An exhibition about lost rivers? Excellent. I was going to report on it when my Fleet walk reaches Islington, but that won't be until Monday and the exhibition closes on Tuesday so best nip in now.
Stepping into the museum's concrete basement off St John Street, it's good to be reminded that Islington was once a green oasis at London's edge. Here were once healing wells, the Fleet and the Walbrook, although not much of the rivers lie within Islington so the borough's pushing its luck somewhat focusing an exhibition on them.
The healing wells included Islington Spa, Bagnigge Wells and Sadler's Well, the latter now best known for the opera house. The exhibition recounts how the chalybeate waters once brought prosperity, started to decline when Joseph Priestly discovered how to manufacture fizzy water (aka 'seltzer'), and lost out entirely as the area became urbanised and polluted. Vulgar entertainments could only hold back the decline for so long.
The Fleet gets its own corner, also a cabinet shared with the New River. If you like maps there is one, also a fabulous illustration from 1825 of the river disappearing underground during the building of the House of Correction at Coldbath Fields. Alongside are a textile installation and a commissioned mosaic by Georgie Fay called The Fragments Flowed Underneath, inspired by the trail of black crossing Charles Booth's poverty map shadowing the route of the buried river.
And in the far corner comes the Walbrook, again with a map and a cabinet of curiosities. Islington only lays claim to the river because the original stream was diverted when the Romans built Londinium's city walls, creating an unpleasant boggy area outside the City later called Moorfields. The innovative exhibit here is a 3D walkthrough of a spectral Walbrook, created by Jamie Turner and Erin Robinson and powered by a nearby laptop. The intention is that you wave your hand over a sensor and somehow 'dowse' your way through a digital river, and if you don't raise your expectations too high you should be successful.
It's a 15 minute kind of exhibition, but worth a look if tagged onto visiting the rest of the museum if you've never been. Just be aware they close for lunch so don't come between 1 and 2, also it's only open today, Monday and Tuesday before the laptop shuts for good and then these rivers will be lost once more.
