THE UNLOST RIVERS OF LONDON Sudbrook Richmond Park → Ham → Petersham (2 miles)
[Sudbrook → Thames]
Most of Richmond Park drains to the east towards the Beverley Brook. The watery channels in the Isabella Plantation and the Pen Ponds, for example, all end up flowing that way. But the corner of the park closest to Kingston instead drains north, direct into the Thames, along channels you can initially see if you know where to look. At Ham Gate they're joined by a suburban tributary we'll get to later, then everything hides within a golf course before flowing through culverts to reach the Thames alongside Petersham Meadows. This is the Sudbrook, an ancient but generally unknown unlost river, and alas not at much of a watercourse if you go exploring during a prolonged drought.
The Sudbrook begins near the Ladderstile Gate, one of a dozen entrances to Richmond Park and the closest to the Isabella Plantation. Walk straight ahead for a couple of minutes and you come to a ferny patch ringed by brambles, within which the headwaters of the river ostensibly rise. They don't at present, it's bone dry, but they must sometimes because four planks have been laid down to lead the adjacent footpath across a shallow channel. A more reliable opener is Dann's Pond, a longstanding pool named after a Victorian gamekeeper called Alfred Dann and apparently a refuge for the great crested newt. It is however surrounded by thick trees and an electric fence so hard to see at the best of times, which these are not, so I didn't.
But below the pond even the temporary stream has left its mark upon the landscape. As the heath slopes gently downwards a broad notch is plainly visible, and continues downhill for almost half a mile. Most people hereabouts are following the sandy bridleway that runs between an avenue of trees, so oblivious of the parallel Sudbrook. But I stepped off into the dip, beneath beeches shedding mast and oaks not yet dispensing acorns, and tracked a river that wasn't there. I did at one point find a broad boggy patch damp enough to have standing water, also a minor trackway suggesting I was by no means the first to walk beside the Sudbrook, but mainly I found a carpet of ferns with a thread of dried mud.
Further down is the first crosspath that needs a little bridge, a three metre pipe beneath, then more impenetrable ferns as the slow descent continues, Just before Queen's Road a small pond intervenes, its edges all dark mud and fallen branches, as the Sudbrook queues to follow a grating beneath the roadway. Watch for cars and speeding bikes if you choose to follow, and maybe look down if you're ever the one speeding by up top. This is Ham Dip, a blatant depression created by the Sudbrook beside the four-way junction known as Ham Cross. Alongside Ham Gate Avenue is a larger permanent pool called Ham Dip Pond where lilies float, not quite idyllic but the best we've seen so far, just before another sluice leads under another road.
The water reemerges in Ham Gate Pond, by far the largest pool so far, but this is a nature reserve so has been firmly locked behind a perimeter fence. It's there to keep deer and dogs out, this to decrease turbidity, boost nutrient levels and increase invertebrate diversity, so I read. It's also the last place you're going to see any water, so make the most. In damper conditions the Sudbrook flows out and, just thirty metres later, its tributary ducks underneath the park wall and merges in. It's come all the way from Kingston and has had a much more eventful journey than just ferns, mud and ferns. Cue an interlude...
THE UNLOST RIVERS OF LONDON Latchmere Stream Kingston → Ham (1¼ miles)
[Latchmere Stream → Sudbrook → Thames]
(coming later)
The conjoined stream is still the Sudbrook, now snaking openly along the western edge of Richmond Park. This green wedge is known as Ham Bottom, funniest of all the hammy names hereabouts, so named because it lies below the gentle climb that forms the (very) long southern flank of Richmond Hill. Hardly anyone comes this far over, let alone crosses the little bridge to walk on the far side of the stream, because it's not leading anywhere useful. A shallow channel meanders between occasional trees, maybe a foot deep with nothing in it but a few shrivelled oak leaves. Be sure to take the last bridge back otherwise it's a dead end, the Sudbrook passing through a vertical grille in the wall to exit the park into a very private space.
Beyond the wall is Richmond Golf Course, formerly Sudbrook Park, the premier 18-holer in TW10. They've been based here since 1891 and their clubhouse is an utterly splendid Palladian mansion in the centre of the course called Sudbrook House. As an outsider all you can see is occasional chimneys through the double fence, but members can stroke their trophies in its central Cube Room before hopping off in a buggy to play a round. The Sudbrook was once diverted off-course to look ornamental, but after golf took over from the Duke of Buccleuch it was unceremoniously buried in a pipe along the drive. This emerges on the far side after half a mile, initially beneath a white arch, then underneath a road that could only be called Sudbrook Lane. For a river you can't see, it sure does get a lot of mentions.
Sudbrook Lane is impressively exclusive, lined by large 18th century houses that money almost can't buy. Cameras watch as you pass, old brick walls keep out prying eyes and the whole thing's illuminated at night by posh lampposts masquerading as gaslights. I did feel a tad out of place. At the north end the lane joins the unnervingly narrow Petersham Road, not far from The Fox and Duck, a fine pub which once doubled up as the clubhouse when the golf course was bedding in. It's hard to imagine the stream once threading beside the road between the most enormous mansions, but it must have done because on the next bend another street name gives the game away.
River Lane could of course be so named because it ends at the Thames, but I like to thinks it's because the Sudbrook once flowed this way for its last quarter mile. It's long been culverted just to the east of this prestigious lane, a dead end where £9m might buy you a Terry Farrell six-bedder, or you could choose to live in an expensive house instead. The pipe then passes under the edge of Petersham Meadow where cattle still graze, before emerging from a concrete block beside a muddy slipway and terminating in the Thames. The Sudbrook's hardly the most unlost of rivers but at least it gets its mile of freedom inside Richmond Park, even if in our present climate it's just four ponds joined by a dry ferny groove.
