Following the Fleet: London’s Secret River

By Gareth Huw Davies

Today all you can see of the famous River Fleet is a collection of streams running pure and free on Hampstead Heath. They are the same streams that once fed the second most famous river in Britain, after the Thames, which it joined just 5 miles distant in the bustling heart of London.
Its final 2 mile stretch is the reason much of old London is sited where it is. But people abused it, and polluted it, and in time the entire river, defiled beyond measure, was driven underground and turned into a sewer.
The writer walked the line of the river’s short length, and found many fascinating associations – landscape, people, literature and fascinating history.
Now there are plans to bring the Fleet back to the surface. It’s becoming easier to imagine that some time in the 21st-century the Fleet will flow again, clear and fresh, above ground.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gareth Huw Davies
• Release date: Nov 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310506499

Gareth Huw Davies

Long experience as a senior contributor to UK and overseas publications on a wide range of subjects. Books: A Walk along the Thames Path: Michael Joseph, 1989. Vanishing England. A photographic journey through England's threatened landscapes (England's Glory: photographic journey through England's threatened landscapes, in US). Specialties areas of expertise include writing for national newspapers and magazines on business, property, public sector, conservation, energy, popular science, technology, travel, culture, landscape.

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Following the Fleet – London’s secret river

Gareth Huw Davies

Copyright 2013 by Gareth Huw Davies

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One bright spring morning, I took the train to Hampstead Underground Station to find what remained of the River Fleet, one of the world's shortest and greatest vanished rivers.

It is the tantalizing lost manuscript of our aquatic environment. In cultural terms, it's a Beethoven Sonata with only the first few bars remaining. Or an early Shakespeare sonnet, reduced to the opening lines. Or a ghostly Vermeer, with a few tentative brushstrokes on the top left of the canvas.

I walked along Flask Walk, past Burgh House and the Hampstead Museum, past smart pubs and lofty brick and stucco mansion blocks set on wide streets. At the junction with East Heath Road, I crossed onto Parliament Hill and into the Vale of Health, where there is a view deep down into London.

Up here map references are on a grand scale. You know where south is because you can see, four miles away, unmistakable world famous places. A visiting Turkmenistan peasant would be able to take his bearings from St Paul's Cathedral, the Post Office Tower, Canary Wharf and the shining, silvery Shard. Even in the fog, there's a giveaway auditory clue. Planes grinding in on the flight path into London City Airport tell you exactly which way is south east.

I am here to locate something so much more difficult to find, London’s second river. Once so familiar, and latterly so despised, the Fleet has disappeared along its entire length – except for a few juvenile Hampstead burblings. Thereafter it is so completely departed, above ground, that only cab drivers, tour guides, water diviners, urban historians and the water board have even the haziest notion of where it once flowed.

Without a map, I would, until recently, have needed a firm grasp of geology and understanding of urban geography to even begin my search. There are few helpful hints. And none that I could find in the shape of signs or signposts. The owners of the Heath, the Corporation of London, (but really all of us, because it is protected by Act of Parliament) do not promote the fact that the second most famous river in Britain rises on its land. I can't believe it does not care. I suspect they think the Heath has visitors enough as it is.

Today most people can find the Fleet in a flash, with that helpful electronic device in their pocket or handbag. Google Maps plainly shows where the embryonic river runs, with four separate, elegant blue flourishes across an otherwise empty Hampstead Heath. (That’s the advantage of a, at the time of writing, map devoid of features other than roads and tracks.) Two of the streams run into the ponds below Kenwood House. They were dammed to create ponds during landscaping, when the grounds were set out.

The Fleet clings on, and some very new wildlife moves in. There was some strident avian conversation in a tree above