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| Michael Hodges inspects the Fleet’s ’hesitant’ first flows |
This bucolic stretch of water, overlooked by the homes of the wealthy, is one potential source of the capital’s lost river, the Fleet. Much of its progress is underground, making it hard to follow – or even find. But, somewhere around my feet, it rises up, before travelling six miles to the swirling squalor of the muddy Thames at Blackfriars. My mission today is to join it on that journey.
Baffled, I stop and ask a jogger in the hope of local knowledge. The puffing athlete morphs into Christopher Eccleston, the actor (well, this is Hampstead). “I’m looking for the source of the Fleet,” I say. “I’ve just had a piss there,” he responds and points me through some trees where I find small damp patches. One, no doubt, provided by the ex-Doctor Who.
The name Fleet comes from the Anglo-Saxon fleaton, to float. It was via inland waterways like this that Anglo-Saxon boats first infiltrated Romano-Celtic Britain; now the Fleet’s lower stretches are paved over and the capital’s dizzying ethnic mix treads these streets. In a sense, this modest river carries the story of England.
Beneath a small bridge I find what I decide is the first hesitant flow of the Fleet. The water is stagnant but not dead – pondweeds and grass are abundant, and the surface bubbles with tadpoles, fly larvae and boatmen. Marked into the stone on the parapet of the bridge, I make out the words: “We were stoned here one day.”
It’s no surprise to find a poet here – Keats’s house, where the doomed romantic wrote “Ode to a Nightingale”, is only a few steps away. The house is closed for renovations, so instead I walk to The Wells Tavern, a Georgian hostelry built to cater to the swarms of Londoners coming to take the waters on the Heath. After a refreshing pint, I walk with renewed purpose down through the grimy edges of Kentish Town and Camden.
I pass Mount Pleasant, the hulking 1920s postal centre with its own, now sadly disused, subterranean rail-track for deliveries. Shortly I come to Farringdon station – terminus of the world’s first underground railway, suspended above the Fleet by the Victorians in 1863.
At The Three Kings, an eccentric, bohemian pub by Clerkenwell Green, posters advertise a visit by a troupe of Morris men and – adjacent to a stuffed rhinoceros head – there is a signed photograph of darts champion Andy “The Viking” Fordham holding his “arrows”. Fordham is a direct descendant, it occurs to me over a pint of The Three Kings’ nutty IPA, of the archers who practised on the Green in the Middle Ages.
Those men were the last to see sails and masts come close to Clerkenwell. Until the 13th century ships could navigate as far as Holborn Bridge but, during the reign of King John, the sheer number of wharfs, piers and tanneries crowded out the boats.
The Fleet became a noxious ditch and, in 1679, the build up of filth burst under the pressure of the water behind it and washed away several butchers around Smithfield meat market, cattle and all. The poet John Gay, perhaps employing his profession’s licence, thought the river delightful and observed: “Fleet Ditch with muddy current flows.” Gay also recommended the oysters for sale on the quayside. Such shellfish would struggle to pass health and safety muster now. Much better to stop at The Eagle, the bar that started Britain’s gastropub revolution, and which tempts me in with those ancient London scents: meat, beer and fish.
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| Farringdon station |
The Fleet has long suffered a downbeat reputation. The black-robed Dominicans built a monastery on its banks, but in 1290 the stench from the water was so poisonous they told Edward I that it was killing their monks.
Those stifled clerics live on today in the name of the last pub on my walk. Built in 1875, and then renovated in 1904, The Blackfriar is perhaps the only surviving, fully intact, art nouveau pub in Britain. An astonishing paean to craftsmanship, its interior ceilings and corners ripple with ornate ambition and humour – a mosaiced motto informs drinkers that “haste is slow” – and an exterior mural shows a monk holding a salmon on the banks of the Fleet. It is all the more enjoyable for the knowledge that the pub was nearly lost to the wrecking ball in the 1960s. It took a campaign by John Betjeman, who would later become poet laureate, to save it.
Beyond The Blackfriar, I disappear into the labyrinthine intricacies of a subterranean walkway that offers many dark turnings, none of which seem to emerge on the river. When Alexander Pope stood on this spot in the 18th century he reported that, “…Fleet Ditch with disemboguing streams/Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to the Thames.”
When I do emerge on the Thames, I find no canine corpses, just pleasure cruisers and an incoming tide that slaps hypnotically against the embankment. The water covers the Fleet exit, so rendering the river’s end as obscure as the source. I wander back through the labyrinth to The Blackfriar and raise a toast to poets, pubs and pongs.
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| The Wells Tavern, Hampstead |
The Wells Tavern
30 Well Walk, Hampstead, NW3
The Georgian exterior concealing a contemporary interior might confuse, but the sensational scallops set you up for a stroll and Adnams’ Broadside beer on draught keeps up the tenuously nautical theme.
The Three Kings
7 Clerkenwell Close, EC1
Quietly insane hostelry, full of odds and ends and some impressive stained glass. Near enough to the execution site of William Wallace to justify drinking golden Deuchars IPA from Edinburgh.
The Eagle
159 Farringdon Road, Clerkenwell, EC1
You really are obliged to eat here – the Spanish-slanted take on meat and fish, freshly chalked up every day, is excellent. Given all the beer you’ve had so far, perhaps it’s time to pick something cheeky and red from the interesting wine list.
The Blackfriar
174 Queen Victoria Street, Blackfriars, EC4
Gaze in wonder at the finest pub decoration in the capital while sipping on London Pride (what else!), a hoppy, tangy bitter, if slightly on the wet side.
London Walks is holding its “Lost World of the River Fleet” tour on Saturday August 15. Meet at St Paul’s underground station, 2.30pm, exit 2. www.walks.com
For a map of the River Fleet, go to www.ft.com/fleet
