For my third return to the Fleet I'm heading to King's Cross, and also to St Pancras because the two stations are intrinsically linked to the river that once flowed through them. The river started to be buried hereabouts around 200 years ago as London edged outwards, transforming a healthy stream to a polluted irritant best hidden away. We thus won't be seeing it along this stretch, nor alas hearing it, but there are still signs of its passing in the lie of the land and the sweep of the buildings.
St Pancras Old Church is one of the oldest Christian sites in the UK - some say 4th century, some say 7th - located on a hump of land beside a temperamental river. The current building is however nowhere near original, so what we see today is an early Victorian reinvention of a church that was mostly Tudor, retaining a few Norman recesses and a medieval altar stone. Stepping inside it looks more Georgian than anything, all white walls and monuments, and also quite high church with racks of votive candles and the low whiff of incense. If you've never been before then be aware that Father Owen keeps the doors unlocked most days to encourage visitors, so there's no need to wait until Open House unless you're keen to see a more crowded interior with the addition of guided tours and a table of homemade chutneys.
Outside is an information board featuring a famous illustration of the churchyard circa 1827, a depiction of bathers in a sylvan stream in front of a church with a completely different tower. The adjacent cemetery proved troublesome in the 1860s when the Midland Railway came to open their station at St Pancras. Countless graves were disturbed and the future poet Thomas Hardy oversaw the reinterment works, including the creation of an evocative ring ofgravestones around an ash tree. Alas the 'Hardy Tree' fell in2022 (weakened by a parasitic fungus and a storm), and its chopped-up trunk now lies nearby for general sitting-on, perhaps while perusing the remaining ring of stones and intermingled roots.
In 1700 the land to the south of the church was occupied by medicinal springs called Saint Pancras Wells. Claims that the waters could cure everything from leprosy to piles brought invalids and daytrippers to the spa in their thousands, taking advantage of two pump rooms, a large dining hall and several tree-lined avenues for promenading. The site now lies roughly where Eurostar's international platforms terminate, the evolution of St Pancras station having repeatedly condemned the Fleet to a new course. A cast iron conduit diverted it in the 1860s, then in the 2000s a doglegged realignment was required so that the foundations of the new International station could be strengthened and Thameslink's tunnels could weave through. Even the crown of the sewer had to be lowered to make room for the subway linking St Pancras to King's Cross, so if you've ever walked that you've come pretty close to unseen waters.
King's Cross station arrived a decade earlier on the site of an old smallpox hospital. Lewis Cubitt's grand terminus was in part constrained by the Fleet Sewer, which is why it faces the Euston Road at an angle rather than straight on. A more obvious indicator is his Grand Northern Hotel, now a five storey stack of boutique rooms, the curve of which precisely follows the arc of the former river's passing. I did try to get a good photo of the hotel's lofty sweep but from the north direct sunlight intervened and from the south I ended up with a vibrant sponsored foreground courtesy of a pink lemonade giveaway. When I blogged the Fleet in 2005 all this was tall cranes and temporary walkways, the forecourt still a drab tacked-on concourse with its departures board and Boots the chemist, but today the constant stream of passengers flows more smoothly than the river.
The area around King's Cross was originally known as Battlebridge. The 'bridge' in question spanned the Fleet at the northern end of Gray's Inn Road and was originally known as Bradeford Bridge, mostly likely named after the broad ford that previously crossed the river here. The mainline station might also have been named Battlebridge had its construction not coincided with the brief tenure of a statue to George IV in the centre of the road junction alongside. The ugly cruciform monument was much disliked so was taken down after just 10 years, but it was during this brief window that the Great Northern Railway christened their new London terminus - King's Cross - and the name has stuck ever since. Battlebridge meanwhile is lost beneath the gyratory somewhere outside the Scala, its single brick arch incorporated into the sewer when the river was enclosed.
From here the Fleet follows the Metropolitan line, or rather the Metropolitan Railway followed the Fleet Sewer. The world's first underground railway was a grand plan to link several North London rail termini, and here between Kings Cross and Farringdon two parallel tunnels were dug, one carrying a railway and the other burying a river. In 1862 half a mile of track downstream was flooded to a depth of ten feet when the new sewer catastrophically burst its retaining wall, delaying the opening of the Metropolitan Railway by six months. Here in the King's Cross hinterland the line instead burrows in open cutting - relatively cheap to construct and better for letting the steam escape. Stand in St Chad's Place, Wicklow Street or any of several parallel roads and you can still trace the gaps in the terraces carved out by the railway below. A camera waved over the parapet may even catch a passing train.
The Metropolitan Railway also wiped away the last traces of the elegant spa at Bagnigge Wells. This developed as a lure for gentlefolk in 1758 after two mineral springs were discovered in the grounds of Bagnigge House, formerly Nell Gwynne’s summer residence. Visitors paid threepence to take the waters from the pump or retired to the Long Room to drink their fill at eightpence per gallon, passing time by attending concerts, playing skittles or strolling around the ornamental gardens on the banks of the river. But Bagnigge eventually gained a reputation for 'loose women and boys whose morals are depraved' so in 1813 the proprietors went bankrupt and the once genteel spa was replaced by a tavern. All that remains today is a white stone plaque topped by a carved head, formerly from Bagnigge House and now set into the wall of number 63 King's Cross Road... but come soon before it disappears behind a rampant buddleia.
Fleeting
