THE UNLOST RIVERS OF LONDON Edgware Brook Bentley Priory → Stanmore → Edgware (3½ miles)
[Edgware Brook → Silk Stream → Brent → Thames]
In November 2015 I walked the Silk Stream north from the Welsh Harp reservoir, and when I got to Edgware I chose to follow the Dean's Brook tributary up to Scratchwood services. Ten years later I'm following the other main tributary, the Edgware Brook, which thankfully has its source somewhere far nicer. In doing so I'm approximately following the route of Silk Stream Way Trail 1 (leaflet here, map here), a year-old project attempting to encourage residents of Harrow and Barnet out and about, but only approximately because it misses several of the good bits.
The Edgware Brook and Dean's Brook combine to form the Silk Stream within the grounds of Edgware Hospital. The confluence is a grim spot behind a shuttered clinic round the back of the compactors, but simultaneously inbetween the mental health centre and breast screening unit because the NHS has to operate out of lowly buildings nobody's upgraded in years. I started here because if this was the end of the walk you'd feel pretty dispirited. The river is better seen on Deansbrook Road, a few inches of water trickling around a discarded chair, past a faded newsagent and under an inconsequential bridge. To see it again follow the alleyway beside the mosque, pass some seriously tumbledown sheds and dodge the gaze of the council cleaner wondering why you're taking such an interest in any of this.
The river's barely noticeable as it ducks under Watling Street, as was, between a Premier Inn and a car showroom, But it must be of local administrative significance because it marks the point where Burnt Oak Broadway becomes Edgware High Street, and also the boundary at which two councils have chosen to place their 'Edgware Town Centre Welcome' sign. To continue you need to find the arch through a decaying 17th coaching inn, formerly the White Hart, beyond which the Edgware Brook finally breaks free alongside a winding footpath. In scenes reminiscent of many a suburban tributary it runs between concrete and then timbered banks, with the occasional pipe emptying local drains into the flow. If nothing else it makes a decent cut-through on the way home from Lidl.
Chandos Recreation Ground is a large humpy space named in honour of a Georgian tycoon who lived locally, although this wasn't part of his glittering estate. Until last year the Edgware Brook ran unseen along the northern boundary but significant landscaping works have since seen it realigned as a naturalised channel within the park, partly because it's much prettier but also as a wildlife corridor and flood prevention measure. The original plans were to shift it even further from the fence but a high voltage cable forced a reappraisal. On my visit three workmen were digging out divots for the planting of several dozen waterside willows, like little hi-vis moles, their water bottles left on a cluster of imported rocks. It can only be an improvement.
After a brief glimpse under Merlin Crescent it's time to bid farewell to the Edgware Brook thanks to League Two football and trains. Barnet FC relocated to the playing fields by the Jubilee line embankment in 2013 with a stadium complex called The Hive, both of which the river crosses and you can't. The team's boss recently announced he intends to move the team back to Barnet because Harrow's not been conducive to maximal crowds, and in the meantime is re-laying the top of the site with artificial floodlit pitches. On the far side of the railway is Stanmore Place, a manicured development of 800 flats on the site of former government offices, whose architects took full advantage of their brookside location by transforming it into a showy fountained pool. No fishing, no swimming, no diving.
Thames 21 have undertaken more landscaping by the crossroads at the top of Honeypot Lane. A broad stripe of Stanmore Marsh survives, rewilded in 2015 as flood storage with the river now crossing wetland in a gravel channel. Volunteers work monthly to clear out Frog Pond and the swales - next appointment November 20th - and the whole area looks tons better than the previous culvert. A word to whoever erected the 'The Silk Stream Way' waymarking signs, they look good but are useless because I only saw three and they're impractically unfollowable. Down Wemborough Road the stream chops off a triangular corner of the school playing fields which has been designated as an exercising space for dogs. I would have gone in to investigate but a particularly bouncy golden hound had beaten me to it, and I'm only glad it didn't bound in after I'd entered.
The next sighting of the Edgware Brook is off-road beside the entrance to Stanmore Golf Club. Three operatives from the Environment Agency were busy cleaning out gunk from the Wolverton Road Screen, thankfully with a whiff of foliage rather than anything browner. A three minute path tracks the stream past gnarled rotting trunks and hoarding squirrels, crossing a concrete slab bridge halfway. This emerges on Gordon Avenue near the gateposts to an 18th century banker's mansion called Stanmore Park - later a boys school, then RAF Balloon Command and since 1997 another upmarket housing estate. The long ducky lake facing the most expensive flats is called Temple Pond, although it's looking a bit of a mess at the moment. It was desilted over the summer and the lakeside is currently a mudbath, like a dozen horses have been galloping up and down, but rest assured it'll be sown with fresh grass in the spring.
The headwaters of the Edgware Brook rise on the slopes of Bentley Priory Local Nature Reserve on the other side of Uxbridge Road. This is a fabulous 90 acre mosaic of woodland, meadow and heath, and at this time of year also mulch and squidge. Cattle and horses graze the lower pasture, fallow deer have a separate paddock up top and dogs are permitted an excitable time in certain areas only. Two fledgling streams join on the edge of Old Lodge Meadow before exiting past Boot Pond, a reedy pool which is named after its shape. The lesser of these tributaries arrives alongside a farm track while the main flow carves a channel from higher up past knotted roots and occasional nature trail posts. Last time I was here it was July and I described the ground as 'parched clay', whereas this time I was very glad I'd worn boots.
In the middle of the woods behind a protective fence is Summerhouse Lake, dammed in the 1850s when Bentley Priory at the top of the hill was the home of the Dowager Queen Adelaide. This is absolutely glorious, I thought, as I made an isolated solo circumnavigation of the lake across a crunchy autumn carpet. Near the southwestern corner is the oldest oak in Middlesex, a sprawling 500 year-old giant with a 9m circumference known as the Master Oak. And on the far side a thin sinuous trickle descends the leafy slopes, fed by springs which emerge where the upper gravels meet the lower London Clay.
This lakeside bowl is easily the most delightful part of the Edgware Brook's brief journey, and this is why I journeyed from a hospital car park to the woods and not, as the stream does, vice versa.
