description of a City Shower” (1710) that:

                 Sweepings from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts and Blood,

                 Drown’d Puppies, stinking Sprats, all drench’d in Mud,

                 Dead Cats and Turnips-Tops come tumbling down the Flood.

  After the Great Fire of 1666 Sir Christopher Wren determined to replace the river of shit with a river of majesty. He widened the Fleet and gave it some of the characteristics of a Venetian canal, with wharves of stone on either side and with a grand new Holborn bridge. This bridge was found beneath the ground in 1826, having in the end been surmounted by the rubbish of the city. Forty years after Wren’s renovation Ned Ward, in The London Spy (1703), remarked that “the greatest good that I ever heard it did was to the undertaker, who is bound to acknowledge he has found better fishing in that muddy stream than ever he did in clear water.” George Farquhar, in Sir Harry Wildair (1701), refers to “the dear perfume of Fleet Ditch.” Alexander Pope completes this litany of Fleet elegists with the Dunciad (1728), in which the river forms the suitably murky background to a satire on London corruption and wretchedness; on its stream rolls “the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames.”

  The canal was found to be less than useful to the merchants and wholesalers who, by encroaching on the whole area, reduced it to chaos and dirt once more. On 24 August 1736 the Gentleman’s Magazine reported that “a fatter boar was hardly ever seen than one taken up this day, coming out of the Fleet Ditch into the Thames. It proved to be a butcher’s near Smithfield Bar, who had missed him five month, all which time he had been in the common sewer, and was improved in price from ten shillings to two guineas.” In the winter of 1763 a barber from Bromley, the worse for drink, fell into the waters and was so enmired in mud that he froze to death overnight.

  Eventually the canal was built over, and the wharves became streets; a public market was erected just above the junction with Fleet Street, now called Ludgate Circus, and in the 1820s Farringdon Street was built. The task of hiding the Fleet was more or less complete. Yet it was not wholly or safely buried. In 1846 it blew up and its fetid gases, as well as its waters, escaped into the outer world. The roads became impassable, and the houses inundated. Three poorhouses were deluged and partly destroyed by a great wave of sewage. A steamboat was smashed against the Blackfriars Bridge. At times of storm the river still proves hazardous for those who live along its course. The tunnels of London Underground in the vicinity are kept dry by means of pumps.

  The archaeology of the area is matter for wonder and contemplation. The skeleton of an infant was found on the southern edge of one of the two islands; the child came from a time before the foundation of Roman London, but the anaerobic conditions allowed some of its flesh and skin to survive. Whether it drowned, or was killed, is of course not known. Glass kilns were built by the eastern bank of the river in the third century. Evidence also exists from the Roman period of coins and pottery, of rings and glasses, of leather shoes and wooden writing tablets, of spatulas and hooks used for surgical purposes. Three keys from the medieval period had dropped down to the Roman level. The foods of various periods—the fruits, the nuts, the cereals—have been found. All the panoply of early London life is here.

  The Fleet Ditch, behind Field Lane, 1841 (illustration credit Ill.11)

  Yet time may also be suspended above the river. Traces of the Roman road leading out of Newgate have been discovered; the modern Holborn Viaduct follows precisely the same path. The same building stood on Ludgate Hill, overlooking the Fleet, from the twelfth century until a night in 1940 when it was destroyed by fire bombs; it had no doubt served a variety of purposes over its long life, including those of a shop, an inn and a lodging house.

  An octagonal stone building, most likely to be a Romano-Celtic temple, was built close to the banks of the river. Its interior was red with a border of green and white lines. A pit beside it contained flecks of charcoal and a human skull. The Fleet was once a sacred place, associated with the Celtic worship of the head. The skulls of the Walbrook offer a parallel. The temple was destroyed at the beginning of the fourth century, at the time when Christianity had become the dominant religion of London. A large building of many rooms was then built on the same site. It has been suggested, therefore, that the temple was torn down and a bishop’s palace erected in its place. Two Roman images, of Bacchus and of Ceres, had been flung into the waters; the Mirror of 22 March 1834 also reported the discovery of “a considerable number of medals, with crosses, crucifixes and Ave Marias engraved thereon.”

  At the place where the Fleet and Thames become one, eleven bodies from the early part of the eleventh century were uncovered in the early 1990s by a team of archaeologists working for the Museum of London Archaeology Service; the bodies had been dismembered and decapitated before being buried. A toilet facility of three seats, dating from the twelfth century, was found deposited in the mud as a reminder of one of the river’s original functions. A black rat, the harbinger of plague, was also found.

  Gazing on the maps of the Fleet and the Fleet Valley, and studying the archae
ology of the area, can turn the development of London into a dream or hallucination. Buildings rise and fall, road surfaces are relined before falling into disuse, yards and alleys disappear and reappear, doorways and staircases come and go, lanes run through previously unoccupied areas, alleys become streets, wells and new drains and cellars are dug in profusion before being covered over. A dish appears bearing the picture of a Tudor woman, and an anthropomorphic head of the thirteenth century emerges from the mud. Buried in the debris of the Fleet were toys, vessels, tobacco pipes, wooden panels, brooches, pots, bowls, jugs, buckles, pins and pieces of fabric. On one tile was imprinted the fingermark of a small child. It is liquid history.

  The Fleet river was always synonymous with crime and disease, not least because of the Fleet Prison that stood beside its eastern bank. This place of dread reputation is mentioned for the first time in documents of the twelfth century, and was no doubt built a few decades earlier. It was erected upon one of the two islands of the Fleet, with a bridge connecting it to the mainland of the city ditch; the “Gaol of London,” as it was called, was surrounded by a moat 10 feet in width. It consisted of a stone tower with an unknown number of floors; it may have therefore resembled the White Tower of the Tower of London. Many cups and mugs have been found in the precincts of the prison; one of them was inscribed “J. Hirst, Fleet Cellar.” The prison stood for almost 800 years before being demolished in 1845.

  Other criminal fraternities congregated along the course of the Fleet. A house, looking over the river close to Smithfield, became in the eighteenth century a haven for thieves and footpads of every description. A trap-door in the building led directly down to the water, and the victims of crime were sometimes unceremoniously bundled out. One sailor had been decoyed before being robbed and stripped; he was “taken up at Blackfriars bridge a corpse.” When “the Old House in West Street,” as it was known, was demolished its cellars were full of human bones. Turnmill Street was notable for its brothels, and Saffron Hill for its robbers. In the nineteenth century William Pinks, in his History of Clerkenwell (1881), remarked that “vice of every kind was rampant in this locality, no measures being effectual for its suppression; the appointed officers of the law were both defied and terrified.”