THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON Stamford Brook 1a) Chiswick House
It's a recently reopened jewel in West London. It's a classical villa built in grand style lying just off the A4. It's surrounded by a garden that's both ground-breaking and gorgeous. And in that garden's there's a landscaped canal which might or might not be the remnant of a lost river. Could be.
Chiswick House was built in the 1720s by Lord Burlington, a bright young thing who'd been inspired by the Palladian villas of northern Italy. He wanted a house to show off, but not to live in, and so commissioned a building the like of which London had never seen before. Porticos and Venetian windows, symmetrical steps and Roman pillars, all topped off with an octagonal dome [photo]. At Chiswick he would entertain the nobility, usually as part of his unofficial role as chief patron to the Arts, and they would be duly inspired by the dazzling walls and ceilings within. You, on the other hand, can get inside for a fiver (open Sunday to Wednesday until the end of October). An audio guide helps explain the historical nuances of what you're seeing, from the more ordinary spaces on the ground floor to the "wow look at that" rooms upstairs. There's a Green Velvet Room, a Blue Velvet Room and a Red Velvet Room (you'll know which is which), plus a central chamber lined by giant portraits beneath a coffered skylight. It's easy to see how 18th century visitors would have been awestruck.
The gardens are almost as impressive. Chiswick House boasts the earliest example of an 'English Landscape Garden' - bravely informal in its time, and littered with classically inspired features [photo]. Avenues lead off into manicured undergrowth, terminating at some chunk of stonework or lofty obelisk. Paths wind through woodland to reach a hidden cricket pitch or sprawling glass conservatory. There's even an Ionic Temple at the garden's heart, although it was swathed in scaffolding when I visited so I can't tell you how impressive it looks.
And then there's the river. It's almost straight, but tweaked so it isn't quite. It dips beneath an unexpectedly humpy bridge [photo]. It's fed by a grotto-like cascade of rippling water. It has ducks, and waterfowl that aren't ducks. It borders a semi-formal lawn where local Chiswick-ites like to picnic (when the weather's better) [photo]. And it runs on an alignment that almost perfectly matches the direction the Bollo Brook would have flowed if only it hadn't turned unexpectedly east halfway down. Some say the brook did indeed once pass this way, and now runs in a pipe along the bottom of the channel. If that's the case then the waters must once have flowed straight on, across Duke's Meadows to the Thames, although there's no sign there today [photo]. Hell, who cares? The possibility of a lost river brought me to ChiswickHouse, but the certainty of beauty should be enough to tempt you instead.
THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON Stamford Brook tributary 1 - Bollo Brook
Yes, there's a lost river in London called the Bollo Brook. If that comes as a surprise, you clearly don't live or work in South Acton, because the name's everywhere. There are roads named after the Bollo, and workplaces, and a gastropub, even a youth centre. It's one of those words that works well as a geographical brand name, because how would you ever mistake it for something else.
The Bollo Brook is the westernmost of Stamford Brook's three headwaters. It kicked off roughly where Birch Grove meets the Uxbridge Road, a few doors down from Carpet Right and suspiciously close to the "Brookford" launderette. The nearest station is Ealing Common, which is highly relevant because this old river hugs the railway for almost the entirety of its length. Or rather the other way round. The District line from Ealing Common round to Turnham Green, laid in the late 1870s, followed fairly closely the line of the old Bollo Brook. I can't locate any evidence to suggest the railway precisely replaced the river, but presumably its undeveloped 'valley' provided the line of least resistance.
So there's a distinctly Underground flavour to the now-underground river. The Bollo Brook once ran across what's now Ealing Common Depot. It ran beside, or maybe through, the London TransportMuseum Depot at Acton (next open in two weeks time) [photo]. It passed Acton Town station [photo], more precisely through the very obvious dip where the Acton Town Hotel now sits. And then it followed Bollo Lane for about half a mile - lost rivers don't get much more blatant than this. There's even a Bollo Bridge Road stretching off into Acton Proper, although no sign of any bridge beneath the apartment blocks. Across the railway is Bollo House, from which the western end of the Piccadilly line is managed. Then at Bollo Lane Junction a pair of level crossings - a rare sight in central London - but only one of which is still in regular (Overground) use [photo]. And finally the gastropub - The Bollo - which for some reason is represented on its sign by a pineapple. A complete load of Bollos, the lot of them.
At Chiswick Park (the tube station, not the park), the river's supposed to have swung east [photo]. It divided Acton Green Common from Chiswick Common, just as the railway does now, before edging away from the District/Piccadilly at Turnham Green. We'll rejoin the river here tomorrow. And we'll visit Chiswick House too, because that's both relevant and exquisite.
Only one of London's lost rivers has a tube station named after it. The Fleet nearly managed an entire line, but the Queen's Silver Jubilee saw to that. Stamford Brook station is named after a waterway which used to flow nearby (but, to the best of my knowledge, not directly through). It's a peculiar waterway, Stamford Brook, in that it had three very distinct and separate sources. Two of those headed defiantly towards the Thames only to stop suddenly, turn east and join up with the third. All three flowed through that broad geographical entity we know today as "Acton". And some were alternatively known by different, and somewhat amusing, names. The western tributary, that's the Bollo Brook, and the middle one is the Warple. Honest.
Please be patient with me - this isn't a part of London I know well. It's also been especially difficult to determine where precisely each branch ran, or indeed if they even linked up like this at all. We're quite a way west of the West End here, well outside the scope of most historical maps of London, so there's not a lot of cartographical evidence to pinpoint the Stamford Brook's original course. But this was the very last of London's lost rivers to go underground, open in its upper reaches until the early 20th century, so some maps do exist. Meanwhile all of the rivers further to the west have survived on the surface - the Brent, the Crane and the Colne still flow.
One thing I've been surprised to discover while researching London's lost rivers this year is how incredibly important they are in defining boundaries. This is especially true in West London, where the existence of two long thin boroughs is entirely due to rivers that no longer exist. The boundary between Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea... a chunk of that follows the Westbourne. The boundary between Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham... is almost precisely defined by Counter's Creek. The western boundary of Hammersmith and Fulham... follows very closely the line of Stamford Brook (bar a few modern tweaks to match administrative areas to reality). And as for the northeastern boundary of Hounslow, where the borough rubs up against Ealing... step forward the Bollo Brook. If you live out this way, then the public body to whom you pay your council tax is most likely determined by on which bank of an ancient unseen river you live. Lost these rivers may be, but their influence remains current.
One of the latest phrases in blogging and the media is "hyperlocal". That's keeping in touch with what's going down in the neighbourhood, and reporting back on events from round about. National and regional news is all very well and good, but what people also need is to know what's happening round the corner. Communal content, that's where it's at.
TV can never drill down far enough to be hyperlocal. Watching a regional news broadcast means sitting through lots of things of no hyperlocal relevance whatsoever. Londoners have it good in that several stories usually relate to citywide issues, but this still leaves folk in Watford or Sevenoaks or Chelmsford thinking "oh for goodness sake, what has this to do with me?" Equally any TV news service aimed solely at Watford, or West Watford, or even the Cassiobury Park end of Gade Avenue, would lose money hand over fist.
So web-based hyperlocal services are surely the way to go. Citizens can supplement their media diet with a feed of stories from very-nearby, like when the next jumble sale is, and who's got a planning application in, and what's wrong with the lamppost on the corner by the postbox. Hyperlocal blogging is a model that can take off anywhere, so long as those behind the project have sufficient enthusiasm (and so long as the community notices and joins in). It works brilliantly in the Derbyshire village of Parwich, for example, and in Ventnor on the Isle of Wight and in Swanage. But it's patchy is hyperlocality, very patchy.
There was a conference over the weekend on the South Bank where various hyperlocal players in London came together to discuss issues and cooperation going forward. I didn't go, but Jason's written a report, Sarah has some thoughts and Hugh even has some photos. It seems London is a perfect arena for all things hyperlocal, because tens of thousands of people live within a mile of someone else. And yet some parts of town (notably the southeast) have blog after blog after blog based a few streets apart, while other neighbourhoods have virtually no voice at all.
My blog isn't hyperlocal. I write about various bits of London, but not one specific area. I may live in Bow, but I don't write about it very often. If I want to find out what's going on round here I have to check the local paper, or council news, or look around for myself. I've uncovered one recent local blog (hello!), but other than that London E3 goes mostly unreported.
So I thought I'd start a hyperlocal blog of my own. I mean, why not? I've called it eethree (because ethree and e-three were already taken), and it's already up and running. Don't get excited, there's nothing on there you haven't read already. I've uploaded all my E3-related posts from the last couple of years to create a brief backstory, and now all that's missing is the new stuff. Maybe you'd help me write it.
I don't have time to maintain two blogs, not properly, so I'd be delighted if certain local folk could help me out with the new one. Let me know, and I'll add friendly literate authors to my eethree permissions list. Only news and comment from the E3 postcode will be permitted. That includes Mile End, Bow and Bromley-by-Bow, even Three Mills and Fish Island, but not Victoria Park or the Olympic Park. Please let's have nothing extreme, nor rampantly advertorial, nor anything applicable to TowerHamlets as a whole. I reserve the right to moderate what gets churned out, or even to delete the entire project if it doesn't work. But let's hope eethree takes off. HyperEastEndlocality, it's the future you know.
WALK LONDON Green Chain Walk[section 11] Crystal Palace to Nunhead Cemetery (5 miles)
The Green Chain is a network of footpaths threading through southeast London linking woods and open spaces. It's one of the capital's key strategic walking routes. And, up until yesterday, it came in ten parts. Today an 11th section is being opened, extending the chain along the borders of Southwark and Lewisham. If you like the sound of the route you can attend its opening ceremony in Nunhead at 2pm this afternoon, then join a guided walk south to Dulwich and/or Crystal Palace. But I sneaked in and did the walk yesterday because the weather was better.
Crystal Palace Park used to be as far as the Green Chain went. But now there's a new fingerpost round the back of the station, near that cute mural of the dinosaurs on a train, and it points the way five miles further. Sorry, there are no concrete iguanadons on this section, which heads off instead past the site of the old palace beneath London's mightiest TV mast [photo]. But not up the steps to enjoy the view. Oh no, this is a walk optimised for those with pushchairs or wheelchairs, so the official path sticks to the lower level beneath the terrace. I ignored that, obviously, and nipped up for a stroll along the top. One thing you quickly learn on this walk is that the occasional deviation is advantageous.
Walk London haven't yet got round to uploading a route map for this walk, so I had to rely on signposts every step of the way. That's OK, because this new walk has been waymarked with Stalinist zeal and getting lost is almost impossible. But not quite. Just north of Crystal Palace Park the walk splits, with one route for those who need to avoid steps and one for more able adventurers. Only the former has been signposted, so I only discovered the more interesting bifurcation using intelligent guesswork. On my way through a well-hidden Lewisham council estate I came face to face with a snarling Staffie called Bones, thankfully tethered to his teenage master else he might well have lived up to his name. And then, where the two routes rejoined, a far more serious error. Two of the signposts have been accidentally swapped, so that Nunhead points to Crystal Palace and vice versa. I treated the whole thing as a logic problem and deduced my correct exit, but had I arrived via the "step-free" route I'd have blindly continued the wrong way (which is straight down a flight of steps). Get it fixed, Greenchainers.
After a brief (but elegant) road trek, the path heads down into a cutting to follow a dismantledrailway. This was the Crystal Palace and South London Junction Railway, which opened in 1865 and somehow struggled on until 1954 despite minimal passenger traffic. The Crescent Wood tunnel survives, and the Green Chain passes bothendsand crosses the northern portal. You won't get inside, not unless you're a member of the London Wildlife Trust, but you can go right up close and sort-of peer in. Further down the line an original railway footbridge survives (the one from which Pissaro painted Lordship Lane station) (now in the Courtauld Gallery), although this now spans nothing more than some fenced off undergrowth [photo]. And inbetween lies Sydenham Hill Wood, a rare tract of ancient woodland, which is another of those places where it's well worth diverting off the signposted track (ooh pond, ahh Victorian folly).
If you feel like a diversion, a Green Chain spur to Dulwich links to the main route here. It starts with a pleasant descent down tree-lined Cox's Walk, then heads west for a meandering stroll through Dulwich Park[photo]. The park was a middle class haven yesterday, with mummies working out on the open air gym equipment while their kids whizzed round the park in a swarm of recumbent pedal cycles. Hordes of under-10s were being drilled in the art of football ("come on Noah pass to Hugo"), whereas it seems nobody fancied a spin on the boating lake now that autumn's here. Green Chain signposts terminate outside Dulwich Art Gallery, which is a marvellous building to visit if you haven't been before - otherwise it's probably worth giving this 1½ mile extension a miss.
Back on the main walk (after several unavoidable steps) there's another south London treasure - the Horniman Museum. Again the official route misses the view from the top of the hill, skirting instead through the landscaped gardens, although it's an easy diversion to the galleries and café if you so choose. There follows a brief slog through the streets to Camberwell Old Cemetery's rear entrance. This will eventually have brand new ornamental gates to accommodate the Green Chain route, but for now it's accessed through a flimsy timber construction which any well-meaning vandal could kick down in a trice. Next up, for those able-bodied enough to manage 72 steps, is One Tree Hill. There's a great view across central London from the summit (blimey, the Shard's going to be huge, isn't it?), as well as a chance to see the oak tree under which Queen Elizabeth I picknicked on May Day 1602 (or its 20th century replacement). Here too is the Green Chain's other major waymarking malfunction. There's a green post at the top of the hill but it's armless, so walkers have to guess which of the many paths down they need to take. I got that right too, but only by luck.
Nearly there, but still two more cemeteries to go. Camberwell New Cemetery is very much a going concern, complete with crematorium and copious floral tributes everywhere. I passed three 'mourners' (with helium balloons) holding a sort-of party beside one particular grave. They'd left the doors of their car open and were pumping Smooth Radio across the entire hillside, which was very sweet if you like George Michael and Billy Joel, and a bloody selfish imposition if you don't. And finally to Nunhead Cemetery, one of London's finest Victorian burial grounds. Imagine a woody hill littered with urns on pillars and toppling gravestones, it's very much like that. Plus a mighty Gothicchapel, its interior alas destroyed by arson in the 1970s, but still the dominant feature at the top of the main carriage drive. Expect a ceremonial "cutting of the ribbon" here around two o'clock this afternoon. Or if you don't fancy joining the Chain gang, turn up and walk the whole thing at a time of your choosing, like what I did.
Chiswick House was built in the 1720s by Lord Burlington, a bright young thing who'd been inspired by the Palladian villas of northern Italy. He wanted a house to show off, but not to live in, and so commissioned a building the like of which London had never seen before. Porticos and Venetian windows, symmetrical steps and Roman pillars, all topped off with an octagonal dome [photo]. At Chiswick he would entertain the nobility, usually as part of his unofficial role as chief patron to the Arts, and they would be duly inspired by the dazzling walls and ceilings within. You, on the other hand, can get inside for a fiver (open Sunday to Wednesday until the end of October). An audio guide helps explain the historical nuances of what you're seeing, from the more ordinary spaces on the ground floor to the "wow look at that" rooms upstairs. There's a Green Velvet Room, a Blue Velvet Room and a Red Velvet Room (you'll know which is which), plus a central chamber lined by giant portraits beneath a coffered skylight. It's easy to see how 18th century visitors would have been awestruck.
The gardens are almost as impressive. Chiswick House boasts the earliest example of an 'English Landscape Garden' - bravely informal in its time, and littered with classically inspired features [photo]. Avenues lead off into manicured undergrowth, terminating at some chunk of stonework or lofty obelisk. Paths wind through woodland to reach a hidden cricket pitch or sprawling glass conservatory. There's even an Ionic Temple at the garden's heart, although it was swathed in scaffolding when I visited so I can't tell you how impressive it looks.
So there's a distinctly Underground flavour to the now-underground river. The Bollo Brook once ran across what's now Ealing Common Depot. It ran beside, or maybe through, the London Transport Museum Depot at Acton (next open in two weeks time) [photo]. It passed Acton Town station [photo], more precisely through the very obvious dip where the Acton Town Hotel now sits. And then it followed Bollo Lane for about half a mile - lost rivers don't get much more blatant than this. There's even a Bollo Bridge Road stretching off into Acton Proper, although no sign of any bridge beneath the apartment blocks. Across the railway is Bollo House, from which the western end of the Piccadilly line is managed. Then at Bollo Lane Junction a pair of level crossings - a rare sight in central London - but only one of which is still in regular (Overground) use [photo]. And finally the gastropub - The Bollo - which for some reason is represented on its sign by a pineapple. A complete load of Bollos, the lot of them.
Only one of London's lost rivers has a tube station named after it. The Fleet nearly managed an entire line, but the Queen's Silver Jubilee saw to that. Stamford Brook station is named after a waterway which used to flow nearby (but, to the best of my knowledge, not directly through). It's a peculiar waterway, Stamford Brook, in that it had three very distinct and separate sources. Two of those headed defiantly towards the Thames only to stop suddenly, turn east and join up with the third. All three flowed through that broad geographical entity we know today as "Acton". And some were alternatively known by different, and somewhat amusing, names. The western tributary, that's the Bollo Brook, and the middle one is the Warple. Honest.
One thing I've been surprised to discover while researching London's lost rivers this year is how incredibly important they are in defining boundaries. This is especially true in West London, where the existence of two long thin boroughs is entirely due to rivers that no longer exist. The boundary between Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea... a chunk of that follows the Westbourne. The boundary between Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham... is almost precisely defined by Counter's Creek. The western boundary of Hammersmith and Fulham... follows very closely the line of Stamford Brook (bar a few modern tweaks to match administrative areas to reality). And as for the northeastern boundary of Hounslow, where the borough rubs up against Ealing... step forward the Bollo Brook. If you live out this way, then the public body to whom you pay your council tax is most likely determined by on which bank of an ancient unseen river you live. Lost these rivers may be, but their influence remains current.
WALK LONDON
Crystal Palace Park used to be as far as the Green Chain went. But now there's a new fingerpost round the back of the station, near that cute mural of the dinosaurs on a train, and it points the way five miles further. Sorry, there are no concrete iguanadons on this section, which heads off instead past the site of the old palace beneath London's mightiest TV mast [photo]. But not up the steps to enjoy the view. Oh no, this is a walk optimised for those with pushchairs or wheelchairs, so the official path sticks to the lower level beneath the terrace. I ignored that, obviously, and nipped up for a stroll along the top. One thing you quickly learn on this walk is that the occasional deviation is advantageous.
After a brief (but elegant) road trek, the path heads down into a cutting to follow a dismantled railway. This was the Crystal Palace and South London Junction Railway, which opened in 1865 and somehow struggled on until 1954 despite minimal passenger traffic. The Crescent Wood tunnel survives, and the Green Chain passes both ends and crosses the northern portal. You won't get inside, not unless you're a member of the London Wildlife Trust, but you can go right up close and sort-of peer in. Further down the line an original railway footbridge survives (the one from which Pissaro painted Lordship Lane station) (now in the Courtauld Gallery), although this now spans nothing more than some fenced off undergrowth [photo]. And inbetween lies Sydenham Hill Wood, a rare tract of ancient woodland, which is another of those places where it's well worth diverting off the signposted track (ooh pond, ahh Victorian folly).
Back on the main walk (after several unavoidable steps) there's another south London treasure - the Horniman Museum. Again the official route misses the view from the top of the hill, skirting instead through the landscaped gardens, although it's an easy diversion to the galleries and café if you so choose. There follows a brief slog through the streets to Camberwell Old Cemetery's rear entrance. This will eventually have brand new ornamental gates to accommodate the Green Chain route, but for now it's accessed through a flimsy timber construction which any well-meaning vandal could kick down in a trice. Next up, for those able-bodied enough to manage 72 steps, is One Tree Hill. There's a great view across central London from the summit (blimey, the Shard's going to be huge, isn't it?), as well as a chance to see the oak tree under which Queen Elizabeth I picknicked on May Day 1602 (or its 20th century replacement). Here too is the Green Chain's other major waymarking malfunction. There's a green post at the top of the hill but it's armless, so walkers have to guess which of the many paths down they need to take. I got that right too, but only by luck.
