Chapter VIII: Part 8

With such arrangements, and the constant increase of buildings on the brook, and the decrease of water supplied to it by the springs in Moorfields, which were gradually being laid dry, the Wallbrook, from a clear stream, became a foul ditch, an open sewer, so that it was found necessary to convert it into a covered one in reality. The brook was filled up with all kinds of debris and partially bricked over, so that when Stow wrote (in 1598) he was obliged to say: 'This watercourse ... was afterwards vaulted over with brick, and paved level with the streets and lanes ... and since that houses also have been built thereon, so that the course of Wallbrook is now hidden underground, and thereby hardly known.' The stream was covered in at least three centuries before the covering in of the Fleet river, but its course can still be traced by the many important buildings which lined its banks. Commencing at its influx to the Thames, there were along its course on the western side the halls of the Innholders, the Dyers, the Joiners, the Skinners, the Tallow-chandlers, and the Cutlers; the churches of St. John, St. Michael, St. Stephen (which originally stood on the western side), St. Mildred, and St. Margaret; also the Grocers' and the Founders' Halls, the estates of the Drapers and Leathersellers, and in Bucklersbury Cornet's Tower, a strong stone tower which was erected by Edward III. as his 'Exchange of money there to be kept.' In the sixteenth century it seems to have come into the possession of one Buckle, a grocer, who intended to erect in its place a 'goodly frame of timber,' but, 'greedily labouring to pull down the tower,' a part thereof fell upon and killed him.

In 1835 a curious discovery, the import of which was then unsuspected, was made close to the Swan's Nest, a public-house in Great Swan Alley, Moorgate Street. A pit or well was laid open, in which was found a large quantity of earthen vessels of various patterns. This well had been carefully planked over with stout boards; the vases it contained were placed on their sides, embedded in mud or sand, which had settled so closely round them that a great number were broken in the attempt to extricate them. A coin and some iron implements were also found in the well, which was about three feet square, and boarded on each side with narrow planks about two feet long. The object with which these vessels, etc., had been deposited in this well was not at the time surmised, but it was made clear by a subsequent discovery. When the National Safe Deposit Company's premises, already referred to, were built, a similar wooden framework was discovered at a depth of about thirty feet below the present level of the street. It was of oak, and about three feet square, and the contents of the box were similar to those found at the Swan's Nest. Fortunately this find came under the observation of Mr. John E. Price, F.S.A., and Honorary Secretary of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, who recognised the remains as those of an _arca finalis_, a monument employed by the Roman surveyors to indicate the situation of limits of public or private property, answering to a landmark or boundary stone. Similar structures, occasionally of stone or tiles, have been discovered in other parts of England, as also on the Continent. It is therefore evident that the box found higher up the stream was also such an area.

To return once more to Wallbrook. A bridge across it we have not yet mentioned was Horseshoe Bridge, situate where the brook crossed Cloak Lane, which was a famous shopping-place of the ladies of those early days, fancy articles being mostly on sale there. It is, however, time to leave the Wallbrook; let us part from it with such a picture on our minds as will leave a vivid and pleasant impression. Remember that its banks were favourite sites for villas, as is proved by all the evidences of wealth and luxury of the ancient dwellers on the Wallbrook ravine and adjoining streets, now buried fathoms deep underground, which have been found on and near the banks of the river. 'A villa in beautiful grounds on the Wallbrook to be let'--think of that!

From the valley of the Wallbrook the ground of the City rises gently towards St. Paul's, and Panyer's Alley, the highest point; thence it falls almost precipitously towards the valley of the Fleet River, so precipitously, indeed, that one of the descents from the Old Bailey to Farringdon Street obtained the name of Breakneck Steps. When the increase of the population of the old City rendered it desirable to seek new habitations, the citizens looked across the river Fleet, and saw the opposite Holborn, Back, and Saffron Hills as yet unoccupied, stretching out as open country--though roads had begun to be established thereon, such as Field Lane, then in the fields--and began to erect dwellings on the western bank of the river. This led to the erection of bridges; we think Holborn Bridge was the first to be built. But before we enter into an account of the bridges, it is necessary to speak of the river itself.

The Fleet, then, which once formed so important a feature of London topography, took its rise in the dense clay of the district just below Hampstead; at Kentish Town its volume was increased by an affluent from Highgate Ponds; it then made its way through the hill near College Street--whence some writers infer that the name of Oldbourne, by which the river was known for some distance, was really a corruption of Hole-bourne--and entered the valley formed by the hills of Camden Town and the Caledonian Road, pursuing its course to Battle Bridge--since 1830 known as King's Cross--where it received an affluent from the west, which rose in the high ground to the south of the Hampstead Road. From Battle Bridge the river bent round to the east, and flowed through the grounds of Bagnigge Wells, once the residence of Nell Gwynne, and thence, still with an easterly trend, past the walls of the House of Correction, thence across Baynes Row, where it received another western affluent, taking its rise at the western end of Guilford Street. Thence it flowed to the northern end of Little Saffron Hill, and in this part of its course it sometimes was called the River of Wells, because it was fed by a number of wells or springs, all situate in Clerkenwell, and known as Clerks' Well, Skinners' Well, Faggs' Well, Loder's Well, Rad Well, and Todd's Well, this latter a corruption of its proper name, God's Well, from which Goswell Street took its name. The river thence flowed down the valley between the old City and the Holborn hills, and here it occasionally went by the name of Turnmill Brook, because of the mills which here stood on its banks. On its eastern side was a street called Turnmill Street, which in later days acquired a very bad reputation, its inhabitants being abandoned characters. Originally it was a respectable street, the houses having gardens going down to the river, which was fenced on both sides. In its southward course the river presently reached Holborn Bridge, where it received the affluent called the Hol-bourne, which rose somewhere near St. Giles'. The existence of this brook is denied by some topographers, but it is distinctly shown in a very old map of the manor of Blemundsbury (Bloomsbury), reproduced in Mr. W. Blott's 'Chronicle of Blemundsbury,' 1892. And we see no reason for doubting the correctness of the map, and therefore adopt the Holbourne as a fact. The Fleet then passed under Chick Lane, afterwards called West Street, which crossed the river at right angles, and in quite recent times was the refuge of thieves, burglars, and other criminals; and means of concealment and of escape by way of the river were revealed when, in the forties and fifties, West Street was pulled down for the improvements then in progress in that locality. After passing under Holborn Bridge, the river was known as the Fleet, not because of the fleetness of its course, as some writers would have it, for it never had much of that quality, but because of the flood or high tide it participated in with the rise of the Thames.

Having thus traced the river from its source to its mouth, we may describe the bridges which crossed it.

In the northern part of its course the river, where it passed through what in the early days was still country, was no doubt here and there crossed by bridges, but they were probably wooden bridges of light construction, as the traffic was but limited. The first solid bridge we have any record of is the one which existed at Battle Bridge, which derived its name from the battle between Suetonius Paulinus and Boadicea, the Queen of the Iceni, which is said to have been fought on the spot, and from the brick bridge which in early times there crossed the Fleet. Originally it was built of wood, but at an uncertain date later on it was replaced by one of brick, consisting of a number of arches. Battle Bridge, from the lowness of its situation, was exposed to frequent inundations. In the _Gentleman's Magazine_, May, 1818, we read: 'From the heavy rain which commenced yesterday ... Battle Bridge, St. Pancras, and part of Somers Town was inundated. The water was several feet deep in many of the houses, and covered an extent of upwards of a mile. The carcases of several sheep and goats were found ... and property was damaged to a very considerable amount.' Various Acts were passed at the beginning of this century for the improvement of the locality: the river was completely arched over, and in 1830 the spot assumed the name of King's Cross from the ridiculous structure erected in the centre of the cross roads; it was of octagon shape, surmounted by a statue of George IV. The basement was for some time occupied as a police-station, then as a public-house, and the whole was taken down in 1845, and a tall lamp erected on the spot.

The Fleet was next crossed by an ornamental, somewhat rustic bridge in the grounds of Bagnigge Wells; of course it disappeared with the gardens and buildings of the Wells in 1841. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Clerkenwell, from an almost rural became an urban district, streets began to cross the Fleet, such as Baynes Row, Eyre Street Hill, Mutton Hill, Peter Street, and others. The next old bridge we came to was Cow Bridge, by Cow Lane, or the present Cow Cross. It dated from the middle of the sixteenth century. Stow, writing, it will be remembered, in 1598, says: 'This bridge being lately decayed, another of timber is made by Chick Lane.' In the time of Elizabeth the ground from Cow Cross towards the Fleet River, and towards Ely House, on the opposite bank, was either entirely vacant or occupied with gardens.

We next come to Chick Lane, afterwards known as West Street. Stow, writing in 1603, refers to Chicken Lane, 'toward Turnmill Brook, and over that brook by a timber bridge into the field.' This must have been Chick Lane, which was really a bridge of houses, the most noticeable of which was one which once had been known as the Red Lion Inn, and which at its demolition is supposed to have been three hundred years old. For the last hundred years of its existence it was used as a lodging-house, and was the resort of thieves, coiners, and other criminals. Its dark closets, trap-doors, sliding panels, and secret recesses rendered it one of the most secure places for robbery and murder; openings in the walls and floors afforded easy means of getting rid of the bodies by dropping them into the Fleet, which for many years before its final abolition was only known as the Fleet Ditch. The history and description of the houses in West Street were rendered so well known at the time of their demolition that we need not enter into them here; besides, they are beyond the scope of our inquiries.

South of Chick Lane was Holborn Bridge, which was built of stone, and, according to Aggas' map of London in 1560, had houses on the north side of it. The date of its original foundation is not given in any chronicle, but it must have gone far back, probably was coeval with the building of London Bridge, since it was on the great highway from east to west. At first it was, like all the other bridges on the Fleet, constructed of wood; after its erection in stone, with a width of some twelve feet, it seems to have been gradually widened to accommodate the increasing traffic. According to Mr. Crosby, a great authority on the antiquities of the Fleet valley, Holborn Bridge consisted of four different bridges joined together at the sides. Yet in 1670 the bridge was found to be too narrow for the traffic, and it had to be rebuilt, so that the way and passage might run in a 'bevil line' from a certain timber-house on the north side, known by the name of the Cock, to the Swan Inn. Wren built the new bridge on the north or Holborn side accordingly, and the name of William Hooker, Lord Mayor in 1673-74, was cut on the stone coping of the eastern approach. What was meant by the 'bevil line' is to us obscure, and we are not much enlightened by what Sir William Tite says, who in 1840 was present at the opening of a sewer at Holborn Hill, and saw the southern face of the old bridge disinterred. 'The arch,' he says, 'was about twenty feet span. The road from the east intersected the bridge obliquely, and out of the angle thus formed a stone corbel arose to carry the parapet.' Of course, with the disappearance of the Fleet Ditch the bridge also vanished.

The next bridge we come to started from Fleet Lane on the east side to Harp Alley on the Holborn side. As it was about half-way between Holborn and Fleet Street bridges, it was sometimes called Middle Bridge. It was built of stone, with a stone rail and banister, and was ascended by fourteen steps, and as high as Bridewell and Fleet bridges, to allow vessels with merchandise to pass under it. It had been erected in 1674, and disappeared with the other bridges on the covering in of the Fleet.

The Fleet Bridge, which we reach next, joined Ludgate Hill to Fleet Street. This bridge was, in 1431, repaired at the charges of John Wels, Mayor. It was destroyed by the Great Fire, and the new one erected in its stead was of the breadth of the street, and ornamented with pineapples and the City arms. But though larger in breadth, it had not the length of the old bridge, the channel having then been already considerably narrowed. The bridge was taken down in 1765.

To the south of Fleet Bridge the river was spanned by a building, which seems to have been a dwelling or a warehouse. It is distinctly shown on Aggas' map.

Bridewell Bridge, the last over the Fleet before its entering the Thames, and the last built (in the sixteenth century), was at first a timber bridge, between Blackfriars and the House of Bridewell, on the site of the Castle Mountfiquet, which originally stood there. In 1708, or thereabouts, it was replaced by one of stone, much higher than the street, being ascended by fourteen steps. It was for foot passengers only. It was pulled down in 1765.

We may now conclude our account of the Fleet with a few statements concerning the vicissitudes it passed through.

A great many antiquities--British, Saxon, and Roman--have been found in the bed of this river, such as coins of silver, copper, and brass, but none of gold; lares, spur rowels, keys, daggers, seals, medals, vases, and urns. An anchor, three feet ten inches in height, encrusted with rust and pebbles--a sketch of which is given in the October number of the _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1843--is said to have been discovered near the site of Holborn Bridge, which may be genuine, as ships are known to have ascended so far up the river in the fourteenth century. But early in that century already the river was choked up 'by the filth of the tanners and others, and by the raising of wharves, and especially by a diversion of the water in the first year of King John (1200) by them of the New Temple for their mills without Baynard's Castle, and by other impediments, the course was decayed, and ships could not enter as they were used.' Upon this complaint of Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, the river was cleansed, the mills removed, and other means taken for its preservation; but it was not brought to its former depth and width, and so was soon filled with mud again. The scouring of the river seems to have been necessary every thirty or forty years, at a great expense to the City. We find that it was so cleansed in 1502, and once more rendered navigable for large barges, but the dwellers on its banks would continue to make it the receptacle of all the refuse, and the wharves built on its banks proved unsuccessful, as vessels could not approach them. Consequently, in 1733 the City of London, seeing that all navigation had ceased, and that the ditch, as it was then called, was a danger to the public on account of its unsanitary state, and because persons had fallen in and been suffocated in the mud, began covering it in, commencing with the portion from Fleet Bridge to Holborn Bridge, and the new Fleet Market was erected on the site in 1737. The part from Fleet Street to the Thames was covered in when the approaches to Blackfriars were completed between 1760 and 1768. One stubborn citizen, however, would not surrender a small filthy dock; a barber, from Bromley, in Kent, was, in 1763, found in it standing upright and frozen to death.

Like all brooks descending from hills, the Fleet was liable to sudden increases of volume, causing inundations.[#] The melting of snow and ice by a sudden thaw and heavy and long-continued rains have frequently turned the Fleet into a mighty and destructive torrent flood. In 1679 it broke down the back of several wholesale butcher-houses at Cow Cross, and carried off cattle dead and alive. At Hockley-in-the-Hole barrels of ale, beer, and brandy floated down the stream. In 1768 the Hampstead Ponds overflowing after a severe storm, the Fleet grew into a torrent, and the roads and fields about Bagnigge Wells were inundated; in the gardens of the latter place the water was four feet deep; in Clerkenwell many thousand pounds' worth of damage was done. In 1809 a sudden thaw produced a flood, and the whole space between St. Pancras and Pentonville Hill was soon under water, and for several days people received their provisions in at their windows. In 1846 a furious thunderstorm caused the Fleet Ditch to blow up. The rush from the drain at the north arch of Blackfriars Bridge drove a steamer against one of the piers and damaged it. The water penetrated into basements and cellars, and one draper had L3,000 worth of goods ruined. From Acton Place, Bagnigge Wells Road, to King's Cross, the roads were impassable. In 1855 the Fleet, as one of the metropolitan main sewers, became vested in the then newly-established Metropolitan Board of Works. Shortly after the Metropolitan Railway was planned, and in 1860 the work was commenced. One of the greatest initial difficulties the engineers of that enterprise had to contend with was the irruption of the Fleet Ditch into their works; the Fleet gave, as does the last flare of an expiring candle, its 'last kick,' made a final effort to assert itself. The ditch, under which the railway had to pass two or three times, suddenly though not unexpectedly filled the tunnel with its dark foetid liquid, which carried all before it; scaffoldings constructed of the stoutest timbers and solid stone and brick walls and piers. But the Metropolitan Board of Works and the railway company, by gigantic and skilfully-conducted efforts, succeeded in forming an outlet for the flood into the Thames; the damage was made good, and the work was successfully carried out.

[#] Wherever there are such brooks the same phenomenon appears. Visitors to Nice may have witnessed the sudden rise of the Paillon, and the Birsig at Basle, usually a fine thread of water, has repeatedly risen five or six feet high in the market-place of that town.

Here we take our leave of the Fleet, and proceeding westward, find nothing to arrest our steps till we come to a spot which once went by the name of the Strand Bridge; not Waterloo Bridge, which originally was so called, but a 'fair bridge,' as Stow calls it, erected many hundred years ago over a brook which crossed the Strand opposite to the present Strand Lane, and descended from the ponds in Fickett's Fields, part of Lincoln's Inn Fields, now all built over. This bridge probably disappeared about the year 1550, when an Act was passed for paving the streets east and west of Temple Bar, and 'Strand Bridge' is specially mentioned in the Act; the paving of the Strand seems to have done away with the brook and the bridge over it. The name of Strand Bridge was also given to the landing-stage at the bottom of Strand Lane, which descends in a tortuous line from the Strand down to the Thames. In this lane there is at the present day the old Roman bath, which, it is supposed, is supplied from the well which gave its name to Holywell Street, and which supply never fails.

There are no written records or other traces of any brook descending from the northern heights through London west of the Strand, till we come to the Tyburn.

This brook, like the Fleet, took its rise near Hampstead, but turning westward, and receiving several tributary streamlets, it ran due south through the Regent's Park, where it was joined by another affluent from the site of the present Zoological Gardens, from which point it turned to the west and crossed the Marylebone Road opposite Gloucester Terrace, and after running parallel with it for a short distance it took a sharp turn to the east, following the hollow in which the present Marylebone Lane stands, the windings of which indicate the course of the brook. On reaching the southern end of High Street, it again turned to the south, crossed Oxford Street, ran down part of South Molton Street, turned west again to the south of Berkeley Square; thence it flowed through the narrow passage between the gardens of Lansdowne House and Devonshire House, whose hollow sound seems to indicate the existence of the watercourse below. It next crossed Piccadilly, ran due south through the Green Park, passed under Buckingham Palace, directly after which it divided into three branches, one of which ran through the ornamental water in St. James's Park, whence it fell into the Thames: the middle branch ran into the ancient Abbey at Westminster, where it turned the mills the monks had erected there. But from old maps it appears that this arm of the Tyburn, at a point a little north-west of the Abbey, threw out a branch which in a northerly course rejoined the park, and then in a curved line to the east reached the Thames at a point not far from Westminster Bridge, and to the north-east of it. The spot where this branch touched St. James's Park was close to Storey's Gate. Now last year (1898) when the ground was being excavated for the foundations of the new Institute of Mechanical Engineers, the workmen came upon the piles and brickwork of an ancient wharf. The structure was wonderfully well preserved; it had evidently been well constructed, probably by the monks, and may have been for the accommodation of the fishermen bringing their goods to the monastery. But at present, and until further information is obtained, if ever it is obtained, we can only form conjectures as to the purposes of the wharf; but its discovery on that spot is curiously illustrative of the history which still lies hidden under our streets.

We have yet to mention the third branch of the Tyburn, which started south of Buckingham Palace. It ran in a southerly direction across Victoria Street, for a short distance skirted the Vauxhall Bridge Road, then crossed it and ran through the marshy grounds then existing down to the Thames a little to the west of Vauxhall Bridge.

Such was the course of the Tyburn. Of the bridges that once must have crossed it not a vestige remains; but we have the record of one which was at the spot which is now Stratford Place, and where the Lord Mayor's Banqueting-house stood, to which he resorted when he, the Aldermen, and other distinguished citizens went to inspect the head conduits from which the City conduits were supplied, on which occasions they combined pleasure with business, hunting the hare before and the fox after dinner. The Tyburn must at one time have been a stream of considerable size; in the year 1238 it was so copious as to furnish nine conduits for supplying the City with water. It had rows of elms growing on its banks, and as it generally, but erroneously, is supposed to have flowed past the southern corner of the Edgware Road, the name of Elm Place was given to a street (now pulled down) west of Connaught Place. How this error arose we shall show when speaking of the West Bourne. On the Tyburn stood the church of St. Mary _la bonne_; by the vulgar omission of letters 'burn' became 'bone,' hence Marylebone. The Tyburn, like the other brooks already discussed, is now a mere sewer.

Proceeding still further west, we come to the Westbourne, which, like the other brooks, rose in the northern heights above London. Around Jack Straw's Castle at Hampstead various rills sprang from the ground, which, forming a united stream a little north of the Finchley Road, that stream, flowing west towards the spot known as West End, continued its western course till it reached Maygrove Road; it crossed that road, and taking a sudden turn south, it ran through Kilburn down to Belsize Road, south of which a small lake was formed, by its confluence there with a considerable tributary in the form of a two-pronged fork and its handle, coming from the lower southern heights of Hampstead. From the lake the Westbourne flowed in a westerly course, and near Cambridge Road received another affluent from the high ground where Paddington Cemetery now stands; still running west at Chippenham Road, its volume was further increased by the reception of a stream coming from the neighbourhood of Brondesbury, and from this point it ran due south, but with many windings, through Paddington, and across the Uxbridge Road, through part of Kensington Gardens, through the Serpentine in Hyde Park and across the Knightsbridge Road, and what was then called the Five Fields, a miserable swamp, and formed the eastern boundary of Chelsea till it discharged itself into the Thames, west of Chelsea Bridge, but divided into a considerable number of small streams.

Such was its course, and from its description we see that it was no insignificant stream, and may assume that the first settlers in those northern parts of London must be looked for on its banks. Like the Fleet, it had various names in different localities; thus at Kilburn it was known as the Keele Bourne, Coldbourne, and Kilbourne; at Bayswater it was called the Bayswater Rivulet; the name of Bayswater itself is supposed to be derived from Baynard, who built Baynard Castle on the Thames, and also possessed lands at Bayswater. At the end of the fourteenth century it was called Baynard's Watering-place, which in time was shortened to its present appellation.

The bridge which gave Knightsbridge its name was a stone bridge; by whom or when erected is not on record, but probably Edward the Confessor, who conferred the land about here on the Abbots of Westminster, also built the bridge for their accommodation. The road was the only way to London from the west, and the stream was broad and rapid. The bridge was situated in front of the present entrance into the Park by Albert Gate, and part of it still remains underground, while the other portion was removed for the Albert Gate improvements. In the churchwardens' accounts of St. Margaret's, Westminster, are the following entries regarding the bridge:

1630. Item, received of John Fennell and Ralph L s. d.
Atkinson, collectors of the escheat, for repair
of Brentford Bridge and Knightsbridge . . . . 23 6 4

1631. Item, paid towards the repairs of Brentford
Bridge and of Knightsbridge, etc. . . . . . . 24 7 10

The Westbourne was occasionally a source of inconvenience and even danger to the inhabitants of Knightsbridge. After heavy rains or in sudden thaws it overflowed. On September 1, 1768, it did so, and did great damage, almost undermining some of the houses; and in January, 1809, it overflowed again, and covered the neighbouring fields so deeply that they resembled a lake, and passengers were for several days rowed from Chelsea to Westminster by Thames boatmen.

On the site now covered by St. George's Row, Pimlico, there stood in the middle of the last century a house of entertainment known as 'Jenny's Whim.' A long wooden bridge over one of the many arms of the Westbourne led up to the house. The present Ebury Bridge over the Grosvenor Canal, which this river-branch has become, occupies the site of this old bridge. 'Jenny's Whim' had trim gardens, alcoves, ponds, and facilities for duck-hunting; in the gardens were recesses, where, by treading on a spring, up started different figures, some ugly enough to frighten people, a harlequin, a Mother Shipton, or some terrible animal. Horace Walpole occasionally alludes to 'Jenny's Whim'; in one of his letters to Montagu, he says: 'Here (at Vauxhall) we picked up Lord Granby, arrived very drunk from Jenny's Whim.' Towards the beginning of this century 'Jenny's Whim' began to decline; at last it sank down to the condition of a beershop, and in 1804 it was finally closed. The origin of the name is doubtful. Davis, the historian of Knightsbridge, accepts the account given him by an old inhabitant, that it was so called from its first landlady, who directed the gardens to be laid out in so fantastic a manner as to cause the noun to be added to her own Christian name. Other reports say that the place was established by a celebrated pyrotechnist in the reign of George I.; but that does not account for the name.

Like other London rivers, the Westbourne in the end became a sewer; it was gradually covered up; of the two chief branches by which it reached the Thames, the eastern one became the Grosvenor Canal, and the western the Ranelagh Sewer. The canal was crossed by several other bridges, Stone Bridge being one of them.

We stated above that the Westbourne formed the western boundary of Chelsea; its eastern boundary was also a river, or rather rivulet, which it appears never even had a name, though in one old map I find it called Bridge Creek. It rose in Wormwood Scrubs, skirted the West London and Westminster Cemetery, and entered the Thames west of Battersea Bridge, where, in fact, there is still a creek going some distance inland. The rest of the stream has been absorbed by the West Kensington Railway. No vestige of it remains, and it has no history.

Brook Green took its name from a brook which once rose near Shepherd's Bush, but it has no records.

The next river we should come to, if we pursued our journey westward, would be the Brent; but as that is still existing--how long will it continue to do so?--it does not enter into the scope of our investigations.

Having now given an account of all the extinct brooks north of the Thames, we will cross that river and see what watercourses formerly existed on the Surrey side.

The southern banks of the Thames, being low and flat, originally were a swamp, continually overflowed by the river--Lambeth Marsh commemorates that condition of the locality. Down to Deptford, Peckham, Camberwell, Stockwell, Brixton, and Clapham did the flood extend. But by the gradual damming up of the southern bank of the Thames, the erection of buildings on the Surrey side, and the draining of the soil, the latter was gradually laid dry, and the numerous rivulets which meandered through the marsh were reduced to three between the still-existing rivers--namely, the Ravenscourt to the east, and the Wandle to the west. The first brook, again going from east to west, is the Neckinger, which rose at the foot of Denmark Hill and adjacent parts, and, after passing in two streams under the Old Kent Road, united north of it, and reached the Thames at St. Saviour's Dock, which, in fact, is the enlarged mouth of the old river. But according to some old maps we have consulted, it had a branch running in a more easterly direction, and entering the Thames at a point near the present Commercial Docks Pier. But of this latter branch no trace remains, whilst the northerly course to the Thames is indicated by various roads, such as the Grange and the Neckinger Roads. The brook ran past Bermondsey Abbey, up to the gates of which it was navigable from the Thames. The Grange Road took its name from a farm known as the Grange, and here the Neckinger was spanned by a bridge. When Bermondsey Abbey was destroyed, a number of tanneries were established on the site, which took their water from the Neckinger, in connection with which a number of tidal ditches, to admit water from the Thames, were cut in various directions. Near the Upper Grange Road stood a windmill, and at the mouth of the Neckinger a water-mill, the owner of which shut off the tide when it suited his purpose, which led to frequent disputes between him and the tanners. But in time the latter sank artesian wells, the mill was driven by steam-power, and the water of the Neckinger being no longer required for manufacturing purposes, the river was neglected and finally built over. The Neckinger Mills had been erected in the last century by a company to manufacture paper from straw; but, this enterprise failing, the premises passed into the hands of the leather manufacturers. A street to the east of St. Saviour's Dock, and parallel with it, is still known as Mill Street. There was another bridge over the Neckinger where it crossed the Old Kent Road, near the spot where the Albany Road joins the latter road. It was known as Thomas-a-Watering, from St. Thomas, the patron of the dissolved monastery or hospital of that name in Southwark. The bridge was the most southern point of the boundary of the Borough of Southwark, and in ancient days the first halting-place out of London on the road to Kent. Chaucer's pilgrims passed it on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas-a-Becket at Canterbury:

'And forth we riden ...
Unto the watering-place of St. Thomas,
And then our host began his hors arrest.'

Deputations of citizens used to go so far to meet royal or other distinguished personages who came to visit London. From the end of the fifteenth century the spot was set apart for executions, and numerous are the records of criminals who were hanged there until about the middle of the last century.

In 1690 two very handsome Janus heads--i.e., heads with two faces--were discovered near St. Thomas-a-Watering. They were found near two ancient piers of a large gate--Janus was the God of Gates. One was taken up and set up on a gardener's door; but the other, being embedded in quicksand, from which springs flowed out pretty freely, was left. Dr. Woodward, who founded the Professorship of Geology in the University of Cambridge, afterwards purchased the head which had been saved, and added it to his collection of curiosities. At the beginning of this century there was still a brook running across the Kent Road on the spot mentioned above, with a bridge over it, and the current from the Peckham and Denmark hills was at times so strong as to overflow at least two acres of ground. East of the Mill Street above mentioned there is a spot which has been rendered famous by Dickens in 'Oliver Twist'--namely, Jacob's Island. As the description he gives of it is known to everyone, we need not here repeat it; it applies, partially only, to the locality now.

It is, or to speak correctly was, a 'Venice of drains.' But it was not always so; in the reign of Henry II. the foul, stagnant ditch, which till recently made an island of this pestilential spot, was a running stream, supplied with the waters which were brought down in the Neckinger from the southern hills. On its banks stood the mills of the monks of St. John and St. Mary, dependencies of the Abbey of Bermondsey, which were worked by it. In those days the neighbourhood consisted of blooming gardens and verdant meadows. Close to Jacob's Island were Cupid's Gardens, a kind of Ranelagh on a small scale, but still a very pleasant place of public entertainment. Tanneries, and many still more objectionable trades now carried on in the locality, were then undreamt of.

Many of the horrors of Jacob's Island are now things of the past. The foul ditch, in whose black mud the juveniles used to disport themselves, undeterred by the close proximity of the unsavoury carcasses of dead dogs and cats, is now filled up and turned into a solid road. Many of the tumble-down houses have been pulled down--in fact, the romance of the place is gone.

Let us proceed westward; we come to the once important Effra, which remained a running stream till within the sixties, when it, like others, became a mere sewer. It rose in the high grounds of Norwood, and ran down Croxted Lane, till within the last two or three years a perfectly rural retreat; at the Half Moon Inn at Herne Hill it received an affluent, which rose between Streatham Hill and Knight's Hill. Skirting the park of Brockwell Hall, it ran along Water Lane, past the police-station in the Brixton Road. Here it took a sharp turn to the north, and ran parallel to the Brixton Road, access to the houses on the eastern side being gained by little bridges, till it reached St. Mark's Church, where it took a sharp turn to the west. But before reaching that point, a branch of the river, at a spot somewhere between the present Clapham and South Lambeth Roads, in what used formerly to be called Fentiman's Fields, turned in a northerly direction towards the South Lambeth Road, flowing through what was then Caroon Park, afterwards the Lawn Estate, a portion of which has recently become Vauxhall Park. The river ran along the lane leading by the side of the present Vauxhall Park to the Crown Works of Messrs. Higgs and Hill, at the corner of the lane turning almost at right angles up the South Lambeth Road towards Vauxhall Cross. As in the Brixton Road, little bridges here gave access to the houses on the eastern side of the South Lambeth Road. According to an old map, this branch of the Effra sent off another across the South Lambeth Road and a Mr. Freeman's land, lying between it and the Kingston Highway, as the Wandsworth Road was then called, and thus reached the Thames. The main stream, which we left at St. Mark's Church, continued its course along the south side of the Oval, sending off in a north-westerly direction a branch which fell into a circular basin, probably on the spot where the great gas-holders now stand in Upper Kennington Lane. It then turned towards Vauxhall, where it passed under a bridge, called Cox's Bridge, and fell into the Thames a little northward of Vauxhall Bridge.

At Belair, one of the show-houses of Dulwich, a branch of the Effra ran through the grounds; the Effra itself also traversed the Springfield Estate near Herne Hill, now given up to the builders. The river there appears to have been much wider than elsewhere, and in depth about nine feet, with banks shaded by old trees. The present writer remembers the Effra as a river, and was told by a gardener, now deceased, who had worked on the Caroon Estate, which extended from the present Dorset Road to the Oval, for more than fifty years, that he had often seen the Effra along Lawn Lane assume the proportions of a river, wide and deep enough to bear large barges, which statement gives countenance to the tradition that Queen Elizabeth frequently in her barge visited Sir Noel Caroon, the Dutch Ambassador, who lived at Caroon House, on the site of which stand the mansion and factory of Mark Beaufoy, Esq., who is also the owner of the Belair House above-mentioned. Dr. Montgomery, sometime Vicar of St. Mark's, and now Bishop of Tasmania, in his 'History of Kennington,' says that, in 1753, the whole space occupied by the Oval and a number of streets was open meadow through which the Effra meandered at will. It was a sparkling river running over a bright gravelly bottom, and supplied fresh water to the neighbourhood. A bridge crossed the Effra at St. Mark's, and was called Merton Bridge, from its formerly having been repaired by the Canons of Merton Abbey, who had lands for that purpose. Curiously enough, the author from whom we take this, Thomas Allen, in his 'History of Lambeth,' published in 1827, when the Effra was yet a running stream, refers to it only on the above occasion, when he calls it a 'small stream.' 'Et c'est ainsi qu'on ecrit l'histoire.'

One more 'lost river' remains on our list, the Falcon Brook, which, rising on the south side of Balham Hill, flowed almost due north between Clapham and Wandsworth Commons to Battersea Rise, which it crossed, after which it turned sharply to the west, ran along Lavender Road, crossed the York Road, and discharged itself into the Thames through Battersea Creek, which is all that now remains of the river, except the underground sewer which represents its former course. Once many pleasant villas stood on its banks; at the present day the entire valley through which it flowed is covered by one of the densest masses of dingy streets to be seen anywhere near London. Nothing remains to recall even its name, except the Falcon Road, and a newly-erected public-house which has supplanted the original Falcon, a somewhat rustic building, which, however, harmonized well with the then surroundings, which were of a perfectly rural aspect, such as, looking at the present scene, we can scarcely realize. But it can be seen in a rare print of the river, engraved by S. Rawle, after an original drawing by J. Nixon. He was an artist, who, passing the Falcon, which was then kept by a man named Robert Death, saw a number of undertaker's men regaling themselves after a funeral on the open space in front of the inn. They were not only eating and drinking and smoking, but indulging in various antics, endeavouring to make the maids of the inn join in their hilarity. This scene, and the queer coincidence of the landlord's strange name, induced Nixon to make a sketch of it, which was engraved and published in 1802, the following lines from Blair's poem 'The Grave' being added to the print:

'But see the well-plumed hearse comes nodding on,
Stately and slow, and properly attended
By the whole sable tribe, that painful watch
The sick man's door, and live upon the dead,
By letting out their persons by the hour
To mimic sorrow, when the heart's not sad.'

A cantata was also published about the same time, supposed to be sung by undertakers' merry men, to celebrate the pleasure and benefit of burying a nabob, and drink to their

'...next merry meeting and quackery's increase!'

Here we close our journey and our records at a funeral. Well, the finale is not inappropriate. Have we not been attending the funerals of so many gay and bright and sparkling, joyfully leaping and rushing, and sometimes roaring, brooks and rivers, descending from the sunny hillsides, finally to be buried in dark and noisome sewers? And the lost river, alas! is but too often the type of the lost life. But moralizing is not in our line--we think it sad waste of time; it is no better than doctors' prescriptions. We would rather remind the reader, who in these notes may miss elegance of style and picturesqueness of description, that such qualities were incompatible with the compactness of details the space at our command imposed upon us. Besides, a more florid style must borrow something from imagination; but here we had only to deal with facts, and if the reader finds as much pleasure in studying as we did in collecting them, though the labour was great, he will not regret the time bestowed on their perusal.

*XVI.*

*ROGUES ASSORTED.*

On Horwood's Map of London, dated 1799, just one hundred years ago, there is shown a road, starting from Blue Anchor Lane, Bermondsey, at almost a right angle to the latter, and running in an easterly direction, but with a considerable curve in it, and this road is called Rogues' Lane. It is more than half a mile long, perfectly solitary, not a house on or near it, the land around it being a wild waste, and as deserted as a lonely moor in the recesses of Wales or Cornwall. How did this lane acquire its name? Did the inhabitants of the East End of London construct it as a kind of sewer for carrying off into the outlying wilderness the rogues who infested their streets? or did the rogues of that day, openly or tacitly acknowledging themselves to be such, choose the lane as a kind of rendezvous, as a sort of peripatetic exchange for the transaction of their rascally schemes? The East End of London seems, indeed, in those days, to have been a favourite resort of rogues--Stepney had its Rogues' Well--now they prefer the West End. But the rogues of old were somewhat different from the modern specimens; they were chiefly thieves, footpads, burglars, sneaks, low cheats, sham cripples, and such mean fry--modern civilization, with its panacea of education, had not yet asserted itself. Culture, which licks all the world into shape, has even reached the rogues; the petty scoundrels of old are replaced by the magnificent swindlers of the present day, who deal not in paltry pence, but in weighty sovereigns--who do not cheat a silly countryman out of the few shillings his purse may contain, but wheedle trusting spinsters and mad and greedy speculators out of thousands of pounds. The modern rogue is either a promoter of bogus companies, or a director who issues bogus shares, an embezzling bank-manager or trustee, or a man who lives far beyond his means, even when he knows that all his available assets are gone in betting, racing, and Stock Exchange speculation, or a fraudulent bankrupt. And there is no slitting of noses, no whipping, not even exposure on the pillory ominously looming at the end of their career; when the game is up, no more cash to be obtained by loans, and the infuriated creditors become troublesome, he attempts one more big haul, the proceeds of which, if successful, he prudently settles on his wife, and then the unfortunate victim of circumstances, over which, as he pathetically says, he had no control, leisurely takes a walk to Carey Street, has a comfortable wash and brush up in the financial lavatory which hospitably stands open there, and he comes out, thoroughly whitewashed and rid of all importunate claims upon him, after which he hires a fine mansion in Belgravia, fares sumptuously every day, and bespatters with the mud of his chariot-wheels the deluded shareholders and tradespeople whom his wily schemes have ruined. It is all, or nearly all, the outcome of modern education, which, by ramming notions totally unsuited to the minds and characters under tuition into juvenile minds, bears such bitter fruit. But educational cranks have it all their own way now, though it is wrong to call them 'educational'; they fancy that education means 'cramming,' never mind whether the food is assimilated with the body, whilst education really means the very opposite--namely, a drawing out, not a putting in: a drawing out of the hidden properties of mind and character. But let us come to our theme--the London rogues of old; their evil deeds were done long ago, and will therefore not rile as does the rascality we see around us now. We will take the beggars first: not all beggars are rogues, but the majority are. They fared variously under various Kings; some protected, some persecuted them. Strange it is that, under the juvenile, gentle Edward VI., one of the most severe laws was passed against them: a servant absenting himself for three days or more from his work was to be, on his re-capture, marked with a hot iron with the letter V (vagabond), and be his master's slave for two years, and fed on bread and water; should he run away again, he was, on being caught, to be marked on his forehead or cheek with a hot iron with the letter S (slave), and be his master's slave for life; for a third escape the punishment was death. This diabolical law was repealed two years after. Under Elizabeth sturdy beggars were whipped till the blood came. James I. rather sympathized with them; he, like them, always was in need of 'siller.' Hence the country, and especially London, swarmed with rogues of every description, known by various cant terms, such as Rufflers, Upright Men, Hookers, Rogues, Pallyards, Abraham Men, Traters, Freshwater Mariners or Whipjacks, Dommerars, Swadders, Bawdy Baskets, Doxies, with many other names of the same slang category; and, of course, the object of all the members of these various associations was to cheat the unwary and charitable. In course of time some of these terms went out of use--the cant of rogues is always on the move--but new ones took their places; and, in spite of all the laws passed against them, beggars continued to flourish. In 1728 a spirited presentment to the Court of King's Bench was made by the Grand Jury of Middlesex against the unusual swarms of sturdy and clamorous beggars, as well as the many frightful objects exposed in the streets; and, the nuisance not abating, a similar presentment was made in 1741, with the same unsatisfactory result. And as long as there are people who will not, and people who cannot, work, and as long as there are thoughtless people who will indiscriminately give alms, beggars will infest our streets. Referring to such, Sir Richard Phillips, in his 'Morning's Walk from London to Kew' (1820), tells us that the passage from Charing Cross to St. James's Park through Spring Gardens was a favourite haunt of beggars. Says he: 'A blind woman was brought to her post by a little boy, who, carelessly leading her against the step of a door, she gave him a smart box on the ear, and exclaimed, "Damn you, you rascal! can't you mind what you are about?" and then, leaning her back against the wall, in the same breath she began to chaunt a hymn.' Even now you may hear a psalm-singing woman, who has hired two or three children to render the show more effective, when these get weary, growl, in a hoarse whisper between her Hallelujahs, 'Sing out, ye devils!' The Rookery in St. Giles's, demolished to make room for New Oxford Street, was the very paradise of beggars. They there held an annual carnival, to which Major Hanger on one occasion accompanied George IV., when still Prince of Wales. The chairman, addressing the company, and pointing to the Prince, said: 'I call upon that 'ere gemman with a shirt for a song.' The Prince got excused on his friend agreeing to sing for him, who then sang a ballad called 'The Beggar's Wedding; or, the Jovial Crew,' with great applause. The beggars drank his health, and he and the Prince soon after managed to make good their retreat.

Among the most infamous rogues of the last century were men of the Jonathan Wild stamp--_agents provocateurs_, as we should now style them--who not only led people into crime, but shared the proceeds of it with the felons; nay, worse, they got persons who were quite innocent convicted, by perjured witnesses, of crimes which had never been committed. It was practices like these which at last brought Jonathan Wild himself to the scaffold.