These and other tributary streams have been covered in and built over
(in some cases serving as sewers), but it is possible to trace their
valleys at various points by the fall and rise of streets crossing them,
and their names survive, as will be seen, in various modern
applications. The Wallbrook rose in a marsh in the modern district of
Finsbury, and joined the Thames close to the Cannon Street railway
bridge. A street named after it runs south from the Mansion House
parallel with its course. The Fleet was larger, rising in, and
collecting various small streams from, the high ground of Hampstead. It
passed Kentish Town, Camden Town and King's Cross, and followed a line
approximating to King's Cross Road. The slope of Farringdon Road, where
crossed by Holborn Viaduct, and of New Bridge Street, Blackfriars, marks
its course exactly, and that of Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill its steep
banks. The name also appears in Fleet Road, Hampstead. From King's Cross
downward the banks were so steep and high that the stream was called
Hollow or Hole-bourne, this name surviving in Holborn; and it was fed
by numerous springs (Bagnigge Well, Clerkenwell and others) in this
vicinity. It entered a creek which was navigable for a considerable
distance, and formed a subsidiary harbour for the City, but by the 14th
century this was becoming choked with refuse, and though an attempt was
made to clear it, and wharves were built in 1670, it was wholly arched
over in 1737-1765 below Holborn Bridge. Continuing westward, the most
important stream was Tyburn (q.v.), which rose at Hampstead, and joined
the Thames through branches on either side of Thorney Island, on which
grew up the great ecclesiastical foundation of St Peter, Westminster,
better known as Westminster Abbey. There is no modern survival of the
name of Tyburn, which finds, indeed, its chief historical interest as
attaching to the famous place of execution which lay near the modern
Marble Arch. The residential district in this vicinity was known at a
later date as Tyburnia. The next stream westward was the Westbourne, the
name of which is perpetuated in Westbourne Grove and elsewhere in
Paddington. It rose on the heights of Hampstead, traversed Paddington,
may be traced in the course of the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park, ran
parallel to and east of Sloane Street, and joined the Thames close to
Chelsea Bridge. The main tributaries of the Thames from the north, to
east and west of those described, are not covered, nor is any tributary
of importance from the south entirely concealed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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