london geezer

2011-03-15T23:00:00.005Z

The diamond geezer Olympic ticket tips page

Olympic update
10 ticketing tips

1) Get an overview of what's on when
The official schedule is really complicated. There are 650-ish sessions in 40-something sports across two-and-a-bit weeks, which makes it really hard to start planning from scratch. London 2012 have produced a mega-pdf, subdivided into mini-pdfs, for the final detail. The Telegraph have a rather nice interactive schedule. But you need to start at a higher level. Try this very-approximate timeline for size.

	weekend 1 27-29 Jul	week 1 30 Jul-3 Aug	weekend 2 4-5 Aug	week 2 6-10 Aug	weekend 3 11-12 Aug
*Opening ceremony*
Archery, Canoe slalom, Road cycling, Judo
Badminton, Fencing, Rowing, *Swimming*, Tennis
Beach volleyball, Equestrian, Table Tennis, Weightlifting
Basketball, Boxing, Diving, Football, Gymnastics, Handball, Hockey, Sailing, Volleyball, Water Polo
Track cycling
Synchronised swimming, Triathlon
*Athletics*, Wrestling
Marathon, Race walk
BMX
Canoe sprint, Taekwondo
Mountain bike, Pentathlon, *Closing ceremony*

2) Only apply for tickets you know you can afford
The application process is a raffle, so you might be tempted to apply for more tickets than you need. But you'll be forced to pay for every ticket you win, so check your potential overdraft before you apply. Payment will be taken somewhere between Tuesday 10 May and Friday 10 June, so we're told. If you're feeling financially screwed at the moment, the BBC website has a helpful table showing where all the £20 tickets are.

3) Get a sense of proportion
There are only 6.6 million tickets up for grabs. That might sound like a lot, but it's not even enough for everyone in London to get one each. Some of these Olympic events are going to be ridiculously over-subscribed. Even if you have hundreds of pounds to splash around, you won't be attending every event you want to see. Don't get your hopes up. In particular don't try to plan yourself a perfect weekend of six consecutive medal-winning sessions, because you'll only end up with two days full of holes.

4) Decide whether you want to see a particular event, or any event
If your only goal is to say "yes, I went to the Olympics", then avoid the massively over-subscribed sessions. Check out the "ticket limit" column on the schedule. If the limit's 4, you're probably not going to get in. If the limit's 20, it's much more likely you'll be lucky. The event you get to attend may not be thrilling, but at least you'll be able to say "I was there".

5) Play the lucky dip
There'll only be a few £20.12 tickets up for grabs for the Opening Ceremony. You barely have any chance at all of getting one. But where's the harm in applying? It won't break the bank, and if you're not successful it won't cost you a thing. Think of it as playing the lottery, with no stake up front. Somebody's got to win, and it could be you. [Session code: ZO001]

6) Know your capacities
The one fact Olympic organisers have failed to mention on their ticket schedule is how many tickets they'll be selling at each session. Several will be saved for sponsors and their hangers-on, the so-called Olympic family. But you can get a pretty good idea of how many tickets are available if you know the capacity of each venue. Some of these are a lot smaller than you might expect, and your chances of getting a ticket will be similarly restricted.

Olympic Stadium	80000	White Water Centre (slalom)	12000
Eton Dorney (rowing)	30000	Woolwich Barracks (shooting)	7500
Greenwich Park	23000	Handball Arena	7000
Hadleigh Farm (mountain biking)	20000	Lord's (archery)	6500
Aquatics Centre	17500	Wembley Arena (gymnastics)	6000
Hockey Centre	16000	BMX circuit	6000
Horseguards (beach volleyball)	15000	Velodrome	6000
Basketball Arena	12000	Water Polo Arena	5000
Earls Court (volleyball)	15000	The Mall (marathon finish)	1600

7) If you want to go as a group, apply as a group
One useful rule in the ballot is that you'll win either all or none of your tickets in each session. So if six of you want to go and see the rowing, apply as a group of six. That way you'll get either six tickets or nothing. Whatever you do, don't let Dave and his wife apply for their tickets and Julie apply for hers and you get the rest, otherwise you're almost certain to be split up.

8) You don't have to have a Visa card to buy tickets
If you don't have a Visa card, you won't be able to buy tickets online. But you will be able to use the ticket application form in the Official Ticketing Guide instead. This document can be picked up from March 15th onwards in any English branch of Lloyds TSB (or Bank of Scotland in Scotland) (or local library in Northern Ireland). The organisers are happy to take a cheque in an envelope, or even a postal order, to pay for your winning tickets. No plastic monopoly need spoil your enjoyment of the Games.

9) Don't forget there are venues outside London
If you don't live in London, do you really want to battle your way into town, pay through the nose for a Travelodge in Aldgate, then queue to squash yourself into a crammed tube train? Your Olympic Ticket includes a free zone 1-9 travelcard, so it's not all bad news. But why not head outside the capital instead? There are 50 football matches to watch, plus the joys of rowing in Windsor, canoeing in Herts, sailing in Weymouth and mountain biking in Essex. I scouted the four major venues outside London last summer, and my reports might help convince you to follow.

10) All competition schedules are subject to change at any time
Now there's a disclaimer. You may think you've booked tickets for the cross-country riding on July 30th, but London 2012 reserve the right to shift any event in case of bad weather, terrorist alert or whatever. It might be safest to stay at home and watch the whole thing on TV instead. The entire fortnight's optimised for the small screen anyway, plus you can nip out for a drink whenever you like and not be forcefed a Coca Cola. But hey, even if it's only for a preliminary round in the volleyball, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Worth a dip in the Olympic bran tub, don't you think?

2011-03-15T22:00:00.004Z

Olympic update
10 more ticketing tips

1) You can only apply online if your Visa card expires in May or later.
The Olympic ticketing procedure is so protracted that the Visa card you have now might expire before London 2012 want your money. So they won't let you use it. Visa cards expiring in March 2011 or April 2011 are being refused by the ticketing software. Instead, owners of early-expiring cards need to wait until Visa send a replacement before applying for tickets. Thousands of potential ticket purchasers are likely to give up at the first hurdle.

2) Your money will be taken before you find out which tickets you've got.
It's perverse, but it's true. The ticketing process is so cumbersome and long-winded that London 2012 won't email you before attempting to take your money. They need a full month (10 May to 10 June) to sift through all the applications and work out who's got what. They may even take money for different events at different times - it's not been confirmed that your bank account will be raided only once. Only by 24 June, a fortnight later, do they guarantee you'll have received confirmation by email of which events you'll be attending. But watch out earlier for a telltale twelvepence. If (and only if) the amount withdrawn from your account includes pence as well as pounds then congratulations, you've won a cheap seat for the Opening Ceremony.

3) Keep your bank account topped up for a month.
I can't emphasise this one enough. At the moment you apply for tickets, London 2012 will warn you of the maximum amount you could end up paying. Keep this amount of money in your Visa-related debit card account at all times between 10 May and 10 June. On some unspecified unannounced day, London 2012 will attempt to take money from your account, and it could be the maximum. If this transaction fails, you'll get nothing. "If payment cannot be taken, LOCOG reserves the right to refuse any Ticket applications or Ticket orders." Even if you're only £1 short, you'll lose every ticket on your shopping list. It'll be like winning the lottery and then realising you forgot to enter. But how many people can genuinely afford to maintain a ticket-sized bufferzone in their bank account for a full month? I guess we'll start finding out in May when the unlucky "winners" start to complain.

4) There's a £6 ticket-handling charge.
Come on, this system is run by Ticketmaster, so what did you expect? The £6 is to pay for registered delivery (and to make a tidy profit, I don't doubt). And don't think of having the tickets delivered to work, or to your auntie, or to your nextdoor neighbour, because that's prohibited. "Tickets will be delivered via secure carrier to the billing address of the Purchaser. Tickets will not be delivered to any other address." If you move house any time between now and summer next year, when the tickets start arriving, then you need to let London 2012 know... or miss out.

5) If you end up with tickets you don't want, you can sell them on.
But you can only sell them on via London 2012's official resale site. There are no precise details yet, but this website will give ticket holders the opportunity to sell unwanted tickets "at no more than face value". Don't think of flogging the official bits of paper on eBay or anything, because that's banned. Don't raffle them for charity, because that's banned too. And don't sell them in a public place, because that's a criminal offence. The official resale website will be a "secure environment", ensuring that London 2012 still know who the official purchaser is at all times. But it won't be operational until next year, so you'll have to sit tight on that hole in your bank balance for at least six months.

6) Don't try buying tickets as a gift for someone else.
According to the terms and conditions, if you're the one that buys the tickets, you have to be one of the people who uses the tickets. "If more than one Ticket is issued to a Purchaser, those Tickets may only be used by the Purchaser and a family member, friend or colleague who is known to the Purchaser personally and who is intended to accompany the Purchaser to a Session." So if you buy two tickets as a gift for Bob and Carol's wedding anniversary, Bob and Carol may be turned away from the venue for not being you. Will officials really be this strict? Best not to risk finding out.

7) Smile, some events are free.
Not every event needs a ticket or a sturdy bank balance. The initial rounds of the archery are free. The cycling road races are free (apart from spectating at the finish). The sailing in Weymouth harbour is free (unless you want to sit in what's normally a public park beside a video screen). And then of course there are the two marathons, which you can watch for free from my front doorstep (except, bugger, sigh, grrr).

8) Get a brochure.
If you're serious about planning your Olympic experience carefully, don't try to do it all online. Negotiating umpteen pdfs or interactive schedules isn't easy, and makes it incredibly hard to gain an overview of what's available when. Instead pop into your nearest branch of Lloyds TSB and pick up a copy of the official ticketing brochure. It's massive - a full 70 pages on thick glossy paper (but then it was paid for by bankers and they have money to burn). No need to queue or anything, the brochures are lying around ready to take. Then you can scan through the entire schedule at your own pace, ticking off possibles and definites, and optimise your application. Makes a nice souvenir too, if you're that way inclined.

9) Read the Terms and Conditions.
Nobody ever reads the terms and conditions. But this time you really should, in case you find yourself agreeing to something you didn't think you were agreeing too. The terms and conditions aren't very easy to find on the website, at least up front, but do hunt them down all the same. Things like "LOCOG cannot guarantee adjacent seats if separate Ticket Application Forms are submitted." And "if a Ticket Holder leaves a Venue for any reason, the same Ticket may not be used to re-enter a Venue." And "upon request, a Ticket Holder must show their Tickets and/or proof of his or her identity with appropriate Photographic Identification." Worth knowing in advance, I think.

10) You can only apply once, so don't rush it.
My brother's already submitted his application form online. By lunchtime yesterday he'd requested four tickets for the Opening Ceremony (the cheap £20.12 ones) and nothing else. So that's it. "Once submitted, a Person may not be able to alter, amend, withdraw or cancel an application." Given how horribly oversubscribed those £20.12 tickets are going to be, my brother's not going to be going to the Olympics at all. He can't apply a second time, either online or on paper, because the rules forbid it. "A Person may only submit one (1) Ticket Application Form." So please, don't rush your application. You've got until 23:59 on Tuesday 26th April to apply, so take your time picking and choosing.
(Don't worry little bruv, because there is an option to withdraw your application, any time up to 26th April, and tweak it and apply again. But come 27th April your application is set in stone, and there's no going back)

2011-03-15T21:00:00.001Z

Olympic update
Just the ticket?

Planning on buying any tickets for the London 2012 Olympics? You may be in for a shock.

You know that 6.6 million tickets will be available, for a total of 650 different sessions. You know the range of prices for each event, which'll start at £20 and peak at £2012. You know there'll be a public ballot for any sessions that are over-subscribed. And you know that everyone will have an equal chance in that ballot, whether they apply on 15 March or 26 April. This you know.

But this (recently added to London 2012's ticketing FAQ) you probably didn't know.

How many tickets am I likely to be allocated depending on how many I apply for?
We urge you to consider your budget very carefully when applying for tickets. Once your application is processed you cannot cancel, change or return the tickets you are allocated. When you apply, the maximum amount you could be charged will be made clear to you and you'll need to have sufficient funds available to cover this.

In other words, when you enter the Olympic ticket ballot you're agreeing to pay for every ticket you're offered. Apply for one, get none, and you'll pay nothing. Apply for twenty, get three, and you'll pay for three. But apply for twenty, get twenty, and you'll pay for twenty. This is a ballot with an expensive sting in its tail. If you can't afford to pay for your backup choices, don't risk entering.

When applying for tickets can I rank my preferences?
We encourage you to take your time in selecting a range of sports, sessions and price categories to apply for as there won’t be an opportunity to rank your preferences within your choices. Tickets start at £20 across all sports. All price categories will provide a great Games experience.

Suppose you want to see the diving. That'll be popular, so how many sessions should you bid for? Apply for just one and it's quite possible you'll lose out, completely, and never see an Olympic dive in your life. To increase your chances you need to apply for more sessions - maybe a lot more, depending on how oversubscribed you think the diving's going to be. Get the balance right and you could be watching Tom Daley leap. But overdo it and you could find yourself lumbered with several tickets across several days, when you really only wanted one. Expensive mistake.

How can I go about applying for tickets for groups of family and friends?
You will be notified if you are unsuccessful in any of the sessions you applied for - you will either receive the allocation you applied for, or you will be unsuccessful and receive none. So if a family of five applies for tickets for a Handball session (providing you're within the ticket limit for that session) and you are allocated tickets to that session you will receive either the total quantity of tickets you requested for that session or none at all.

Suppose you're a family of five who want to see some track cycling at the Velodrome. You don't mind when, because it's the school holidays, but how many sessions do you apply for? You'd like to spread the possibilities over a week, but that's too dangerous. What if you ended up with five tickets for Monday afternoon and five for Monday evening and five for Tuesday afternoon, etc etc, that'd break the bank. It'd be safer to apply for only one session, say Wednesday afternoon... but then you might miss out on the cycling altogether. Best to aim low and go to the preliminary round of the handball instead, I'm sure the kids won't be disappointed.

How many tickets am I likely to be allocated depending on how many I apply for?
You will be able to add a price range indicating the lowest and/or highest prices you are willing to pay for tickets to a session - by entering this price range it will increase your chances of being allocated tickets.

Suppose you have your heart set on attending the Beach Volleyball final. Tickets are available at £450, £295, £185, £125 and £95, and you can choose just one of these price categories or a wider range. The £95 tickets will obviously be more popular than the £450, so you can maximise your chances by including the higher value tickets in your range. Unfortunately that also maximises your chances of having to pay a lot rather than a little. Offer to pay £450 or £95, and you can bet that £450's the more likely total to be whipped from your bank balance.

When will ticket costs be charged to my account?
No charge will be made until tickets are allocated, which will happen in May-June 2011. Full details of the process - including what happens and when - will be announced shortly.

Applications for tickets close at a minute to midnight on Tuesday 26th April. At this point you'll have offered some sort of pre-authorisation on your Visa card for every ticket you've applied for - your money's primed to go. It'll take London 2012 and their friends at Ticketmaster some time to allocate who gets what, and then they'll email to tell you precisely how successful you've been. Will you have the event you wanted or not? Will you be signed up for a balanced range of sports at optimal times, or will you be making do with second best spread awkwardly across a fortnight? Most importantly, can your bank balance take an instant hit on some as-yet unspecified date if you end up being more successful than you hoped? Plan carefully, or this might hurt.

How do refunds and resales work if I decide I don’t want my tickets?
Customers will have the opportunity to resell their tickets at face value through the official London 2012 resale programme in 2012. This will be the only authorised way to buy tickets from people offering their tickets for resale. Further details will be announced in early 2012.

Just read those last two FAQs again. Your money will be taken in May/June 2011. But if you end up with tickets you don't want, for whatever reason, you won't be able to sell them until some time in 2012. Any unexpected hole in your cashflow will last at least six months, whereas Olympic bosses get all their ticket money more than a year before the first event takes place. Someone's thought about this very deliberately.

If I apply for tickets in a range of sessions to increase my chances of being allocated tickets, and subsequently I'm awarded all of those tickets, can I cancel the sessions that I no longer want?
We would like to clarify that customers are committed to purchase any tickets they are allocated through the application process, whether they receive all or only some of the tickets they applied for.

When the official publicity kicks off for Olympic ticketing, one message will be very clear. Don't apply for tickets you know you can't afford. Less well-off folk will be penalised, because they can only risk having a few tickets in the great Olympic raffle, and may end up seeing nothing. Meanwhile rich folk can bid for all the best tickets in as many sports as they like, because their finances can take the hit no matter what. Best plump up your cash reserves if you want to see anything decent. This you now know.

2011-03-15T20:00:00.001Z

Dear Mr and Mrs Smith,
Thank you for applying for tickets for London 2012. You applied for

✖ ZO001 Opening Ceremony (27 Jul 19:30-22:30) 2 tickets @£20.12
✖ AT005 Athletics - 100m final (6 Aug 18:50-21:55) 2 tickets @£50
✖ DV016 Diving - 10m platform final (11 Aug 20:30-22:10) 2 tickets @£50

You were successful in none of your bids. We have not taken any money from your account.
You will not be coming to the Olympics, loser. Perhaps you should have considered the laws of supply and demand a little more carefully before you applied for the three most popular sessions on the list.
Love Seb

Dear The McTavish Family,
Thank you for applying for tickets for London 2012. You applied for

✖ BD021 Badminton - semi-finals (4 Aug 09:00-12:00) 4 tickets @£30
✖ GT002 Trampoline - men's final (4 Aug 14:00-16:15) 2 tickets @£20, 1@£13, 1@£8
✖ HO021 Hockey - preliminaries (4 Aug 19:00-22:45) 4 tickets @£20
✖ CT005 Cycling - women's sprint (5 Aug 10:00-11:25) 2 tickets @£20, 1@£13, 1@£8
✖ SY001 Synchronised swimming (5 Aug 15:00-16:40) 2 tickets @£20, 1@£13, 1@£8
✔ TT025 Table Tennis - women's semi-final (5 Aug 19:00-22:00) 4 tickets @£20

You were successful in one of your bids. We have taken £80 from your account.
You thought you were being clever planning a full weekend of events. But all you won in the ballot was an evening of ping pong. Enjoy your long weekend down from Scotland. Hope you find something interesting to do for the rest of it.
Love Seb

Dear Sandra and Bob,
Thank you for applying for tickets for London 2012. You applied for

✔ SW002 Swimming - finals (28 Jul 19:30-21:35) 2 tickets @£95
✔ SW004 Swimming - finals (29 Jul 19:30-21:35) 2 tickets @£95
✔ SW006 Swimming - finals (30 Jul 19:30-21:15) 2 tickets @£95
✔ SW008 Swimming - finals (31 Jul 19:30-21:20) 2 tickets @£95
✔ SW010 Swimming - finals (1 Aug 19:30-21:35) 2 tickets @£95
✔ SW012 Swimming - finals (2 Aug 19:30-21:05) 2 tickets @£95
✔ SW014 Swimming - finals (3 Aug 19:30-20:50) 2 tickets @£95
✔ SW015 Swimming - finals (4 Aug 19:30-21:00) 2 tickets @£95

You were successful in all eight of your bids. We have taken £1520 from your account.
You really wanted to see a swimming final, any swimming final. So you thought you'd better apply for all of them. Unfortunately you forgot to read the smallprint. The smallprint says you're obliged to pay for every ticket you win in the ballot, and you were unexpectedly lucky. So we're screwing you for a grand and a half, and there's nothing you can do to stop us. Good luck selling the unwanted tickets next year.
Love Seb

Dear Arthur,
Thank you for applying for tickets for London 2012. You applied for

✖ JU007 Judo - quarter finals (31 Jul 09:30-12:30) 1 ticket @£16

You were successful in none of your bids. We have not taken any money from your account.
You only wanted to see one event. You only wanted to be able to say that you were here. Unfortunately tens of thousands of other people also wanted to see the same event, and you were unlucky. I'm sorry that, as a mere pensioner, £16 was all you could risk paying. But remember, you can always apply for Paralympic tickets from September. Or watch it all on TV.
Love Seb

Dear Phil, Jenny and family,
Thank you for applying for tickets for London 2012. You applied for

✔ ED004 Equestrian - individual dressage (9 Aug 12:30-16:30) 6 tickets @£275 or £175 or £95 or £65

You were successful in your bid. We have taken £1650 from your account.
You really really wanted to see this event, so you ticked all the boxes for the full range of ticket prices. Bad luck, the cheapest tickets were oversubscribed and the most expensive weren't. So we picked the most expensive tickets for you, and charged you full whack. Don't look so surprised.
Love Seb
PS It's worse than that. Our terms and conditions state that "payment will be taken from all successful applicants between Tuesday 10 May 2011 and Friday 10 June 2011" but that "you will be notified of any tickets you have been allocated by 24 June 2011." So we actually took the £1650 out of your account six weeks ago. Sorry we didn't warn you in advance. Sorry we removed the money the day before your mortgage payment. Sorry for hurling you unexpectedly into overdraft. We're proud to have tipped you into the red with Visa.

Dear Ahmed and Mina,
Thank you for applying for tickets for London 2012. You applied for

✖ TE010 Tennis - singles round 2 (31 Jul 09:30-12:30) 2 tickets @£55
✔ CS004 Kayak slalom finals (1 Aug 13:30-16:05) 2 tickets @£35
✖ AT006 Discus/Hurdles/Shot Put (6 Aug 09:30-12:30) 2 tickets @£20

You were successful in one of your bids. We have taken £70 from your account.
You chose carefully, and you chose well. You've only got one event but it should be a cracker. You'll remember being part of the Olympics for the rest of your lives. Thanks for giving us your money.
Love Seb

2011-03-15T19:00:00.002Z

Alternative ways to get London 2012 tickets, number 1

Fancy a ticket to the Opening Ceremony? You can guarantee yourself one, come September, if you book an Olympic "short break" with Thomas Cook. For just £6499 per person you can get to see...

» Opening Ceremony - Olympic Stadium
(27 July - 19:30 to 22:30) [Seat Category A - normal price £1600]
» Table Tennis - Men's & Women's Singles Preliminary Rounds - ExCeL
(28 July - 9:00 to 12:45) [Seat Category A - normal price £85]
» Volleyball - Women's Preliminaries - Earls Court
(28 July - 20:00 to 23:30) [Seat Category B - normal price £55]

...along with three nights at a 5 star West End hotel. Meals are thrown in, as is a coach to whisk you to and from your Olympic event. What with Thomas Cook being official London 2012 sponsors, your coach might even get to whisk along the segregated lanes of the Olympic Route Network (you VIP you). But at a price almost £5000 greater than the total face value of the three tickets, your guaranteed seats come at a huge premium.

Or if £189 is more your budget, how about...

» Basketball - Women Preliminaries - Olympic Park
(5 August - 20:00 to 00:00) [Seat Category D - normal price £45]
» Athletics - Men & Women - Heats/Qualifying Rounds - Olympic Stadium
(6 August - 10:00 to 12:20) [Seat Category E - normal price £20]

...along with one night at a budget Heathrow hotel? There's no coach this time, only a free Travelcard, but boy is that Travelcard going to be necessary. The basketball ends at midnight (in Stratford) and the athletics starts at 10am (in Stratford), so somehow you'll have to exit the arena, catch the specially-extended late-night tube, return to the hotel (20 miles away in Heathrow), get some sleep, have breakfast, check out, ride the tube back to the Olympic Park and get through security, all in ten hours flat. You don't have to wait until September to book this clunker, you can book it now.

Rest assured, most of Thomas Cook's 800 Olympic package holidays aren't quite this eye-wateringly expensive or impractically compact. And they do guarantee official tickets and a hotel room for the night, which may be in short supply in London at Games time. But Thomas Cook do seem to have a lot of tickets for the less desirable preliminary rounds of non-premium sports, so you will be paying well over the odds to see some fairly bog standard events.

If you're not successful in the Olympic ticket ballot, you live outside London and you have money to burn, you might want to bear Thomas Cook's short breaks in mind. But if you're not successful in the Olympic ticket ballot, that could be because thousands of the tickets aren't available to the general public at all, only to corporate packages and official sponsors. Best not complain, because ticket sales are an important part of the funding for the Games, and without big business hospitality we'd be contributing even more of our taxes to the event.

Alternative ways to get London 2012 tickets, number 2

Fancy guaranteed tickets to both the Opening and Closing Ceremonies? They're up for grabs now if you're a major company or large organisation with a bottomless budget. London 2012 (under the mantle of 'Prestige Ticketing') are selling luxury corporate Event Packages with access to VIP seating, hospitality boxes and backstage entertainment. In addition to the two ceremonies, companies also have to sign up for at least four of the premier athletics sessions (the ones at which medals are awarded). A bargain at £4500 per delegate per session, I think you'll agree. Here's what a typical itinerary looks like... (this for the lucky sods invited to schmooze at the Opening Ceremony)

Friday 27th July - Opening Ceremony (£4,500)
14:30 Prestige Pavilion opens
14:30 Champagne and canapé reception
15:00 Superb four course lunch with fine wines
17:30 Guests to be seated within the Olympic Stadium
18:00 Pre-show entertainment begins
19:30 Opening Ceremony commences
22:30 Opening Ceremony ends, guests return to Prestige Pavilion
22:30 Dessert and a selection of fine cheeses
01:00 Prestige Pavilion closes

This June, when your own personal ticket application for the Opening Ceremony is refused due to massive public over-subscription, remember it's your own fault for not being important enough. But remember too that the profits from these mammoth corporate packages are helping to subsidise free tickets for London schoolchildren, and indeed the Games themselves.

2011-03-15T17:00:00.006Z

Olympic update
Spectator Policy

Publication of the ticketing terms and conditions gives us the first glimpse into what it'll be like to attend a session at the 2012 Olympics. When you offer to buy a ticket, you also sign up to a Spectator Policy. If the following sounds extreme, that might be because you haven't been to a major stadium event recently and don't know what's the norm. Or it might be because this goes well beyond the norm. You decide.

Personal property
19.1.1 There will be no storage available at the Venues, save for limited space afforded to children’s buggies, prams and wheelchairs.
19.1.2 LOCOG has the exclusive right to determine what objects may be brought into a Venue by a Ticket Holder. LOCOG will not store confiscated and/or unauthorised material at a Venue and a Ticket Holder will have no right for the item to be returned.

Be warned. There'll be a security friskdown before every Olympic event, during which your personal belongings will be scrutinised. And all unacceptable items may be removed, permanently, never to be seen again. Let's see what London 2012 will be throwing away.

Prohibited and restricted items
19.2.1 Ticket Holders are prohibited from transporting into a Venue any firearm, ammunition, dangerous weapon or object, explosive, chemicals or incendiary device.

Well that's a relief. Good. So far, so normal.

19.2.3 The following is a non-exhaustive list of restricted items which may not be taken into a Venue (LOCOG reserves the right to amend this list, generally, or in respect of any Venue or Session): food (save for baby food), alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages (save for baby milk and other valid medical reasons)...

This doesn't mean no eating or drinking at your seat - there'll be plenty of catering suppliers inside each venue. But it does mean no food or drink will be consumed at the Games apart from that sold by official merchandisers. McDonalds Quarter Pounder and Coke, yes. Packed lunch and carton of Aldi apple juice, definitely not.

...liquids in containers of greater than 100ml in size, needles (save as required for valid medical reasons), animals (save for guide dogs), weapons (including knives), illegal drugs, other illegal substances, fireworks, firecrackers, poles, flagpoles, sticks, photography tripods, bats, umbrellas and other blunt instruments...

If it rains, don't bring a brolly to the venue. Even if you only plan to use it on the journey there, you'll lose it immediately. Plastic raincoats rule.

...motorcycles, bicycles...

I hope Boris sorts out cycle parking outside all London's Olympic venues, because you won't be allowed to take yours in. Don't arrive at the Stadium by Borisbike either. The Cycle Hire zone is being extended east but not quite as far as the Olympic Park, because Barclays aren't official sponsors.

...roller-skates, skateboards, or other types of skates, electronic transmitting equipment, flags of countries not participating in the Games...

Aside from Afghanistan, Kosovo and Vatican City, pretty much every independent country sends a team. Are London 2012 expecting the Pope to turn up with a big flag?

...large flags or banners, horns, whistles, drums, rattles, musical instruments, lasers or any other devices that in the opinion of LOCOG may disturb a Session (including mobile telephones)...

Hang on, have I read that right? Mobile phones may not be taken into a venue?! Mobile phones are a restricted item?! Mobile phones will be confiscated and not returned?! They can't mean that, surely? But that's what it says.
Update: They didn't mean that. They've now changed what it says. Phew. But, sheesh.

...objects bearing trademarks or other kinds of promotional signs or messages (such as hats, T-shirts, bags, etc) which LOCOG believes are for promotional purposes...

Don't panic, your Nike t-shirt is fine, and your Emirates football top won't be banned. It's only deliberate attempts at ambush marketing which will be forcibly restricted.

...counterfeit products...

I can hear the security guard now. "Excuse me Sir, I have reason to believe that your Rolex is a fake, hand it over please." They can't mean all counterfeit products, even that £3 designer jacket you bought from Walthamstow Market, surely? But that's what whoever wrote these terms and conditions has written.

...balls, rackets, frisbees or similar objects, large quantities of coins, lighters, advertising or promotional material of any kind...

"of any kind..." what sort of ambiguous catch-all phrase is that? I mean, you stop almost anybody in the street and they'll have some kind of promotional material on them - back page of a magazine, IKEA-sponsored Oyster wallet, whatever. I know what London 2012 are trying to stop, and rightly so, but this over-vague phrase appears to give them carte blanche to impound almost any branded object.

...printed matter bearing religious, political or offensive content or content contrary to public order and/or morality, bottles or containers made of glass or other material, flasks, thermoses, refrigerators...

Who the hell brings a refrigerator to an athletics stadium? Well don't!

...large objects such as suitcases or bags...

How large is a large bag? This is important because most of us can't survive without carrying a bag around, and we need to know in advance how large a bag we can get away with.

...and in general any material that LOCOG may deem dangerous or that may cause damage or disruption to a Session.

Essentially then, when you come to the Olympics LOCOG have the right to remove lots of relatively normal objects from your possession. I can't believe they're going to steal all mobile phones, large handbags and chewing gum, but by signing up you're effectively saying that they can. Whoever compiled this list was either being excessively draconian or wilfully vague. Still, at least they don't appear to want your camera...

Filming, photography and taping
19.6.3 Images, video and sound recordings of the Games taken by a Ticket Holder cannot be used for any purpose other than for private and domestic purposes and a Ticket Holder may not license, broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the internet more generally, and may not exploit images, video and/or sound recordings for commercial purposes under any circumstances, whether on the internet or otherwise, or make them available to third parties for commercial purposes.

This is important. Yes you can take photos or make a video of what you see at an Olympic event. But no you can't sell them to anyone and no you can't give them to the media. And yes you can post pictures on your own website, but no you can't upload any videos to the internet. That's yes to Flickr, Twitpics and photo-blogging, but no to YouTube or Audioboo. I wonder how the Facebook generation are going to react to enforced non-sharing of Olympic videos and audio. More interestingly, I wonder if London 2012 can stop them.

2011-03-15T17:00:00.005Z

Olympic update
10 travel tips for ticket-buyers

1) Travelling to the Olympics might be a lot easier than you think.
If you're not fortunate enough to live nextdoor to the Olympic Park, then the hassle of travelling to the Games might be putting you off buying a ticket. Fret not, because London 2012 really want you to buy a ticket, so they've gone out of their way to provide lots of travel options to get you there. Long distance coaches, park and rides, even pre-bookable train tickets. It's just that you probably haven't realised these options exist yet. Let me advise you.

2) Your Games ticket comes with a free one-day travelcard.
And not just any travelcard, but the top-whack zones 1-9 travelcard. That means free travel from Heathrow to Stratford, or Amersham to Woolwich, or Epping to Wimbledon, or whatever. The Games Travelcard even entitles you to free travel on Javelin services between St Pancras and Stratford International, for that special seven-minute cross-town whizz. The only services you won't be able to use are the Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick Expresses. Olympic folk have even gone to the effort of providing a map to show the Games Travelcard zone, 16 months in advance, so you can see for yourself what good value it is.

3) Some Games events outside London also come with a free one-day travelcard.
Some events are only just outside London, like the rowing at Eton Dorney, canoeing at the Lee Valley White Water Centre and mountain biking at Hadleigh Farm. Good news. Tickets for these events will include a free London Travelcard and free travel by National Rail out of London to the nearest stations. For events at Eton and Hadleigh, there'll even be shuttle buses laid on to take you the last couple of miles from the station to the venue. Good news, that is, unless you live further out of London (like Reading or Southend), in which case you'll have to pay for all your travel yourself.

4) Rail tickets to the Games can be booked over 12 months in advance.
Normally you can't book a long-distance UK rail ticket any more than three months in advance. But some very special arrangements have been made to ensure that rail tickets for Games journeys can be made this summer once ticket allocations are known. If the train you want has non-reservable seats then you don't need to book a specific-timed train, any will do, plus you can travel back up to midday on the following day. If the train you want needs a reservation then you can travel back up to three hours later than the train you booked. Peace of mind, one year early. Unheard of.

5) If you find travel difficult, you can plan an accessible journey to the Games.
London already has a step-free travel map, but London 2012 have generated a new one and it goes one step further. Yes, there are blue blobs denoting step-free access from street to platform, but this map also has pink blobs. These denote step-free access from street to train, and are only to be found at a few stations like Stratford or Green Park which have been constructed or revamped recently. The pink blobs are terribly distracting, so I hope they're not the future for London's day-to-day tube map, but if you're in a wheelchair they're also terribly useful.
There's also an accessible map for rail travel outside London showing stations in southeast England with "step-free station from entrance to platform, and between platforms, staff assistance available." Not seen that before.

6) There'll also be special coach services from far outside London to the Games.
It's not all about trains. For those on a budget, arriving by coach may be ideal. 2012 Games coach services will run to East London from an impressive variety of places - as far afield as Norwich, Leeds, Shrewsbury and Swansea. There'll be special coaches to the sailing in Weymouth too, from towns and cities nearby. Here's a map showing all the many departure points. You'll be able to book seats starting this summer, once ticket allocations are known. But be aware that coaches will be scheduled to arrive at the venue for the start of sessions, so this might mean getting up ridiculously early in the morning.

7) Arriving by bike will be encouraged.
All London 2012 venues will have free, secure, managed cycle parking. That's an admirable commitment, and to be applauded. But there'll be nowhere to dock Borisbikes, so you'll have to leave your hired Barclaycycle elsewhere and walk the last bit.

8) For motorists, park-and-ride services will be available.
And there was everyone thinking that 2012 would be a public-transport-only Games. Not so. Park and ride facilities for motorists will be available for several venues, often nearby, but in some cases outside the M25 with coach transfer. You'll have to book a car parking space in advance, once you know you've got tickets, but we're promised that these will be "reasonably priced". And this is for one day only, there'll be no long-term overnight parking permitted.

9) Before you book tickets in two places on the same day, check how long it'll take to travel from one to the other.
It's no good planning to see gymnastics at Wembley in the morning and shooting at Woolwich in the early afternoon because you'll never get across London in time. For non-residents, a very simple map is available so you can get a sense of what's close and what's not. But for a better guide, the London 2012 website has an interactive "Journey Time Finder" which advises on estimated journey times between the recommended stations at each venue. Wembley to Woolwich might take 1-2 hours, it advises, whereas Coventry to Weymouth is more like 3-4. But in some cases the timings are highly pessimistic, or indicative of major congestion (Stratford to North Greenwich 1-2 hours, seriously? ouch!)

10) Travelling to the Olympics might be a lot harder than you think.
Depsite all of the arrangements above, it's highly likely that travelling around London will be hellish during Games fortnight. Trains will be packed, stations will have long queues, roads will be segregated, and it won't take much for the entire city to grind to a halt. This isn't hype, it's all laid out in documentation for London businesses who need to plan ahead to ensure continuity and resilience. The Jubilee and Central lines could have "significant additional delays of over an hour in accessing train services". Hotspots like Westminster Bridge "will be subject to significant additional delays, leading to traffic build-up". For several bus routes, "delays could be experienced as a result of higher traffic levels". Check out the full 22-part details on the Olympic website, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, and prepare for the worst.

2011-03-15T06:00:00.000Z

Olympic update
To say "I was there"

I was asked, earlier in the week, for an Olympic ticket recommendation.

"If I wanted to see SOMETHING, didn't really mind what it was, as long as I could say 'I was there' for the Olympics, what's your hunch on what might be the best thing to bid for?"

Which I thought was a good question. The ticket ballot system makes it really difficult to guarantee a seat, especially for the more popular sports. If you only apply for a handful of events, there's a real risk that they'll all be over-subscribed and you'll walk away with nothing. But you don't want to apply for too many sessions in case you're accidentally over-successful and end up forking out a fortune. So what's the ideal 'dead cert' event?

Some Olympic events are free. Who cares whether you get a ticket or not, you can go along and watch anyway. The marathon, of course, and the race walk. The cycling road race, which heads all the way out to Surrey, and the biking bit of the triathlon. The sailing off Weymouth, so long as you find yourself a non-ticketed bit of foreshore. Or, my top tip, the ranking rounds of the archery, which are two unticketed sessions on the morning and afternoon before the Opening Ceremony. But none of these free events really fit what my questioner required. To truly 'be there', it's going to cost.

The Olympic Ticket guide helpfully highlights all the sessions that organisers think they're going to have trouble selling tickets for. These are the sessions where the "Ticket limit" is 20, not 4 or 6. They're usually sessions where special prices for children and senior citizens are available, and are all for the preliminary rounds of something, never a final, For the best chance of actually winning an Olympic ticket in the 2012 lottery, apply for one these. But be warned. Some £20 sessions have been subsidised to appear generous, when in fact they would have sold out at a much higher price. Don't think you'll get into the athletics for £20, for example, because everyone else will have had the same idea.

Football's probably a very good bet. There are more than a million tickets to Olympic football matches up for grabs, all over the country, where you can go and watch two as yet unnamed countries kicking a ball around for 90 minutes. A Great Britain team is scheduled to take part next year, although few Britons give a damn about Olympic football because we haven't officially entered a team since 1960. And football's so common, so everyday, so ordinary, isn't it? So somehow this doesn't feel like properly 'being there' either.

What you're looking for are the sports that nobody really cares about. That's where the sure-fire ticket opportunities are. Badminton, fencing, handball, judo, table tennis, taekwondo, volleyball, and wrestling - these surely won't be over-subscribed. Or aim for sports with large arenas to fill and plenty of preliminary rounds, sports such as basketball, boxing, canoeing, hockey, rowing and weightlifting.

But some of these won't have a true Olympic feel, because of where they're taking place. Badminton has lots of tickets, but at Wembley Arena, which isn't special. Boxing, fencing, judo, table tennis, taekwondo, weightlifting and wrestling are all being held at ExCel, a cavernous venue with all the charm of a supermarket warehouse. And the volleyball will be hosted at Earl's Court, so that's doubly boring. To be able to say "I was there", you don't want to have gone here.

So here are my top 3 "I was there" choices.

Bronze: Rowing (Eton Dorney, capacity 30000)
It's not in Stratford, it's near Windsor, but there's something very Olympic about the rowing. Eton Dorney will host £20 sessions on each of the last four days of July, the first of which (on Saturday 28th) lasts for nearly five hours. Rowing will be a popular ticket choice, but the lake is so huge that there'll be plenty of standing room to cram in lots of spectators, and the view should still be good.

Silver: Handball (Handball Arena, capacity 7000)
Nobody gives a damn about handball. I mean, you never see it on the TV. It's nothing but water polo without the water, and where's the fun in that? But London's built a dedicated Handball Arena in the Olympic Park, and its seven thousand seats need filling on the cheap every morning for ten days. Hundreds have gone to Thomas Cook, that's how desperate organisers are to shift these tickets. But there should still be plenty for you.

Gold: Hockey (Hockey Centre, capacity 16000)
The hockey's taking place on 14 consecutive days, and all the morning sessions are £20 specials. You'll need to turn up by 8:30am, which is damned early, but all the sessions run past noon, so you're getting a lot of spectating for your money. Best of all, the Hockey Centre is inside the boundaries of the Olympic Park, so you'll be able to spend the rest of the day there soaking in the atmosphere. Bargain. And a dead cert?

Don't blame me if you don't get in, but hopefully these three will boost your chances.

2011-01-23T07:00:00.005Z

Rail Replacement Safari

Every weekend, rail travel in the capital is blighted by "planned engineering works". We all know it's essential, but that doesn't make it any less bloody annoying. This weekend three entire Underground lines are closed, four others curtailed, and the DLR and Overground substantially buggered. TfL ran as many as ten rail replacement bus services yesterday, from Harrow in the west to Dagenham in the east. I thought I'd entirely waste my Saturday by travelling on every single one of them, from end to end, to see how dreadful the experience was. My rail replacement safari took me ten and a half hours, so I think you can guess how much fun it wasn't. But hopefully I've learned some useful lessons along the way, which you (or maybe TfL) should take to heart.

District line replacement service B: Mile End → Barking
No trains were running, so buses up the Mile End Road were busier than normal. This seemed odd, because most people were crammed aboard buses that cost money, rather than hopping aboard the freebie rail replacements. Fancy travelling to Stratford for nothing, hop on. They don't have Oyster readers on rail replacement buses because it would be too much additional hassle, which is brilliant, because at weekends you can ride all over London for free. OK, so you're supposed to have a valid ticket before boarding, but I rode ten different freebie buses yesterday and wasn't challenged once. Even better, rail replacement buses are express buses. They don't stop everywhere, so you get to sail past normal buses halting every few hundred yards and get to your destination even faster. I hate to think how slow this bus would have been if we'd stopped everywhere. Our driver seemed afraid of exceeding 20mph, occasionally ambling up to green traffic lights just in time for them to turn red. But we still saved time by not going to West Ham, which was a shame because we could have caught a faster c2c train there. And we saved even more time by not going to Plaistow, which TfL cruelly deemed unworthy of any replacement service whatsoever. Free buses aren't for everyone, it seems.
Mile End → Barking: normally 17 min, rail replacement bus 38 min (+120%)

District line replacement service C: Barking → Dagenham East
Once, when a long strip of tube line was closed down, TfL used to run just one rail replacement bus service. Not any more. Now they split the closure into sections and make you change from one to the other partway. Here the main split was outside Barking station and, I have to say, was appallingly handled. The driver dumped us off the bus from Mile End with no clue as to where to go next. Nothing on the bus stop, no staff waiting helpfully, bugger all. Erm. Eventually I spotted three blue tabards huddled in the station entrance across the road, and managed to attract their owners' attention. I was duly directed down the street to a home-made bus stop with a tiny "rail replacement" sticker on it, where the next bus to Dagenham had just left without me. Another bus soon turned up, but with its destination blinds blank and no helpful route card in the window. "And you're going to...?" No, back to Mile End. Rest assured I made it to Dagenham eventually (at roughly the same speed as the 70 year-old cyclist we got stuck behind). But come on TfL. If you're going to force us to change buses mid-replacement, at least tell us clearly how to do it.
Barking → Dagenham East: normally 9 min, rail replacement bus 22 min (+140%)
Mile End → Dagenham East: normally 26 min, rail replacement buses 1hr 10 min (+170%)

Catching the rail replacement bus isn't usually the quickest way to get to your destination. At Dagenham East, for example, some whiteboard scribble strongly recommended catching the tube all the way out to Upminster and then the fast c2c train back the other way. So I tried that, and it took just as long to get to Barking as it had done on the slowcoach bus. Getting beyond Barking, however, proved much much faster, which was good. I was even able to confirm that planned engineering work was indeed taking place at several places up and down the line. Track maintenance at Upney, a trainful of ballast further along, and early construction of the Olympic passenger footbridge at West Ham. Londoners, your weekend travel pain is not in vain.

DLR replacement service C: Canary Wharf → North Woolwich
They don't want you to catch a DLR replacement bus from Canary Wharf. A sign at the station suggests you hop on the Jubilee line to Canning Town instead and catch the buses there. That's great if you're going further, but no help if you want to head to a station inbetween. I had to guess which Dockland stop the replacement buses were leaving from, five minutes walk away, because directions were non-existent. Thankfully I guessed correctly. The bus took the most ridiculous detour at East India simply to get as close as possible to the station, which involved driving through two security barriers and round a deserted private estate. At Canning Town I was surprised to see as many as ten members of weekend-only support staff hanging around the bus station, although most of them were chatting to each other rather than helping the public. I also spotted a one-carriage test train running on the new bit of DLR they haven't opened yet, which is why half the network was closed to passengers. The remaining two miles of replacement bus after Canning Town seemed unnecessary because there's a perfectly decent scheduled bus, the 474, running along precisely the same route. But it appears that real buses confuse the train-using public, who'd feel lost and cheated if they didn't have a special dedicated parallel service of their own. Is it important to run a "474 Express", or is it a waste of money?
Blackwall → King George V: normally 12 min, rail replacement bus 28 min (+130%)

DLR replacement service B: Beckton → Canary Wharf
At Beckton bus station, more hopelessness. The replacement bus stood empty, door invitingly open, but with absolutely no members of staff around to help. Several of them were sat across the road in a cosy blue bus having tea, or reading the paper or whatever, while a confused huddle of would-be passengers gathered by the bus stop. One lady asked me where the bus was going, because the information on the front wasn't at all clear. One bloke was waiting to swipe his Oyster because he thought he'd get fined otherwise, and there was nobody there to tell him not to. Only by going over to enquire of a driver on his fag break did one enterprising traveller finally confirm the bus's destination and departure time. No brownie points for customer service here, none whatsoever. At least the journey, when it finally began, was mercifully swift.
Beckton → Canning Town: normally 14 min, rail replacement bus 17 min! (+20%)

District line replacement service A: Canning Town → Liverpool Street
The District line doesn't go to Canning Town, so who in their right mind would think of catching a replacement bus here? Nobody, which is why I was the only passenger on board for the first bit of the journey. From Canning Town to Bromley-by-Bow in six minutes flat was a fantastic service for an E3 local, if alas only temporary. We sped on, unhindered by the traffic that often blights the Mile End Road. There were hiccups in Whitechapel, however. A lady in a woolly hat had made the mistake of waiting at the bus stop nearest to the station, which is precisely where you might expect a rail replacement bus to stop, but no. Next stop, by the hospital... where our driver was harangued by a posh lady with a suitcase. How dare this bus go to Liverpool Street not Tower Hill, I mean, what sort of District line replacement bus service does that? Point taken, except there were no trains at Tower Hill to connect to, and this was technically a Hammersmith & City replacement bus. By the time the argument had finished the lady in the woolly hat had caught up and clambered aboard, which made me smile. And we still reached Liverpool Street almost as fast as the train would have done, which was damned impressive.
Bromley-by-Bow → Liverpool Street: normally 15 min, rail replacement bus 20 min! (+30%)

For the second part of my quest to ride every rail replacement bus in London, I headed west. That meant getting from Liverpool Street to Hammersmith - a journey normally possible on one train, but not on Saturday. There was no service of any kind round the eastern half of the Circle line - that's between Edgware Road and Embankment - and no rail replacement buses either. TfL no longer believe in running RRBs through Central London, so leave passengers to find their own way via whatever other tubes (or buses) are running. From Liverpool Street the only escape was via the Central line, hence the platforms were absolutely packed when I came to use them. Carriages too, as if it were the height of the weekday rush hour - the mismatch caused by running only a weekend-level service. Sometimes, TfL, what we need are extra rail replacement trains.

Hammersmith & City line replacement service D: Hammersmith → Paddington
"Today this station close" read the scribbled message on the board outside Hammersmith station on Saturday. Not a phrase to raise hopes of high-level communicative ability in either of the two members of staff standing alongside. "Buses all stations to Paddington" said the printed text underneath, before explaining in small type "Not stopping at Wood Lane. Calling additionally at Shepherd's Bush." You had to get up pretty close to read that, which suggests that whoever designs these posters is using an undersized font.
Mini-rant: There were two posters, and from a distance the only obvious wording said "BUS STOP →" on one and "BUS STOP W" on the other. The arrow was very definitely pointing around the corner so that's where I went, but instead found Bus Stop Q which didn't have any rail replacement branding at all. Bus Stop W turned out to have been immediately outside the station, back where I'd started, which was frustrating. I pointed out this signage confusion to a nearby member of staff, but he was from the bus company not TfL and quite frankly didn't care. Then when the bus finally arrived it stopped at both bus stops, W and Q, which seemed bafflingly unnecessary.
Mini-rant 2: Just after the bus pulled up, the TfL employee standing by the bus stop loudly announced "All stations to Paddington". But it's not is it, I said to him, we're missing out Wood Lane. "All stations to Paddington!" he confirmed, in that smug way people do when they're wrong.
The journey to Paddington suffered from a simple problem - one I experienced several times over the weekend. Just because there's a railway line linking a set of stations doesn't mean there's a road. There was no direct road from Latimer Road to Ladbroke Grove, for example, so we had to drive up, across and back down to get from one to the other. There was no direct road from Ladbroke Grove to Westbourne Park either so we had to drive down, across and back up, this time along streets barely suitable for two-way traffic. And there was no direct road from Westbourne Park to Royal Oak (apart from the A40 Westway, which was out of the question) so we had to drive way up, across and back down yet again. These tortuous detours stretched out the journey so much that the bus took more three times as long as the tube journey would have done.
Mini-rant 3: And then at the end, one final bit of customer neglect. The bus ejected us halfway down one side of Paddington station, not at the front. We could clearly see a side entrance to the station, but on the other side of very long iron railings and one level below. We were left to our own devices to decide how best to get down there, several minutes walk away, which especially annoyed the elderly passenger and the lady with a suitcase. If you want to feel like a second-class citizen, ride the rail replacement bus.
Hammersmith → Paddington: normally 14 min, rail replacement bus 47 min (+240%)

Jubilee line replacement service C: Stonebridge Park → Stanmore
You have to feel sorry for the people of Stanmore. They've suffered more than most with the incompetent installation of signalling on the Jubilee line, facing rail replacement bus services at weekends for years. And again this weekend. Not that you'd have known when the bus rolled up at Stonebridge Park, because the destination wasn't visible. If you're not familiar, most rail replacement buses don't have the destination up on the front blind where the destination usually is. That would be too useful. Instead they convey information via a small card plonked behind the windscreen wherever the driver thinks fit. In large font is written the 'letter' of the service (in this case 'C') and alongside that a list of the stations the bus will be stopping at. And the last station on the list invariably disappears, because it slots behind something, so it's impossible to read. In this case 'Canons Park' was the last station name visible, because the word 'Stanmore' had disappeared below the fascia horizon. And this was no one-off. All the buses we passed in the opposite direction had "Stonebridge Park" concealed, leaving "Wembley Park" as the final visible destination. Somebody needs to tell drivers to display these cards properly, consistently, clearly. A serious rethink on front-of-bus signage is long overdue.
Wembley Park → Stanmore: normally 11 min, rail replacement bus 24 min (+120%)

Metropolitan line replacement service A: Harrow-on-the-Hill → Wembley Park
I had to get one eventually - a not-very-nice double decker rolled out of retirement for the use of weekend engineering nomads. Some lucky folk in the opposite direction got Routemasters, but we got some bog standard 20th century workhorse. If I sat carefully enough, I could just about keep my shoes out of the pool of phlegm on the floor. Throughout the journey, even with headphones plugged in, I was forced to listen to the well-urban conversation of the trainee footballer sitting behind me. "You know what club was interested in me, bruv, Yeovil." "I can't sign anything with Barnet until I get an agent, innit." "Watford was an even worse shithole than Barnet, know what I mean." If only the bus hadn't detoured round the backstreets to Northwick Park I might have been spared the full details of his long-term injury woes. The Road to Wembley is never easy.
Harrow-on-the-Hill → Wembley Park: normally 5 min, rail replacement bus 20 min (+300%)

Jubilee line replacement service D: Wembley Park → Finchley Road
Four possible rail replacement destinations from Wembley Park, and three empty buses lined up. But which one was which? Not a bloody clue. The crowd mustering impatiently on the pavement wanted to know, waiting for one of the many customer service agents to finally point at one and say yes, get on that. As a prime example of rail replacement directional incoherence, this was hard to beat. When the pack finally swarmed aboard bus number two I ended up on the top deck beside a flapping copy of the Sun and an empty packet of onion garlic potato snacks. There then followed a depressingly slow meander through the streets of northwest London. Beyond Neasden most of the streets along the railway were residential, and deemed too narrow for double decker buses. We therefore took some ridiculous detours merely to ensure that we passed all the same stations that the train would have done [map]. Neasden to Dollis Hill was particularly convoluted, three times longer than it could have been, and delivered us into the hands of some annoyingly bouncy speed humps. Willesden Green to Kilburn was a right pain too, and we ended up stuck in nasty traffic on the Kilburn High Road because our driver wasn't allowed to turn off sooner. What would've really helped would have been an additional Metropolitan replacement express - Wembley to Finchley Road without deviation, repetition, or hesitation. But no, every city-bound passenger got to take the slow route through Jubilee purgatory. I hated this one, never again.
Wembley Park → West Hampstead: normally 11 min, rail replacement bus 45 min (+310%)
Harrow-on the Hill → Finchley Road: normally 12 min, rail replacement buses 77 min (+540%)

Overground replacement bus service: Hampstead Heath → Stratford
And finally, the granddaddy of TfL rail replacement buses. This one's been running so often over the last few years that local residents must think it's a permanent service. Rest assured it won't be around forever - the engineering works on the old Silverlink line are scheduled to end in May, heralding an improved, more frequent Overground service. But in the meantime, sorry, orbital rail passengers face four-wheeled double deckers for several more weekends yet. They really ought to have arrangements perfectly sorted by now, you'd think. You'd think.

I arrived at Hampstead Heath by Overground - the driver having urged everyone to get off one stop early for the rail replacement bus. Now all I had to do was find one. A poster in the ticket hall told me to go to Bus Stop A in Constantine Street, which was no help, and included a map, which sort of was. I attempted to match the map to my mental image of the surrounding area, and rushed off down the hill. I'd probably have spotted the blue directional signs attached to lampposts quicker if it hadn't been dark. I then had to run the last bit because the bus was about to leave. Some idiot had scheduled the replacement bus to depart almost immediately after the train arrived. Only by being the first person off the platform, and the first person out of the station, and the first person round the correct corner, had I managed to board it on time. Some further research later revealed the reason for this lunacy. Eastbound Overground trains arrive at Hampstead Heath every 15 minutes, but eastbound rail replacement buses depart Hampstead Heath every 20 minutes. There is bugger all attempt to synchronise the two services to assist through-travellers, just two disparate systems existing in mis-timed silos.

I wasn't looking forward to this particular journey because I've made it before. My enduring memory is of battling through the treacly backstreets of Islington trying to get close to a station nobody really wanted to get off at. Good news, TfL have streamlined the route. No jobsworth regulations here insist that buses must stop outside stations. Instead we missed Gospel Oak by seven streets, Kentish Town West by 300 metres and Caledonian Road & Barnsbury by a full mile. Brilliant for those of us passing through, it speeded up the journey no end - but not quite so good for those at bypassed stations attempting to work out where the scheduled bus stop was.

It being dark, and with windows steamed up, it was often quite difficult to work out where the bus was. To assist passengers our driver yelled out the name of each station as we reached it, and the sound just about carried up the stairs. He yelled in a language resembling English, but I was eventually able to decipher "Keshdownwet" and "Durlstenking" after a few seconds thought. Meanwhile the electronic iBus display at the front of the top deck was firmly switched off. Over the last few years we Londoners have got used to being spoilt by instant scrolling displays announcing the name of the next stop, and here it would have been exceptionally useful. I know that not all rail replacement buses have this system fitted but, for those that do, would it really be so difficult to program the route and turn it on?

One thing that struck me was the number of people on their mobiles uttering the immortal phrase "I'm on the bus". They were apologising to friends, mostly, because when they'd set out on their journey they were expecting to be "on the train". But no, they'd completely missed the fact the Overground was suspended until it was too late, so found themselves rumbling slowly towards social events they were going to arrive late for. TfL do try hard to invite travellers to check for service disruptions, especially at weekends, but most people obviously don't. These days there are far too many planned engineering works for even the hardiest geek to remember, so what hope for the general public? They still wander round clutching paper maps of the weekday network, so lengthy bus detours always come as a surprise.

I wish the girl who sat behind me at Dalston Kingsland had been using her mobile for a late apology. Instead she seemed to be having some sort of emotional breakdown, by phone, in public, with someone who was no longer her beloved. By Hackney Central she'd told the top deck how her plans for motherhood were wrecked, by Homerton she was considering pissing off abroad for six months unable to cope, and by Hackney Wick she was blaming it all on her au pair. You don't get this kind of comedy soap opera on trains. I was semi-delusional by this point, so was more than pleased when we finally reached Stratford station. And then, alas, drove straight past it to the official alighting point, so that everyone had a two minute walk back again. Even at the end of ten and a half hours of rail replacement purgatory, there's always one last unpleasant extra.
Hampstead Heath → Stratford: normally 32 min, rail replacement bus 76 min (+140%)

Lessons learned
1) Every weekend, TfL and local bus companies throw hundreds of staff out onto the streets to assist passengers using rail replacement buses. Some are wonderful, but far too many just stand around passing the time without being of any help whatsoever. Cull them, it'd save money.
2) The weakest link when travelling by rail replacement bus can be trying to find the correct bus stop in the first place. A generic "rail replacement bus service stops here" sign is often inadequately non-specific. Which bus, in which direction, to where? Don't always leave us to ask a member of staff.
3) If TfL want to force people to change replacement buses halfway through their journey, they need to explain how to do it. Don't just dump people somewhere unfamiliar and leave them to work it out for themselves.
4) Just because TfL's laid on a rail replacement bus service, don't act like a sheep and assume it'll be the fastest way of reaching your destination.
5) Some replacement buses are distressingly snail-like, others are expressly speedy. Learn to use the latter and avoid the former.
6) People of London - stop thinking of rail replacement buses as annoying hassle, and start thinking of them as a free way to travel around town.
7) When several lines in Central London are closed, a more frequent service on any parallel lines would help to absorb increased passenger numbers.
8) Simply displaying "Rail Replacement Service" on the front of a rail replacement bus isn't good enough. If the correct destination's on the roller blind, show us that. Please.
9) Tiny cardboard rectangles on the driver's dashboard are not the solution to rail replacement bus signage. They're surprisingly illegible from a distance, inconsistently placed, and the bottom line often disappears from view. Design something bigger and clearer, and use that.
10) Rail replacement buses can be told apart by a single letter code, but members of the public rarely notice this. They're looking for a destination, not a letter.
11) Certain rail replacement bus routes would be much quicker if they passed 'close' to a station, rather than all round the houses to stop right outside. Excessively tortuous routes are a curse, not a blessing.
12) The London borough of Brent was pretty much tube-free on Sunday. Do try to coordinate your line closures more carefully, TfL, otherwise residents will think you've got it in for them.
13) On railway lines with a less frequent service, it shouldn't be rocket science to synchronise the replacement buses with the trains.
14) After dark, if the bus's destination is only written on a small piece of cardboard in the front window, that's not very useful is it?
15) If there's a 'next stop' display system aboard a rail replacement bus (and I know there isn't always), please switch it on.
16) Many of the problems here aren't the fault of the bus companies providing the service, they're the fault of whoever it is at TfL that writes their contracts.
17) Those "planned engineering works for the week ahead" posters on display at tube stations are misleading. They show an amalgam of Saturday's and Sunday's closures, not the closures in effect today, which makes them less than practical for instant use. One day in the far future these maps will be on an electronic screen, not a sheet of paper, and that'll help no end.
18) However much TfL tell people there's rail replacement work coming up, people still aren't listening.
19) People of London - if you're travelling at the weekend, always check for planned engineering works first. There's probably a quicker way to get around them if you plan ahead. And, really, you don't want to get stuck on the bus.
20) If anyone ever suggests riding every rail replacement bus in London to see what it's like, query their sanity.

[these posts originally appeared here on diamond geezer]

2010-11-30T23:00:00.000Z

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Tyburn

And finally in this series, the West End's lost river. That'll be the Tyburn, a long-departed stream which used to run through some of the most tourist-friendly spots on the planet. The Queen lives on it, Big Ben overshadows it, and shoppers on Oxford Street regularly wade across it. Even better, its valley remains readily visible most of the way down, even through Marylebone and Mayfair, should you ever fancy tracking it down. I've had a go.

The River Tyburn started its journey from the uplands of Hampstead, as did its streamy neighbours the Fleet and the Westbourne. All three ran sort-of parallel down to the Thames, with the Tyburn sandwiched inbetween the other two. It trickled south through St John's Wood, keeping to the west of the heights of Primrose Hill, and then into what is now Regent's Park. The boating lake here is the river's most obvious legacy, but one of the bridges over the Regent's Canal hides a similar secret. The Tyburn slipped out of the park past Baker Street station and on into Marylebone, where meandering Marylebone Lane still mimics the river's former course. Oxford Street is crossed close to Bond Street station (look for the very obvious dip in the road when you're out Christmas shopping). Then on into the heart of Mayfair (via Brook Street, obviously), curving around Berkeley Square to cross Piccadilly and into Green Park. The original stream crossed the front of Buckingham Palace before swinging east through St James's Park (home to another no-coincidence water feature) and splitting in two. These final rivulets once surrounded Thorney Island, a dry-spot in the marsh upon which Westminster Abbey and the Palace of Westminster were built. Drainage hereabouts later forced the diversion of the river south, with a fresh course running down to Pimlico. One river, three possible endings, all now long gone.

There are several theories as to the derivation of the name Tyburn. The 'burn' bit is fairly straightforward, being derived from 'bourne' which means stream. But the first part of the name is probably linked to that split in the lower river. It could therefore come from 'Teo' (meaning 'two') or 'Tie' (meaning 'enclosing'). The first of these is given credence by King Edgar's royal charter, dated 951AD, which names the stream Teo-burna. Alternatively the entire name may mean 'boundary stream', or else might be a contraction of 'the Aye bourne', whoever or whatever 'Aye' was. Take your pick.

Other places named after the Tyburn:
• Oxford Street: Until the 1780s, known as Tyburn Road
• Tyburn: A small medieval village at the western end of Tyburn Road (population in 1086, eight families)
• Tyburn Tree: Site of London's most notorious place of execution, in Tyburn, close to where Marble Arch now stands.
• Tyburn Brook: A completely different lost river, a tributary of the Westbourne, which flowed from the gallows southwest into Hyde Park
• Marylebone: Parish whose was church originally known as 'St Mary's church by the bourne'.

The river Tyburn's fate was decreed by its location. Early settlers were drawn to its delta, at Westminster, to form London's second nucleus. Its lower marshes were drained in Tudor times to create fertile land for farming and hunting. Then, as the city started to extend into Mayfair and Marylebone, the river had to be driven underground to provide sanitary living conditions for new residential quarters. Full burial came in the mid 19th century with the construction of an underground conduit, the King's Scholars' Pond Sewer (named after a pool used by Westminster School's top pupils for fishing and bathing). It's straighter and wider than the old river - for much of its length an elliptical brick tunnel - and still in use for foul-smelling run-off to this day.

Businessman James Bowdidge recently proposed that the Tyburn be restored to the surface, forcibly if necessary, by knocking down all the buildings in its path north of Piccadilly. An most peculiar motive for a property developer, it has to be said, but James is also the honorary secretary of the Tyburn Angling Society so claimed his priories were mostly fish-related. Assuming his plans to be tongue-in-cheek, or at best impractical, your best chance of spotting the Tyburn continues to be searching for clues on the surface.

» An approximate map of the Tyburn's course (my best Google map attempt)

» Londonist walks the Tyburn (in three parts)
» Exploring the Tyburn sewer (blimey) (ooh) (golly) (ah)
» James Bowdidge's presentation on behalf of the Tyburn Angling Society

2010-11-30T22:00:00.000Z

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Tyburn
1) Hampstead → Regent's Park

Unusually for a lost river, the top of the Tyburn is really obvious. On the corner of Fitzjohn's Avenue and Akenside Road in Hampstead, a short trek south of the tube station, are the remains of a commemorative drinking fountain [photo]. Nothing gushes forth here today, but this was once the site of the "Shepherd's Well" which supplied the villagefolk of Hampstead with drinking water [photo]. Other local wells may have left a nasty mineral taste in the mouth, but water from the Shepherd's Conduit tasted clean and pure and so was much in demand. A penny a pailful, for those who couldn't be bothered to fetch it themselves. The track back to town survives as "Spring Path" [photo], and the Gothic pile on the corner is still known as Old Conduit House [photo]. Like I said, really obvious, all the clues are there.

The Tyburn ran down towards Swiss Cottage, past a statue of Sigmund Freud, centuries before either of those were ever there [photo]. About a foot in width, this was once a sparkling stream whose waters very rarely dried up. It passed through the western fringes of Belsize Park, crossing what are now leafy residential avenues, and slipping between the local leisure centre and a glassy mega-hotel. A second tributary rose further to the east, with its source in the grounds of Belsize Manor. In 1728, as Bellais House, this was a "beautifully situated" place of public amusement for the more genteel members of Georgian society. No trace of that house remains today, merely the townhouses that now cover the old estate, although there's still a clear ripple in the contours leading down from Belsize Park Gardens.

Both branches of the Tyburn curled round the western flank of Primrose Hill, which kept them apart from the larger River Fleet on the opposite side. The two tributaries met up on Avenue Road before edging into the borough of Westminster and following the line of Townshend Road. Houses are big round here, with gated driveways and swivelling cameras, but still somehow on the pleasant side of aspirational. Meanwhile the remains of the river trickle beneath the streets through the Kings Scholar's Pond Sewer, constructed circa 1825 with a quirky brickiness that Jon can tell you lots more about.

And then, Regent's Park. The river headed in beneath the Thirties apartments on the northern flank, before reaching an artificial valley carved across its course. This belongs to the Regent's Canal, which architect John Nash was forced to drop into a cutting so that it's perceived ugliness couldn't tarnish the rest of his great park. So the Tyburn has to cross over the canal [photo], and its pipes form the basis of the Charlbert footbridge. Most people walk over the top without even guessing [photo], but the folks at SilentUK have been for a crouch through the underworld...

"The pipe shifted into a smaller egg shape, before long reaching the Regents Canal. The pipe split into two rather unfavourable 4ft pipes, carrying the flow over the canal via a bridge, fun, but the show must go on. Slowly striding through the black, chunky liquid, dangerously close to catching some splash in the face, bags catching at every possible opportunity, thank god it was only 40 metres."

The pipe continues underground, but a separate Tyburn legacy is ever-so visible on the surface of Regent's Park. It's the boating lake [photo]. Don't think small and round. This lake's more bunch-of-bananas shaped, and curves almost all the way down the western side of the park. One finger starts close to the American ambassador's back garden [photo] and is therefore under permanent Secret Service scrutiny. Another starts nearer to the Zoo, this representing a very minor tributary which could never originally have been deep enough to support a pedalo [photo]. But the lake curls too much to precisely match the original Tyburn. Don't be fooled - this entire ornamental lagoon was artificially created by excavation when the park was first landscaped. It was originally fed by the Tyburn's piped-in waters, at least until January 1867 when the ice broke killing 40 men and boys skating on its surface. The water level was immediately lowered, and ice skating's been banned here ever since [icy photo]. Rest assured that the sewer's long been diverted to bypass the lake altogether, so all that floats here now are hireboats and waterfowl. [photo]

Following the Tyburn: Shepherd's Path, Akenside Road, Fitzjohn's Avenue, Belsize Park, Winchester Road, Harley Road, Wadham Gardens, Elsworthy Road, Avenue Road, Acacia Road, Townshend Road, Shannon Place, Eamont Street, Prince Albert Road, Charlbert Street, Charlbert Bridge, Outer Circle, Winfield House, Regent's Park Boating Lake.

2010-11-30T21:00:00.001Z

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Tyburn
2) Regent's Park → Oxford Street

The River Tyburn exited Regent's Park further north than you might expect. The former stream never reached the final curl of the boating lake beyond the footbridge. Instead it slipped out of the park nearer Sussex Place, where the London Business School stands today, and fairly close to the northern end of Baker Street. This is the magnetic point that draws in tourists attempting to find 221B - a purely fictitious address, not that this stops the Sherlock Holmes Museum pretending to be based there. Inquisitive visitors ought to be suspicious that the entrance is located immediately between 237 Baker Street and 241 Baker Street, but most fail to spot the fiddle. [photo]

The Abbey National used to be based where Holmes' home should have been, but its HQ has recently been redeveloped into luxury apartments. At least they kept the tower. Here the Tyburn veered to the west of Baker Street, traversing the busy Marylebone Road across a very obvious dip in the land. It clipped Gloucester Place, somewhere in the vicinity of Algeria, Lithuania and Honduras (or at least their respective embassies). Then back to Baker Street through the middle of another former blue chip HQ - Michael House. Marks and Spencer was run from here for years, but bosses moved out in 2004 in favour of less austere offices on Paddington Basin. In its place is a vast new mixed use development, name of 55 Baker Street [photo], clad with a faceted glass lattice (best viewed from inside rather than out [photo]).

Next up, Marylebone proper. The Tyburn followed what's now Blandford Street, past the former bookseller where a young Michael Faraday spent eight years as an apprentice. Today it's an estate agents, obviously, but they've had the good grace to name themselves Faradays, and there's a proper non-blue plaque above the door [photo]. No, the Tudor Rose pub isn't Tudor, it's a 1930s pastiche. Blandford Street reaches Marylebone High Street at a pedestrian-friendly triple zebra crossing [photo]. Up the other end of the high street is St Mary's church, originally named after the river as "St Mary the Virgin, by the bourne". Bit long, that, so it was shortened to "St Mary le burn", and later to "St Marylebone". The Tyburn lives on, at least as a corrupted suffix.

On any modern map of the area, the one road which looks out of place is Marylebone Lane. Everything else is straight and griddy, and yet this backstreet meanders in errant curves. That's because it was once the country lane round here, and the Tyburn ran alongside. Today's it's a boutique-y street which Time Out likes feature all-too regularly in its "quirky shopping" features. Of note is the delicatessen/cafe owned by Paul Rothe & Son [photo], stacked with repetitive jars and still with a late Victorian sensibility. A pub halfway down used to have the very-relevant name of "The Conduit of Tybourne" [photo], but under new ownership has recently reverted to the more-original "Coach Makers". Then there's the unique Button Queen [photo], located at the precise point where the Tyburn veered right to leave the lane. This fragile blue store used to be a wildly out-of-time stockist of all things buttony, but has recently been demolished to make way for new development. The business survives across the road, you'll be glad to hear, but with regrettably less charm.

The line of the river crosses Wigmore Street to pass into St Christopher's Place - a favourite midweek haunt for shopaholic ladies who lunch. This narrows to a tiny alleyway [photo] before emerging somewhere you'll definitely recognise - the heart of Oxford Street [photo]. More specifically, the gentle dip in the road located close to Bond Street station, slightly downhill from the Disney Store on one side of the valley and Selfridges on the other. Shoppers on London's most famous retail thoroughfare probably don't realise that Oxford Street was called Tyburn Road up until the early 18th century, at which point it was renamed after the university town 50 miles straight on past Marble Arch.

The City of London is a couple of miles away from here, but medieval residents obtained their drinking water from this particular stretch of the Tyburn. Lead pipes were laid from here to Cheapside during the reign of Henry III, and these eventually developed into a series of nine conduits that survived several centuries. Conduit Street, between New Bond Street and Regent Street, is still named after what's probably London first public utility supply system. Nowadays the only alleged appearance of sparkling Tyburn water hereabouts is in the basement of Grays Antiques [photo]. 200 dealers have stalls in this collectibles complex (which is located just around the back of Bond Street station), and those in the Mews building share floorspace with a most unusual water feature [photo]. A shallow channel, filled with golden fish, runs from one end of the basement to the other and is crossed by a small arched bridge in the centre [photo]. The owners assure visitors that this is the actual Tyburn, and absolutely not an ornamental culvert fed by water from the mains. It could, I suppose, be fed by groundwater seeping from the surrounding clay, but I fear it's nothing more than a damned good bit of marketing.

Following the Tyburn: Outer Circle, Sussex Place, Baker Street, Glentworth Street, Marylebone Road, Gloucester Place, Blandford Street, Marylebone Lane, Jason Court, St Christopher's Place, Gees Court, Oxford Street.

2010-11-30T20:00:00.001Z

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Tyburn
3) Oxford Street → Buckingham Palace

If you think you know Mayfair, a walk along the route of the lost river Tyburn may change your mind. This begins somewhere familiar enough - South Molton Street. The peculiar diagonal angle this street makes to the surrounding roads is explained by the parallel Tyburn, which ran immediately behind the houses on the western side. The stream precisely defined the eastern boundary of the Grosvenor estate, one of Mayfair's most exclusive neighbourhoods, and was arched over and made into a covered sewer in the 1720s. The buried Tyburn became South Molton Lane, still a mere backstreet even today and nowhere near as aspirational as its fashionista neighbour.

Brook Street's up next, a major east-west thoroughfare named after the river it once crossed [photo]. George Frideric Handel was one of the first residents to move in when the estate was developed, in 1723, and lived for nearly 40 years a few doors up from the culverted Tyburn. And yes, if you're wondering, this is indeed the Brook Street in which the Brook Street Bureau was formed. Margery Hurst's famous secretarial employment agency started out here in 1946, and continues to be named after a lost river even though company HQ is now in St Albans.

The diagonal line of the Tyburn continues along Avery Row - a narrow alleyway named after the bricklayer originally responsible for culverting this stretch of the river, Henry Avery. The stream never quite reached as far east as New Bond Street, instead twisting south down Bourdon Place to cross the foot of Grosvenor Hill. The hill's quite pronounced, even today, rolling down past a chain of hemmed-in mews houses [photo]. They're all backwaters it seems, the streets along which the Mayfair Tyburn flowed, and none more so than Bruton Lane. This miserable service road kicks off at the Tudorbethan Coach & Horses [photo], then enters a grim netherworld of rear frontages, monolithic office blocks and fire escapes [photo]. If the folk who invented the London version of Monopoly had seen this side of Mayfair, they'd have made it the first brown instead of the last blue. [photo]

Hay Hill's next, another proper Mayfair slope, which diverted the Tyburn westward across the corner of Berkeley Square. Back when all round here was grand mansions, the river used to divide the back gardens of Devonshire House and Lansdowne House. Now paved over, this section has become Lansdowne Row - a back passage of small shops and sandwich bars that's packed only at lunchtimes [photo]. Another curving road mimics the Tyburn's former course, namely Curzon Street [photo], which leads to the delightful off-beat enclave of Shepherd Market. From 1686 to 1764 this was the spot where London's largest May Fair was held - a fortnight of drinking and debauchery held on open land beside the brook. Wining and dining is a little more refined here now, with both river and festivities despatched elsewhere. [photo]

The Tyburn's crossing of Piccadilly is more than obvious, emerging from Mayfair via Brick Street (alongside the Japanese embassy) [photo]. The indentation continues into Green Park [photo], across the western half where fewer tourists stroll and where the trees are too dense for deckchairs [photo]. This area was originally called Upper St James's Park but split off to earn its new "Green" title in 1746. An ornamental lake once lay on the line of the river, almost precisely in the centre of the park [photo], and was named the Tyburn Pool. It might still be there had the area been better looked after, but Queen Victoria considered the pool an eyesore and had it filled in. Green Park's been pleasantly bland ever since. [photo]

And so to Buckingham Palace, built close to the point where the medieval Tyburn once drained into the Westminster marshes [photo]. Centuries of drainage lent the river a firmer course, initially east towards Westminster, later diverted underground south towards Pimlico. The current Palace therefore stands not on a river but a sewer, which reputedly passes underneath the front courtyard and beneath the south wing [photo]. If you're the illegal adventurer type it's perfectly possible to clamber down into the egg-shaped brick drain and inspect the Queen's effluent, although I'm told it's nothing special. As for the swirling ornamental lake in the Palace's back garden, the backdrop to many a royal stroll and garden party, this might appear to be Tyburn-related but it's not [photo]. Its waters are fed in from the Serpentine, half a mile yonder, which means they're actually derived from the lost river Westbourne. [photo]

Following the Tyburn: South Molton Lane, Avery Row, Bourdon Place, Bruton Place, Bruton Lane, Berkeley Street, Lansdowne Row, Curzon Street, Shepherd Market, Brick Street, Piccadilly, Green Park, Constitution Hill.

2010-11-30T18:00:00.000Z

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Tyburn
4a) Buckingham Palace → Westminster

The final stretch of the Tyburn, from Buck House east to the Thames, isn't especially well documented. That's a) because this was originally marshland, and b) medieval Londoners weren't especially interested in drawing accurate maps as a legacy to future generations. What is certain is that the most obvious route, along the line of the lake down the middle of St James's Park, isn't the original. This started life as a long ornamental canal, arrow-straight, created by a French landscape gardener at the behest of king Charles II. 150 years later the Prince Regent asked John Nash for a more naturalistic redesign, and he created the curving lake we still see today [photo]. So, lovely though the view is from the central bridge near the pelicans, it's definitely not rivery. [photo] [photo]

Instead the waters of the Tyburn probably followed Buckingham Gate, which is a mostly tedious road heading downhill from the southern corner of the palace [photo]. Past the Wellington Barracks, past the end of Petty France, then forking left at the Blewcoat School (now the National Trust's main London giftshop). It tracked Caxton Street before flowing straight through the modern site of New Scotland Yard, peculiarly enough [photo]. And then across Victoria Street into Abbey Orchard Street, which was indeed where the nearby Abbey grew its fruit, but is now covered by a Peabody Estate and some ugly civil service bastions.

A millennium ago the Tyburn bifurcated approximately here. Its twin streams formed the western boundaries of Thorney Island - then a small eyot in the Thames covered by thickets. As the highest land hereabouts it was the only place capable of supporting foundations, so the nucleus of Westminster grew up on the island with the Abbey and the Palace at its heart. Expansion required drainage, so Thorney gradually merged with the mainland and lost its identity. Today the name survives only in Thorney Street, which is the service road round the back of MI5's HQ at Thames House.

Branch 1 of the lower Tyburn passed to the north of Westminster Abbey and up to the foot of Whitehall. It supposedly ran along the line of King Charles Street [photo], between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and HM Treasury [photo]. And then across the foot of Whitehall, south of the Cenotaph, to reach the Thames in the vicinity of Westminster Pier [photo]. Don't go looking for traces today, there's nothing to see. Meanwhile branch 2 continued through Dean's Yard at the back of Westminster School [photo] - an esteemed private establishment who are holding their 450th Anniversary Gala tonight. Then along Great College Street, which feels more Winchester than Greater London, and out into the Thames south of the Houses of Parliament [photo]. The mouth would have been somewhere in Victoria Tower Gardens, and a storm drain outlet is still visible at low tide close to Lambeth Bridge. [photo]

Following the Tyburn: The Mall, Buckingham Gate, Caxton Street, Victoria Street, Abbey Orchard Street, Dean's Yard, Great College Street, Victoria Tower Gardens.

2010-11-30T11:00:00.002Z

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Tyburn
4b) Buckingham Palace → Pimlico

To fully remove the lower reaches of the river Tyburn, its waters were dropped into a brick sewer in the early 18th century. Rather than tracing the route of the river towards Westminster, the new culvert instead headed south from Buckingham Palace and made for the Thames at Pimlico. This was the King's Scholars' Pond Sewer, named after Westminster School's ablest pupils (which is perhaps not the way they'd prefer to be remembered). Soon after leaving the royal residence it today passes beneath more mundane backstreets, then past the big new shopping/office complex at Cardinal Place. I'm guessing it flows beneath Billy Elliot at the Victoria Palace Theatre [photo], which is something best not considered when you're sitting in the stalls. The sewer's also causing problems with the construction of a new ticket hall for Victoria tube station at Bressenden Place, because the brown tube isn't as far below the ground as engineers would like.

Next up, an unexpectedly grim back passage. That's King's Scholars' Passage, a lengthy access road squashed between six-storey brick cliffs round the back of Vauxhall Bridge Road [photo]. If you can ever avoid visiting, do. This emerges outside the Queen Mother Sports Centre (no, she never popped by for an Age Vitality Workout, it's merely named after her). The sewer then follows the curve of Tachbrook Street, which is delightfully Georgian-terrace on one flank and depressingly postwar-block on the other [photo]. Nearly there. One final stretch beyond Pimlico station, beneath the Tachbrook Estate, and we're at the Thames.

Unusually for a lost river, the bottom of the Tyburn is really obvious. Two houses stand out beside the busy riverside dual carriageway, being rather older than the modern piles to either side [photo]. One's Rio Cottage, labelled with a plaque announcing it was built in 1832 "as part of Kingschoole Sluice". Nextdoor at number 140C is Tyburn House - similarly old looking but with an extra storey on top. Between them they guard the exit to the King's Scholars' Sewer, which disgorges (when necessary) beneath one resident's back window [photo]. They can even nip down a metal staircase at low tide to their own pebbly beach, if they're brave enough. And in case all the clues aren't obvious enough, a slab of slate affixed to the riverside path charts a rundown of the Tyburn's progress all the way from Shepherds Well to Tachbrook Street [photo]. Journey's end, job well done. [photo]

Following the Tyburn: Stafford Place, Stag Place, Bressenden Place, King's Scholar's Passage, Upper Tachbrook Street, Tachbrook Street, Buonaparte Mews, Balvaird Place, Grosvenor Road.

2010-10-29T00:49:00.003+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Earl's Sluice / Peck

South of the Thames, lost rivers are always harder to find. The land's flatter, the contours less distinct, and any former watercourse more completely eradicated. Take, for example, these two conjoined streams flowing north from sort-of-Peckham towards Rotherhithe-ish. To the west was the Earl's Sluice, and to the east was the Peck (I'm sure you can spot the suburb-naming connection there). Neither is especially well documented. Wikipedia's take on the Peck, for example, stretches to less than 50 words and an irrelevant photo. My apologies, therefore, because these latest watery jaunts are going to be less precise than usual. But I'll do my best.

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Earl's Sluice

First I'm going to follow the Earl's Sluice from its source to its confluence with the Peck. The river's named after the Duke of Gloucester, allegedly, who was Lord of the manor round here in the time of Henry I. Its headwaters were on Denmark Hill (yes, there's a clue in the word 'hill'), close to the twin healthcare behemoths of the Maudsley and King's College Hospitals. But there's nothing in Ruskin Park today to hint that a river ever started here, apart from a mild slope and an ornamental lake. The closest water feature to the source is the park's paddling pool, currently drained for the winter (and ideal for teaching your toddler how to ride a bike). The river flowed north, where the electricity substation now is (and where 71 residential units and a mixed office development soon will be). A series of backstreets follow, some pleasantly terracey, others the sort of social housing where a teenager named Edvin might be stabbed to death. We're in Camberwell here, a settlement named after its groundwater. The original "Camber Well" provided liquid sustenance for ancient residents of Peckham and Dulwich, and was recently uncovered in Noreen's back garden in nearby Grove Park. There's tons more here, if you're interested (and I was).

From Camberwell Green we head north along Camberwell Road as far as the park entrance, at which point the Earl's Sluice dog-legged abruptly right. Burgess Park didn't exist in those days - it's a surprisingly recent intervention, created since the war by filling in a canal and demolishing umpteen streets. The most charming bits of the park are the bits they didn't destroy, like the old lime kiln and the ornate Passmore Edwards Library. There's also a more recent Arts Centre, plus an undulating cycle track where I watched a lone fox sunbathing in broad daylight. But the Earl's Sluice missed all of that and ran instead along Albany Road, where the park rubs up against the monstrous slab blocks of the Aylesbury Estate. There's one single clue to the river's burial, which is a green stinkpipe emerging from the pavement at the junction with Bagshot Street.

Next up, Monopoly's bargain basement - the Old Kent Road. It's a brief crossing, straight into the Southernwood Retail Park (where Currys and Argos no doubt each pay considerably more than £2 rent). More interesting is Rolls Road, whose Victorian brick wall sort-of follows the old river. This gappy barrier was formerly the southern perimeter of the Bricklayers Arms Goods Depot - the last remnants of a misguided early Victorian attempt to create a major London rail terminus far from the centre of town. The station complex is now covered by boxy housing, but a couple of buildings survive as the local stables and a still-functioning forge. And then somewhere along the Rotherhithe New Road, close to Millwall's Den, is the point where the Earl's Sluice joined up with its partner the Peck. Next I'll guide you back here via river number two.

2010-10-29T00:48:00.000+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The Peck

The Peck is Peckham's lost river (obviously). It's not quite as lost as you might expect. Nor as interesting, sorry.

If reports are to be believed, the source of the Peck was on One Tree Hill in Honor Oak. That's the marvellously steep mound above St Augustine's church, the hilltop on which Queen Elizabeth I took her May Day picnic in 1602. You must know about this place by now, because this is the third time I've been here in the last six months. Tracing the river below is tricky because Beechcroft reservoir blocks the way. This is a cathedral-like vault of prime Edwardian engineering - the world's largest brick-built underground storage facility when it opened in 1909. But you'll only get to see the inside if you're a Thames Water employee, because it's long been grassed over and is now covered by a golf course.

In Peckham Rye Park, the river's much harder to miss. It wiggles across the entire park from east to west - only as a trickle in an artificial trench, but most definitely not lost at all. It's there flowing beneath a faux-rustic wooden bridge. It's there weaving through woodland between the playground and the skate park. It's there running in a grubby ditch beside the pea green toilet block. It's there curving through the Japanese Garden, and it's there dribbling down a cascade in the Ornamental Pond Garden. It's been creatively landscaped, and elevates the whole of Peckham Rye Park above the ordinary. But that's the last we'll see of the Peck, as it drains beneath a flowerbed into an anonymous pipe.

Peckham Rye Common is broad and green, still with a telltale slope down towards the western edge. On my visit the space was occupied by footballers and crows, in roughly equal numbers. Zippo's Circus had also taken root, setting up their big white top and surrounding it with articulated trailers. I listened as dramatic music played from inside, rising to an emotional crescendo which had the unseen audience applauding wildly. My journey could offer nothing more exciting than Peckham Rye, where the tip of the common intrudes between a parade of shops. Contours suggest that the Peck once flowed straight down the middle, where now the buses pull over and where flocks of pigeons crowd round the dogmess bin.

We'll not be following Peckham's main shopping street - the town's eponymous river didn't head this way. Instead it veered off towards the railway and across a mile of residential SE15. All of these houses owe their existence to an early 19th century culvert which tugged the Peck underground, creating more sanitary conditions on the surface. There's little to excite the urban walker here, unless you particularly enjoy dead pubs and relentless backstreets. I don't think I've ever taken a lost river walk where my camera's stayed so firmly in my pocket. [no photo]

It's all change at the bottom of the Old Kent Road, and not in a good way. A mountain range of tower blocks marks the start of Ilderton Road, then most of the next half mile is scarily light industrial. Tyre depots, car washes, textile wholesalers, that sort of thing... plus the real growth market around here - evangelical churches. It doesn't cost much to take over half a warehouse, or an entire chapel that Anglicanism abandoned, then fill it to the rafters with heartfelt praise. Within a very small area you'll find the Universal Church of God, the River of Life Centre, Reconcilers Evangelical Ministries and God's Church of Peace (amongst many others), each competing for their share of Peckham's Afro-Caribbean congregation. Try catching the P12 bus down Ilderton Road at turfing-out time on a Sunday afternoon and you'll be battling for space with scores of smart ladies in bright flowing dresses and wrapped millinery.

Surrey Canal Road has a lost waterway connection, but that'd be a canal, not our river, so I'll save that for another time. The Peck had a few more hundred yards to travel, before joining up with the Earl's Sluice roughly where I said it did above. Fingers crossed tomorrow I'll convince you that the final mile down to the Thames is actually worth writing about.

2010-10-29T00:47:00.003+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Earl's Sluice/Peck

Southeast London's two lost rivers, the Earl's Sluice and the Peck, merged somewhere in the vicinity of South Bermondsey station. It's no coincidence that this station lies on the border between Southwark and Lewisham. If you trace the borough boundary from the Old Kent Road up Ilderton Road you're following the route of the Peck, near enough. And if you carry on along that same boundary to the east, you're following the final mile of both rivers down to the Thames, pretty much. Indeed, these rivers once marked the county boundary between Surrey and Kent, which is impressively significant for a minor river that no longer exists.

For the best view of the area, head up to the elevated platforms at South Bermondsey. The footpath from the street is ridiculously long (all the better for corralling football supporters), and the curving narrow platform almost longer still. From the tip you can even peer down through a gap in the stands at The Den and watch Millwall play, so long as the ball's in one specific tiny patch of pitch. [photo]

My river walk continued down the embankment, outside the stadium, on one of the gloomiest streets I've ever encountered in central London. That's Bolina Road, a bendy backwater which burrows its way beneath as many as five railway viaducts in quick succession. The first cuts you off from the outside world. The second, and loftiest, is blessed by a pile of boulders and abandoned tyres at its base [photo]. The gap between here and the third feels scarily oppressive, as if some ne'erdowell might leap out at any moment and your body might not be found for months. The fourth is low enough to slice off the entire top deck of a bus, although its precise height is unclear because the official road sign's long since vanished. And the fifth is so narrow that cars wishing to pass have to honk their horns lest they meet a car, bike or even pedestrian coming the other way. I moved on fast.

It's hard to imagine the Hawkestone Estate as riverside fields (and worrying to imagine which council committee thought 'Regeneration Road' was a good name for one of its new streets). Another railway bars progress before long, this time the East London line, with a welcome footbridge at the point where the spur to Clapham Junction will one day divert. A thick white pipe crosses the tracks close by, reputedly the sewer-borne remains of our lost river, flirting anonymously with the open air. There's one last inferred sighting at the top of Rotherhithe New Road, where a green stinkpipe rises from the triangular traffic island. 200 years ago the view round here was rather more peaceful, with the Earl's Sluice rolling by beneath an arched bridge.

One last push to the Thames, along a stretch which last saw the light of day as the "Black Ditch". On Chilton Grove there's conclusive evidence of the river's burial - the Earl Pumping Station. It's housed in a boxy brick structure which could easily be a 1930s library, but instead houses some non-cutting-edge Thames Water pipework. You might expect the river to have flowed along the line of the South Dock [photo], but cartographical evidence suggests its replacement sewer follows Plough Way. A memorial stone inlaid in the pavement wall, past Baltic Quay, confirms that the former Kent/Surrey boundary passed this way. It makes sense - those are indeed the Surrey Docks just to the north on the non-Kent side of the divide. [photo]

The final few yards in Helsinki Square are marked by what looks like a filled-in dock, lined by 21st century trees, leading to St George's Stairs [photo]. At low tide a pebbly beach is revealed alongside a pair of rotting wooden piers [photo]. Don't be tempted down the steps - a bold yellow Thames Water sign warns of a "sewer outlet 30 metres out from this board". Stay on the riverside promenade, turn left, and you'll find a preserved brick wall from a bridge over Earl's Creek. It was shifted here in 1988, and includes yet another boundary stone to admire. Surrey/Kent, Rotherhithe/Deptford, Southwark/Lewisham... not a bad tally for the former Earl's Sluice/Peck.

» A very approximate map of the Earl's Sluice and Peck's course (my best Google map attempt)

» Previous rivers in this series: Fleet, Westbourne, Falcon Brook, Counters Creek, Neckinger, Hackney Brook, Effra, Walbrook, Pudding Mill, Stamford Brook

2010-09-30T23:00:00.003+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Stamford Brook

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.

» An approximate map of the Stamford Brook's course (my best Google map attempt)
» 20 photos altogether in my Stamford Brook gallery

2010-09-30T22:00:00.002+01:00

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 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.

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 later...

2010-09-30T21:00:00.001+01:00

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 Chiswick House, but the certainty of beauty should be enough to tempt you instead.

2010-09-30T20:00:00.000+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Stamford Brook
tributary 2 - The Warple

If the Bollo Brook was obscure, then the Warple is surely more so. It's the local name for the middle one of the Stamford Brook's three main tributaries, and it used to drain much of Acton. Most surprisingly, a tiny stretch of the Warple apparently still exists. The local Ordnance Survey map shows approximately 100m of streamlet running through the back gardens of houses on Rosemont Road, which must make for a nice water feature, although nothing's visible from the street nor indeed from above. This is one of the Warple's sources, and there's another in nearby Springfield Gardens. Spring, field... all the clues are there! Council-erected signs spell out the park's rivery backstory as confirmation for those who care to read it.

There are some fairly steep slopes round and about, including Acton Hill. This was once home to the very first branch of Waitrose, but now leads down towards a rather less aspirational Morrisons in the High Street [photo]. The Warple flowed in the dip between these two retail outlets, crossing what's now a major traffic junction before continuing down through the redbrick end of the South Acton Estate. There are nicer places to go tracking lost rivers than traipsing round the back of garages beneath slabby tower blocks, it has to be said. The contours flatten out a little towards Acton Lane, where the only watery landmark today is the Victorian glass-roofed Acton Swimming Baths. [photo]

Next up it's the Southfields Recreation Ground, through which the river ran when this was Acton's South Field. And then, beyond the Scout hut, a peculiar curved lane fenced off at both ends. This is the location of the Acton Storm Tanks - a 1905 pumping station built for the important purpose of preventing the local area from flooding now that the river had been removed. The Warple is still sorely missed. Thames Water are currently consulting on plans to build a 21st century sewer - the multi-million pound Acton Storm Relief - to connect to their Tideway Tunnel running beneath the Thames. Locals fear several years of lorries disrupting life down Warple Way (there had to be one, didn't there?).

It's not far to the area where tributaries 1 and 2 joined. The Bollo Brook came in from the west, the Warple from the north, and the resulting conglomeration was the Stamford Brook. The stream's gone now, but it's not been forgotten. There's a Stamford Brook Road, which leads to the Brook gastropub (a chicken kiev and tempura prawn kind of place). There's a triangle of grass, called Stamford Brook Common, ideal for exercising less energetic dogs. The river once ran along the southern side, I believe. And of course there's Stamford Brook tube station, the most widely-known reminder of all. This was the very first station on the underground network to have automatic ticket barriers, way back in 1964. The staff have had less to do ever since, which must be why the bloke on the gate took more than a passing interest in the fact I was taking photographs of the exterior of his station [photo]. "Those for a magazine?" he asked, as I Oystered through. "Yeah, like any magazine would be interested in shots of Stamford Brook station, you suspicious jobsworth," I wanted to reply, but thought better of it. I wonder how many dyslexic Chelsea fans he has to deal with on Saturday afternoons.

2010-09-30T19:00:00.000+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Stamford Brook
tributary 3 - The Stamford Brook

The easternmost branch of the Stamford Brook was the straightest, and the longest. It rose on Old Oak Common, which might sound quaint and rural but these days is anything but. The source now lies within an industrial estate to the south of Willesden Junction station, whose sole redeeming feature is the Grand Union Canal snaking by. Just don't look beyond the shrubbery, not unless you like ash-scattered clearings full of abandoned supermarket trolleys and rotting mattresses. And rail depots. The depot at Old Oak Common is an absolute whopper, with sheds and sidings everywhere, and weedy plants growing up between the tracks and sleepers. It must have been unutterably lovelier when a stream trickled through.

You'd imagine Wormwood Scrubs to be even uglier, but that's not the case. It remains a broad expanse of open heathland, ideal for rambling or brambling, and you'll never even notice the prison existed if you hang around the western end [photo]. My OS map told me there was a boundary stone part way along the rail embankment, which undoubtedly would have marked the passage of the Stamford Brook as well as the dividing line between London and Middlesex, but I couldn't find it. Nor the boundary stone beside the canal, for that matter. But the borough/ex-river is extremely obvious for the next mile because it precisely follows the route of Old Oak Common Lane, then Old Oak Road, through East Acton. The East Acton Estate is certainly more characterful than its South Acton counterpart, filled with brick cottagey terraces of a very distinct interwar municipal style.

Any hint of peace is shattered by the not-yet-elevated Westway, which sweeps across the former riverbed with four-lane disdain. Alongside is Claydon Gardens, a miserable patch of greenspace decked out with cider-swilling benches, followed by a series of 1970s council blocks that only a talentless architect could love [photo]. Don't worry, that's the lowpoint. It's swiftly back to sturdy family piles and faux-timbered semis on the journey down to Acton Vale. And look, there on the corner with the Uxbridge Road it's the holy grail of lost-river-searchers - the stinkpipe. A rusty green tube rises up from the pavement to release sewer-vent whiff well above top floor window level [photo]. Somewhere below ground the waters of the Stamford Brook continue to flow, although it's probably best not to imagine quite how.

Next up, Askew Road (which is indeed a skew road, suggesting a sinuous rivery past). There's a proper parade-of-shops feel here, all laundrettes and bistrocaffs, plus a Victorian tavern which has yet to realise that Setanta Sports have gone bust. Watch out if you own a cat round here, I've never seen quite so many Lost Pet notices attached to lampposts. And I'm embarrassed to say that this part of London has a name I'd never ever heard of before - Starch Green. It must be true, it says so on the maps in the bus shelters. Used to be a small open space on the Goldhawk Road, apparently, and was originally called Gaggle Goose Green courtesy of a former pond, now long filled-in. But one water feature has survived close by, in the park where the Stamford Brook's three tributaries finally come together. Half a mile to go.

2010-09-30T18:00:00.001+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Stamford Brook
lower course: Ravenscourt Park → Hammersmith Creek

At the northern end of Ravenscourt Park there's a pond. It's a rather attractive asymmetrical pond with a central island, and a stone footbridge up one end beneath which the watery channel disappears. It's a waterfowl magnet, and the parkkeepers have kindly provided an identification board in case you can't tell your moorhens from your mallards. What most visitors don't realise is that in a previous incarnation it used to be part of a moat fed by the Stamford Brook. The moat surrounded Paddenswick House - a mansion of great standing dating back to the 12th century, and once owned by Edward III's mistress. Paddenswick House was upgraded several times over the years, and the gardens were duly landscaped (hence the park), but incendiary bombing in 1941 left the structure in need of total demolition so there's no trace now. Apart from the moat, that is. [photo]

Within the grounds of Ravenscourt Park the Stamford Brook's trio of headwaters finally merged, then headed south. We know that their combined flow was still visible 100 years ago in a culvert running beneath 180 King Street (now an estate agents) [photo]. From King Street onwards the river was once wide enough to be navigable, and the wharf-lined inlet so formed was known as Hammersmith Creek. It's anything but picturesque today. Hammersmith and Fulham Town Hall has been erected either on top of or right beside the old waterway, and you won't be seeing this building appearing on local postcards. Having said that, one bunch of architects have ambitious plans to restore the Stamford Brook to the surface here, including a potentially very expensive crossing of the A4 at aqueduct or surface level. The full scheme will never happen, not in this financial climate, but something more symbolically fluvial could easily reappear beside the town hall as part of a smaller scale redevelopment.

And finally, Furnival Gardens. This Thames-side park lies on the northern rim of the Hammersmith meander, and was created for the Festival of Britain out of an area of bombed wasteground. It's a very pleasant spot, with manicured flowerbeds and a small walled garden. Pleasant enough to be the location of choice for toddling families, keen joggers and Woodpecker-swilling inebriates. A semi-private pier juts out into the Thames, from which it's possible to look back towards the riverbank. If the tide's low enough, revealed before you is the outlet of the sewer which replaced Hammersmith Creek [photo]. One flap, which raises if it rains too much [photo], and a grey sludgy channel guiding whatever emerges into London's largest river [photo]. It's no wonder that Thames Water are keen to construct a mega-expensive replacement, starting very nearby indeed and heading down to Beckton. Those who live nearby will raise a cheer that former plans to sink the new tunnel from Furnival Gardens have been withdrawn. And come 2020 even the old Stamford Brook dribble-pipe will have been realigned, redirected and reborn.

» An approximate map of the Stamford Brook's course (my best Google map attempt)
» 20 photos altogether in my Stamford Brook gallery (of varying degrees of thrillingness)

» Previous rivers in this series: Fleet, Westbourne, Falcon Brook, Counters Creek, Neckinger, Hackney Brook, Effra, Walbrook

2010-08-12T23:00:00.001+01:00

NOT-LONDON 2012
Exploring Olympic venues outside the capital
1) Much Wenlock

The Olympic Games won't be coming to Shropshire in 2012. But there'll still be an Olympic Games here on the second weekend in July - the original Games, the one that inspired everything. Because the entire Olympic movement was kickstarted by a Victorian doctor bringing his community together on a West Midlands recreation ground. It's come very a long way since.

Much Wenlock is a proper small town with ten streets and a church, located a long way from anywhere important. OK that's not quite true. Shrewsbury's half an hour up the road, and the Industrial Revolution erupted a few miles away at Ironbridge. But Much Wenlock itself lurks in an isolated self-sufficient spot, packed with a population of only 2600, surrounded by charming rolling hills. Remote enough that it took me five hours to get there from London, and another five home again. Even more unexpected, then, that this should be a place of pilgrimage for those seeking the spark which lit the Olympic flame.

Dr William Penny Brookes was Much Wenlock's very own superhero. As well as being the local doctor, he also took a keen interest in the health and wellbeing of the town's population. Experiments he carried out at the main school proved that physical exercise made children fitter - a finding which helped roll out PT lessons across countless Victorian schoolyards nationwide. He restored the town's Guildhall, enticed the railways to link here and established a society to help local farmers to read. But his enduring legacy came via the Wenlock Olympian Society, an egalitarian sporting guild open to all, which ran contrary to all the elitist ideals of athletics associations of the day. From the 1850s an annual Games was held each year on the Windmill Field, mixing athletics with country sports, and open to allcomers. Pageantry was an important part of the weekend, and most definitely the taking part rather than necessarily the winning.

News of WPB's Olympian Games spread to France, and the ears of a certain Baron Pierre de Coubertin. He had plans for some sort of classical sporting competition back home, and made a special visit to Much Wenlock in October 1890 to see how the experts did it. It rained all day but the townspeople put on a plucky performance for the 27 year-old Baron and he left much inspired. William died a year before the inaugural Olympic revival in 1896, but his ideals live on into 2012 and beyond.

"Much Wenlock is a town in Shropshire, a county on the border of Wales, and if the Olympic Games that modern Greece has not yet been able to revive still survives today, it is due not to a Greek but to Dr. W. P. Brookes. It is he who inaugurated them forty years ago, and it is still he, now 82 years old but still alert and vigorous, who continues to organize and inspire them... He rests on the principles of the past which are just as true and noble today as they were in ancient times in the gymnasium of Athens, but their form is modern." (Baron Pierre de Coubertin, November 1890)

Much Wenlock celebrates its greatest son with an Olympian Trail around the town. It's marked by bronze plaques in the pavement, starting off from the Museum (endearing, Brookes-packed) then heading out via the Corn Exchange, a coaching inn and the Raven Hotel. The trails' nicely done, with free maps and information boards and everything, which'll help you spot William's place of birth and the family grave by the parish church [photo]. Ditto the Windmill Field, which looks much like any other recreation ground with a school and leisure centre nextdoor and a bowling green down the far end [photo]. Spectators used to pay a shilling and sixpence for a seat on the hill to watch the running and 'tilting' and all the other Olympian excitement (although they'd never pay today because a line of tall trees has grown up to block the view). The good Baron himself planted one of the oaks, and a plaque beneath commemorates the event.

Even without the Olympic connection, Much Wenlock's a pleasant place to while away a few hours. You can look around the Guildhall in the summer for a quid, or pay a bit more to look round the ruins of medieval Wenlock Priory. The High Street's short but 'proper', with a delightful first-/second-hand bookshop and a family butchers where the queue invariably stretches out onto the pavement. And if all that gets too much, head out west on Victoria Road and you can be up on the hilltops in less than half an hour. A network of footpaths leads up onto Wenlock Edge - a limestone escarpment which runs for 15 miles between here and Craven Arms. Initially there are gently-sloping fields, then suddenly you realise you're walking along a high narrow path with a quarry down to one side and steep wooded scarp on the other. Find a gap through the trees and there are wistful views across undulating farmland towards A.E. Housman's blue-remembered hills. [photo]

OK, so Olympia in Greece is the true birthplace of the modern Olympic Games, but I was more than impressed by the Shropshire town whose ideals helped inspire a global movement. They've not forgotten the great William Penny Brookes round here, nor his annual Games, and London 2012's Olympic mascot will help the rest of the world to remember too. Good old Wenlock.

• The Wenlock Olympian Society
• A Walking Tour of Much Wenlock

2010-08-12T22:00:00.001+01:00

NOT-LONDON 2012
Exploring Olympic venues outside the capital
2) Stoke Mandeville

London's Olympic closing ceremony will take place exactly two years from today. But that won't be the end of the show. Three weeks later the other Games kick off, the Games far fewer people follow, the Paralympics. And they have their their roots in English suburbia, 30 miles outside London in deepest Buckinghamshire. So I've been there too. After Wenlock, Mandeville.

The seeds of the Paralympics were unintentionally sown when an Aylesbury hospital was chosen for the treatment of military casualties during World War 2. A specialist spinal injuries unit was set up, whose expertise continued and grew into peacetime under the directorship of Dr Ludwig Guttmann. When London hosted the Olympic Games in 1948, hospital staff organised a special athletics event for 16 disabled ex-soldiers, and the annual Stoke Mandeville Games were born. In 1952 a Dutch team turned up, launching the first international sporting competition for disabled athletes. And in 1960 the competition ventured abroad to Rome, taking place alongside the city's able-bodied Olympics. Known at the time as the 9th Annual International Stoke Mandeville Games, this is the moment when the Paralympics are deemed to have been born. And yes, we came second. Great Britain's very good at coming second in the Paralympics, but we've never yet topped the medal table.

If you want to get to Stoke Mandeville hospital (not via an ambulance), there's one important thing to remember. Don't get off the train at Stoke Mandeville station. They have big signs up on the platforms warning you not to, and to alight at Aylesbury instead. The hospital was originally an isolation unit for cholera sufferers, so was very deliberately built in the nomansland halfway between the two settlements. Aylesbury's long since grown up and swallowed the place, but the hospital retains the name of the small commuter village down the road.

I got off the train at Stoke Mandeville, because I'm like that, although almost nobody else did. This is a sleepy Chiltern backwater, peaceful but not overflowing with character. The Post Office is the sort of place that sells Silvine exercise books and Tunnock's tea cakes. The village hall is the sort of place that hosts the Mid Bucks Rabbit Show. And the bus stop is the sort of place that boasts only five services a day, so I walked to the hospital instead. It was only a mile across the fields towards the big chimney in the distance, past a couple of extremely tame sheep, but there were rather a lot of stiles on the way so I'd never have managed the journey in a wheelchair.

OK, so Stoke Mandeville Hospital looks very much like a modern hospital. A huge organic cluster of rambling buildings, some thrusting and modern, others barely-altered prefabs from the dawn of the NHS [photo]. The Spinal Injuries Unit is one of the more up-to-date wings, with a friendly 'Welcome' scrawled across its roof. But I headed round the bleak northern perimeter road, past several staff car parks, to catch a glimpse of the legendary stadium. There it was through the fence, behind the junior doctors' accommodation block, a ring of eight blue lanes curving off towards a distant hedge. All the usual athletics facilities, by the looks of things, including spaces for chucking things and nets for chucking them into. In fact nothing extra special at all, because this is Sport For All, and round here everyone uses the same track. [photo]

But not every sports track has an Olympic Village attached. Most of it is bungalows, obviously, in a none-too fetching shade of sludge-brown brick surrounded by unkempt shrubbery. The village was built for the one occasion the fledgling Paralympics came to Stoke Mandeville, in 1984, when the hosting honours were shared transatlantically with New York. Nextdoor is the two-storey Olympic Lodge, with a ramp, obviously, which doubles up as an accessible hotel and conference centre. And a big steely sports centre, named after dear old Dr Guttman, within which lurk a badminton hall, swimming pool and (obviously) a gym. Looking at the Aylesburyfolk walking inside to use the facilities, and pumping iron through the smoked glass windows, you'd never guess this place had any special disabled function at all.

But there's a proper hint of the old days across the car park. A row of ramshackle white huts, of the kind that ought to house a pack or three of postwar boy scouts, unsullied by upgrade since their sporting debut [photo]. One's the Shooting Hall, where wheelchair athletes won medals for target practice, and another's the Wallace-Taylor Cuesports Room, where sedentary snooker players potted black for gold. And there's an indoor bowls centre too, even though that's not a Paralympic sport any more, because they used to do things differently here.

Disabled sport has moved on big time since 1948, so that when the Paralympics return to the UK in 2012 they'll have vastly outgrown this pioneering provincial sports centre. But its legacy lives on, both around here and around the world. And it's thanks to Stoke Mandeville that in precisely two years' time the London Games won't be over, there'll still be half the fun to go.

2010-08-12T21:00:00.001+01:00

NOT-LONDON 2012
Exploring Olympic venues outside the capital
3) Dorney Lake

Not all of London 2012 will take place in London. The football's heading all across the UK, for example, but I'm going to ignore that. Instead I'm heading off to the four other non-London venues which have been selected to host a medal-winning opportunity in two years' time. One's a heck of a long way away from the Olympic Village, while the other three are in the inner Home Counties. First up, close by, the rowing/canoeing/kayaking.

Not every Olympic venue is a drain on the public purse. This is perhaps just as well when the requirement is a category A rowing lake. To host an international level event requires a two-kilometre-long stretch of still water, broad enough for eight lanes of oarsmanship, plus a separate lake running parallel to allow competitors to return to the start. Fortunately for London 2012, one such facility had been constructed just outside the capital a few years before our Olympic bid was successful. A school pool, no less. Well, OK, it's Eton College's rowing lake. But hurrah to them, because otherwise goodness knows where the world's finest rowers would be competing.

About halfway between Windsor and Maidenhead, that's where you'll find Dorney Lake. There weren't many spots along the Thames where a 2km boating lake could have been shoehorned [aerial photo]. Any longer and it would have joined up with the river, or else wiped out someone's garden. But that wouldn't have been a problem because Eton College own pretty much everything around here, which is probably why they can afford their own multi-million pound artificial lagoon (plus a fleet of minibuses to ferry all the scholars over). And if you've not got your own wheels (or a Thames cruiser) to get you here, it's a very long walk from anywhere.

It's a damned impressive lake, though. Arrow-straight, and vanishing off into the distance as if somebody stretched an open-air swimming pool far further than they should have. At the starting end, a series of pontoons stretch out into the water like fingers [photo]. Facing each, strung out in a long line along the foreshore, stand two parallel rows of giant yellow and black shields. They look like the decoration for a very one-sided medieval jousting tournament, whereas in fact they're to give the cox something to line up with as they shoot off down the course. Pull hard, and the far distant clubhouse is less than ten minutes away.

Dorney Lake's grounds are open to the public on all but the busiest race days, so this is an ideal spot for a walk or a ride. Cyclists are welcomed, so long as they keep out of the way of coaches with megaphones speeding along the perimeter on a bike. Even very tiny cyclists were in evidence when I visited, including some of Berkshire's youngest trying to learn how to ride one of the things in the first place. It's also a popular spot for jogging, and dog-walking, and even bird-watching if there's no regatta on the water. Swans and geese have taken to the artificial lake like ducks to water, as have the ducks, obviously. Throw in a meadowful of sheep along one side, and a recently-established arboretum on the other, and this is an attractive destination even for non-sports fans.

Strings of small white buoys mark out the eight parallel lanes, with the occasional big orange floater at strategic points along the way. A series of giant numbers count down the distance to go at 250 metre intervals, far further apart than you'd imagine they ought to be [photo]. There are squat podiums at similar intervals, some topped by a portakabin, others awaiting the BBC TV cameras which will broadcast these waters to the world in two summers time. These lie along the thin strip between the main lake and its parallel return channel [photo], which in 2012 will help to keep officials and screaming coaches out of the way of the spectating public. For now, however, it's a public walk/jog/bike-way lined by colourful marshy flowers busy colonising the water's edge.

Past 1750m, the loudspeakers begin. They were switched off during my visit because there was nothing to commentate on, no regattas or even heavy training, just a couple of quad sculls rowing weakly up-lake. Then at 2000m a final row of buoys, overlooked by the Finish Tower [photo], from whose roof terrace Pimms can be supped and photo-finishes can be judged. That was empty too, maybe because it's August and the College has packed up and gone home for the summer. The enormous clubhouse appeared to be open [photo], but I saw no evidence that visiting families and budding amateurs were being particularly welcomed to try out anything watersporty. Enjoy the perimeter, seemed to be Eton's message, but the water is ours. Elitist maybe, but it's commendable that the college are willing to share their outdoor pool with the world for a couple of fortnights, even if it brings no long-lasting public legacy. And should you fancy wandering somewhere that'll one day be on a billion TV screens, the perimeter's definitely pleasant enough.

2010-08-12T19:00:00.001+01:00

NOT-LONDON 2012
Exploring Olympic venues outside the capital
4) Hadleigh Farm

Most of the cycling events at the 2012 Games will be taking place at the Velodrome in the Olympic Park - that Pringle-roofed stadium just off the A12. Obviously the Road Race has to take place elsewhere, where there are roads, and is likely to run from the Mall out to Box Hill and back. But one particular discipline has proved rather harder to locate, and that's the mountain biking. Because, well, London's not renowned for its contours, is it?

When London won its Olympic bid, the plan was to hold the mountain biking at the Weald Country Park near Brentwood. That's near junction 28 of the M25 - a corner of Essex not especially renowned as mountain country (indeed the highest point in the park is no more than 100m above sea level). The International Cycling Union were not impressed. Not hilly enough, they said, not enough challenge, have you got anywhere else? So London 2012 looked around Essex (because they'd promised the mountain biking to Essex) and tried to see if there was anywhere steeper that they could carve out a course instead. Yes, obviously, Canvey Island.

OK, not quite Canvey, but a hill on the mainland at Hadleigh which looks out towards the pancake-flat isle. The hilltop may be only 70 metres high, but it has far more exciting slopes than the Weald, so it's been deemed excitingly acceptable by the powers that be. Which means that, on the final two days of Olympic competition, 30 women and 50 men will be coming to Essex to test out their skill, balance, daring and verve on cross-country saddleback. It's just a pity that, with so many other events scheduled for that weekend, so few TV viewers will be watching.

Hadleigh's not a town that's used to the spotlight. A few streets before Southend, where the A13 dual carriageway fades into a bus garage and a parade of shops, that's the heart of Hadleigh. Take Chapel Lane down towards the river and eventually you'll reach a poorly used car park beside a fake Iron Age Roundhouse. This lonely spot is currently the gateway to Hadleigh Country Park, but come 2012 it'll be transformed into the official Olympic car park (for official Olympic vehicles). From here it's but a brief freewheel into the field where the mountain biking course is located, or at least it will be once the whole shebang is ready. It isn't yet, but they've already made a start.

A public footpath crosses Sandpit Hill, which is the uplifted zone selected for international competition, but alas it's not public any more. The stile leading off from the lane has been fenced over, and someone's erected a "temporary footpath diversion" sign which looks anything but temporary. No doubt it's only for a couple of years, although any determined intruder could easily nip over the netting and wander around the entire course to their heart's content. Law-abiding souls have to walk a little further down the track, then turn off through a parallel field, from where there's a pretty good view of what's been built so far. [photo]

There's not much to see yet, to be honest, just a few sinuous paths cut into the hillside and surrounded by flapping orange netting. It's not yet clear whether these are tracks for competitors or access routes for spectators, probably the latter. But what is clear is that there are definitely enough contours here - nothing too precipitous, but equally nothing too restrictively feeble. There's also every chance of a mudbath should the clouds open during the week before the competition. My boots got absolutely covered in sludge during my wanderings in the local area last weekend, and I had to endure more than one awkward scramble down a treacherously slippery mudslide. Even if the rest of London 2012 is thwarted by torrential rain, at least here it'll make for some damned fine competition.

The site has one further bonus, which is the presence of a haunting Norman ruin on the hilltop nextdoor. This is Hadleigh Castle, once an important Thames-side citadel and a favoured residence of Edward III. No longer. The walls have almost all fallen, which is what happens over the centuries when you pile large chunks of stone on top of an unstable clay outcrop. A few outline foundations remain for visitors to pick over - that's part of the great hall, there's the kitchen, and that's the floor of the King's old bedroom. Some of the original towers still stand, most only barely (thanks to a long-ago landslip), but one as half a shell looming high above the marshland below. No French invaders pass upriver these days, only a succession of huge container ships and tankers heading towards the chimneys of Corringham. Southend is clearly visible to the east, while the flat wastes of the Isle of Grain fade off to the horizon across the snaking river. As the estuarine Thames goes, this is definitely one of the prettier spots (although admittedly it hasn't got much competition). [photo]

One further point of interest can be found a few hundred yards inland from the castle - the Salvation Army's Hadleigh Training Centre. William Booth created the Home Farm Colony here in the 1880s "for the benefit of men who, through misfortune, need a helping hand." The Army continues its sterling work in the local community to this day, but the skills offered now are rather less manually-based than before. Having said that, they do run a Rare Breeds Farm which is open to the public every summer, and which four-year-olds are bound to find more exciting than a wander round some old ruins. There are also tearooms, I think inside a mighty big chalet, although a shocking lack of publicity meant I only worked out they were tearooms from the internet once I got home. They'll stay open during the Games in 2012, you'll be pleased to hear, even if the castle will be blocked off to stop spectators getting too good a free view. No problem. The mountain biking's one event, I suspect, it'll be well worth paying to see.

• Hadleigh Farm 2012 (the official Essex Legacy site) (with undownloadable newsletters)
• Hadleigh Castle (courtesy of English Heritage)
• Hadleigh Country Park (the wild slopes of south Essex) (leaflet/map)

2010-08-12T18:00:00.001+01:00

NOT-LONDON 2012
Exploring Olympic venues outside the capital
5) Lee Valley White Water Centre (Waltham Cross)

One of the more spectacular Olympic sports is the canoe slalom. Lots of splashy white water, several flashing oars, and some very wet athletes careering downhill to a frothy finish. Again, fairly easy to organise if you have a mountain to hand, but rather harder when the land's flat. So, this time, destination Hertfordshire.

The plan was always to hold the slalom events somewhere in the Lea Valley. A short trip upriver from the Olympic Village, and a course that would provide a long-term sporting legacy for local residents. So a former industrial site was identified Broxbourne station and the river, and plans made for a Games-standard whitewater course. That was the plan. But the Spitalbrook site turned up to be more deeply contaminated than anyone had guessed, and would have cost millions to clear up. So an alternative location was sought, as a matter of urgency, but still in the Broxbourne area because they'd hate to let the local council down. Which is how a whopping great building site ended up on a greenfield site halfway between Waltham Cross and Waltham Abbey.

There are several ways to get to the new Lee Valley White Water Centre. The official recommended route is via Cheshunt station, not because it's the closest but because it has the most frequent rail service. It's ideally located for the river, is Cheshunt station, if not for the surrounding town. It's also perfect for the Lee Valley Youth Hostel, amongst whose smart fresh chalets an information point has been set up for those wishing to find out more about the new venue. They're very keen to get visitors, by the looks of it, because the existence of this information centre is advertised on signposts and posterboards in the middle of nowhere up to a mile away. But it's not really worth a half hour detour to reach. A small unstaffed room off the main hostel reception, with a few big photos on the wall and a whitewater video and a web terminal that doesn't work. Oh, and plenty of information, which manages to make the new course sound fairly exciting. But not very nearby.

The most direct route is via Theobalds Grove station. You've probably never been, but this was the nearest station to my gran's house while I was growing up, so I know it all too well. Then down Trinity Lane, past the parish church where my parents got married, and across the unmanned level crossing onto Cheshunt Marsh. It's more than pleasant here, within the boundaries of the Lee Valley Park. Rolling water meadows edged by flowery undergrowth, and a speckling of streams and lakes threading through verdant woodland. All except for one patch of land to the south, where a sprawling building site has been rudely plonked. The Olympic planners have attempted to destroy only mown grassland and a car park, but this corner of the marsh has been irrevocably changed. Down that blocked footpath, behind that temporary fence, the whitewater slalom course is taking shape.

The best views of the new centre are from the edge of the Lee Navigation. Cross over the footbridge (from Essex into Herts) and you can look down on the emergent course from a hump in the path. Last summer nothing was here but a huge pile of earth [photo], but 12 months later there's almost enough infrastructure here to paddle down [photo]. At its heart is a timber-framed building shaped like a hardback book, with a sweeping wooden terrace stretching out above the starting pool for the Olympic course. The water level only drops five metres from start to finish, but the gradient's steep enough to provide a rocky ride for the professional canoeists. The pumps were switched on for the first time last week to check that the course doesn't leak, and the good news is that everything appeared to splish and splosh appropriately [video]. I visited a few days too early to see any of that, so had to make do with a vague glimpse of the pre-filled lower pool surrounded by snapping diggers [photo]. It's possible to get a better view of the central facilities building from further along the towpath, hovering above ground level like a floating encyclopaedia. But the path's too low down, and the main course too far away, to get a decent glimpse of any Olympic water whatsoever. Never fear, potential 2012 spectators, because a special earthy lump is being piled up for thousands of you to sit on, and there'll be a much better view from up there.

One final way to reach the Centre is along Eleanor Cross Road from Waltham Cross station. Unfortunately this only works at the moment if you're an Olympic contractor. This is the official entrance, the one with smart graphic pictograms hanging from the gates, and the one that everyone will be using in 2012. And in 2011, because the unique thing about this particular Olympic venue is that it'll be open to the public one year early. If you fancy trying your hand at the scary slalom, or more likely a bit of rafting down the separate intermediate circuit, turn up here from spring 2011 onwards and get your feet wet. Certainly Broxbourne Council are more than delighted with their new world class watersports venue, and are crowing about its existence on banners hung all along the adjacent roadway. Local landlubbers may not be quite so pleased at swapping grassland for white water, but officials hope that tens of thousands will take full advantage once the slalom gates open.

2010-08-12T15:00:00.001+01:00

NOT-LONDON 2012
Exploring Olympic venues outside the capital
6) Weymouth & Portland National Sailing Academy

The Serpentine doesn't really cut it as an Olympic sailing venue, so all the yachters and sailspersons are off to the Dorset seaside instead. A full 120 miles from the main stadium, in the lee of the Isle of Portland, they'll be all a-flutter come 2012. To conclude my summer series, here's one final report from an out-of-London Olympic venue.

The best sailing waters in Northern Europe are to be found in Weymouth Bay. Lucky, that. The waters are protected by coast on three sides, with only the non-prevailing easterlies able to blow in unhindered. But even that wasn't good enough for the Royal Navy, who in the mid 19th century built a series of breakwaters to create one of the largest man-made harbours in the world. Prince Albert laid the foundation stone - and there aren't many other Olympic venues which can claim the same thing. The Navy sold up in 1996, allowing the watersports industry to move in instead, and the Weymouth & Portland National Sailing Academy was established four years later. One nigh-perfect global sailing venue, up and running in advance of London 2012's successful bid, and making barely a scratch on the Olympic budget.

The WPNSA can be found off the northern tip of the Isle of Portland, on reclaimed land in the lee of Chesil Beach. Don't think glamour. The inshore area at Osprey Quay is covered with car parks, metal sheds and a heliport. As for the boatyard, that's shielded behind metal railings to keep mere landlubbers at a safe distance. The fence isn't standard Olympic issue, no mile-high razorwire or anything, but no doubt that'll change once 2012 comes around. The clubhouse is a blue toastrack of a building, not as capacious as you might expect, and with its most interesting side out of sight facing the waters. Hundreds of high-masted boats are lined up nearby, some on the tarmac, the rest spaced out along pontoons in the water. Pick your weekend carefully and the harbour is a mass of flapping white sails tacking across the waves, and a quite magnificent sight. I picked my weekend less carefully, and got a few racing canoes instead.

Nextdoor is the Portland Marina, a commercial proposition which meets the needs of the more aspirational yacht owner. They have a two-storey restaurant called "The Boat That Rocks", named after last year's pirate radio film which was shot around here. How long the name survives remains to be seen, but the place was packed out with boating clientèle when I walked by. I doubt that many of these diners came from the local area, but one day soon they will. Some gleaming green-domed apartments have just been finished nearby, looking wildly out of place like they were meant for the Battersea riverside. In the meantime Castletown on the rim of the island is little more than one weatherbeaten street, lined by grand hotels whose glory days are long past and the occasional dead pub. Further up the hillside are the outskirts of Fortuneswell, a patch of council housing strung out like fingers along the upper contours of the island. [photo]

These two settlements are joined by the Merchant's Incline, a steep footpath once used for the haulage of Portland stone down to the docks below. It's well worth making the climb to the top, turning round occasionally to stare back at the panorama below [photo]. The best view is from outside the gates of HM Prison The Verne, hidden in the rockface at the very peak of the island. From here the entire bay is spread out below, with a focus on the protected waters inside the Portland breakwaters [photo]. This'll be a great spot from which to watch the Olympic yachting in 2012, even though you won't have a clue who's winning. You probably won't even need a ticket. Sailing's traditionally been a free-to-view Olympic event, and it's likely that the cliffs will stay open to all throughout. Hospitality enclaves and spectator boats may be introduced at sea level, and they'll no doubt cost a small fortune, but the slopes of Fortuneswell offer as fine an overview as one could hope to find.

• London 2012 venues

2010-07-31T10:00:00.000+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Walbrook

The Walbrook is one of the most important rivers in the world, which is pretty impressive for a river that no longer exists. It's not as important as the Thames, obviously, but the spot where these two rivers met defined the nucleus of a great global city. The City of London emerged along the line of this shallow river valley rolling down to the Thames, then spread across the contours of two low hills rising to either side. Drinking water, defensive position, strategic location, perfect. Those two hills still exist, with St Paul's Cathedral marking Ludgate Hill to the west and the Royal Exchange atop Cornhill to the east. But the Romans wouldn't recognise the valley which once divided their walled city into two halves, because the sparkling river has irreversibly vanished.

The Walbrook is therefore incredibly difficult to follow. You'd think it would be easy, passing as it did through one of the most well-documented square miles on the entire planet. But this means it disappeared early, several centuries before any other London lost river bit the dust. What had once been a "fair brook of sweet water" had by the 13th century become an ugly sewer that was "neither fair nor sweet". The middle and lower reaches of the Walbrook were paved over in 1463 thanks to a hygiene-minded Royal Act, and the original watercourse hasn't been seen since. Few accurate maps of the area were drawn up in medieval times, and the landscape has been built upon and built upon and built upon over the intervening years. So the account I'm publishing below is based on historical scraps I found in books, some approximate published maps and a bit of guesswork.

• An approximate map of the Walbrook's course (my best Google map attempt)

2010-07-31T09:00:00.000+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Walbrook
1) Shoreditch - Liverpool Street

Trying to locate the source of the Walbrook is fraught with difficulty. It's said by some to have arisen in Moorfields - once a large area of marshy fenland outside the City walls, broadly where Moorgate station and Finsbury Circus stand today. If so, expect the stream to have 'emerged' and 'coalesced', rather than bubbling forth from one distinct spring. Others think there were lots of tiny brooks draining a wider area to the north of the City. If so, then as one modern hydrologist has it, "Walbrook is merely a generic term for a network of convergent southbound streams". A third group are convinced that the river had slightly longer tributaries, probably two, one of which flowed down from Islington and the other from Shoreditch. If so, they'd probably have been pretty piddly streams, possibly only much in evidence after a decent amount of rainfall. I've decided to run with this third option, because I've seen it in print most often. Starting in Shoreditch.

You'd think "Shore Ditch" was a sure fire reference to something lost river-y, but apparently this isn't the case. There was a wellspring here once, allegedly, close to the Roman road junction outside St Leonard's Church [photo], and this could have been the Walbrook's most northerly source. Don't go looking for any evidence on the ground, but the blogger at Spitalfields Life has had a long chat with the vicar and he assures us the river once flowed from here. The fledgling Walbrook would have dribbled south through the heart of trendy Shoreditch [photo], quenching the bar-ghetto between Curtain Road and Shoreditch High Street [photo]. Precisely here could be found Shakespeare's first two London theatres - The Theatre and The Curtain - so it's a pretty good bet that young Will relieved himself into the Walbrook on a number of occasions.

The river would have followed the line of the old Broad Street Railway, which may or may not be a lucky coincidence. It entered the modern City of London beneath the Broadgate Tower [photo], the ancient valley now marked by a chasm of glass and steel between lofty heights [photo]. And then south across the extensive financial wastes of the Broadgate development. You'll find no medieval street patterns here, just a warren of mighty office blocks dumped down where Broad Street station and its sidings once stood. Seething with suits from Monday to Friday, at weekends its solitary piazzas echo with workmen, cleaners and the occasional lost tourist [photo]. Running parallel to the rail terminus at Liverpool Street [photo], it's here at ye olde Moorfields that the Walbrook proper began.

2010-07-31T08:00:00.000+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Walbrook
2) Liverpool Street - Bank

The Walbrook entered Roman Londinium through a culvert under the city walls about halfway between Moor Gate and Bishop's Gate. It brought fresh water for drinking and cooking, so it was allowed to pass unhindered beneath the ragstone bulkhead. And as the brook beneath the wall, that's how the Walbrook got its name. Probably. Very little about this river is certain, you should know that by now.

The entrance point today is marked by an unlikely dual carriageway sloping down past the church of All Hallows On The Wall. This building is a rare survivor in a sea of modern architectural tedium, although at the top of the hill the new spire-topped Heron Tower injects a striking contrast into the skyline [photo]. And then on into the city proper, and an area you way not know too well. There are a lot of gates and walls and narrow alleyways, as if those round here would rather not too many of the outside world wandered by. If Throgmorton Avenue's locked off then slip down the nearby passage and enter the mysterious enclave around Austin Friars [photo]. Wiggly lanes lined by obscure financial institutions, plus De Nederlandse Kerk (which has been serving the capital's Dutch community since 1550). Alas the Walbrook ran slightly further west, past Drapers Hall, through what's now the chunky brown lump of Angel Court. Over the last fifty years, it seems, architects have infilled umpteen corners of our great City with stacked-office ugliness.

To Tokenhouse Yard. This is a neat yet non-descript EC2 cul-de-sac, with a narrow alley at one end leading to a snack shop and gentleman's barbers. Along one side is an elegant façade with classical columns, and along the other a building site [photo]. Really quite typical. But this is apparently the spot where two tributaries of the Walbrook met. Above this point marshy uncertainty, below this point a fairly definite river course. There's even a map of the Walbrook stuck to the building site wall, because construction projects in the City have to take archaeology very seriously. Roman remains (including a timber-lined drain) have been found beneath basement level, the poster informs, as well as telltale lost-river alluvium. London's original watery dividing line passed straight through here, then south to Lothbury.

"Now for the North side of this Lothbury, beginning at the East end thereof: Upon the Water-course of Walbrooke, have ye a proper Parish Church, called St. Margaret. Which seemeth to be newly re-edified and builded, about the Year 1440. For Robert Large gave to the Quire of that Church one hundred and 20 Pounds for Ornaments. More to the Vaulting over the Water-course of Walbrook, by the said Church, for the enlarging thereof, Two Hundred Marks."

Not many medieval churches had to be specially constructed so that a stream could pass underneath! By the time Wren rebuilt St Margaret's after the Great Fire there was no need for special vaulting as there was no longer a river [photo]. But there were genuine underground issues at the next building across the street - the mighty Bank of England [photo]. Sir John Soane had to deal with the buried Walbrook when he designed and constructed the City's financial fortress - its waters were seen trickling beneath the foundations. A similar, though unexpected, archaeological revelation occurred in the late 1950s when the "Travelator" at Bank station was being installed. Next time you're walking down to the Waterloo & City line on Europe's first moving pavement, be aware that you're also wading through the channel of the deep-buried Walbrook. [photo]

2010-07-31T07:00:00.003+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Walbrook
3) Bank - Cannon Street

The Walbrook lives on, in name only, in the heart of London. One of the City's 25 electoral wards is named after the river, which once ran precisely along the ward's historic western border. There's a street called Walbrook [photo], and has been for centuries, which may be short but boasts the Mayor's Mansion House at its head. Nextdoor is a church named St Stephen Walbrook - one of Sir Christopher Wren's finest post-conflagration rebuilds, and also the institution responsible for founding the Samaritans helpline in 1953 [photo]. In sharp contrast alongside is a ribbed black office block in an upturned-jelly style, nearing completion and to be known by its new tenants as the Walbrook Building [photo]. But the river didn't quite flow past all this lot, down the street that bears its name, but instead about 50 yards or so to the west.

This is a right ugly chunk of London, unless you're into near-demolished Modernist office blocks [photo]. Bucklersbury House and its neighbour Temple Court were knocked up in the 1950s, and will be knocked down very shortly. While the wrecking balls wait and a locked fence keeps Londoners at bay, Legal & General's flapping windows now let in the rain. One ancient relic survives on view - the Roman Temple of Mithras. its stonework was discovered by workmen while Bucklersbury House was being laid out in the 1950s, and archaeologists subsequently recovered several marble sculptures of gods and goddesses from the dig. The finest relics were put on display in the Museum of London, while the temple was rudely shifted to its current position on a gloomy raised platform beside Victoria Street [photo]. If sufficient money is ever forthcoming, a new development called Walbrook Square will be constructed on the site, with the re-relocated Temple of Mithras at its heart. Judging by the plans, there'll be few mourners when the demolition balls swing for Walbrook Square in 50 years time.

The Walbrook crossed Cannon Street precisely where today's contours suggest it did, beneath Horseshoe Bridge to the west of the current station. The next street down is Cloak Lane, formerly Cloaca Lane (after the Latin name for sewer, which tells you all you need to know about the medieval smell locally). Here could be found the church of St John the Baptist upon Walbrook, one of the unlucky City churches not chosen to be rebuilt after 1666. It suffered a further blow when the District line ploughed through the churchyard in the 1880s, and all human remains were disinterred into a small barred vault (which, unexpectedly, can still be seen). And then comes Upper Thames Street, which marked the line of the quayside in Roman times but is now an unpleasantly busy arterial road. One of the main gates in London's defensive wall was here, named Dowgate. The Walbrook here was 14 feet wide as it flowed out into the Thames - an improbable fact which you can ponder while sitting in Whittington Garden watching the pigeons in the fountain. [photo]

As Londinium expanded inexorably to become London, the mouth of the Walbrook gradually migrated south. The river flowed between dockside wharves to join the Thames about 120 feet to the west of Cannon Street station, where it's still possible to see a concrete trough at low tide marking the end of the London Bridge Sewer [photo]. This is also the spot from which the City chooses to despatch its rubbish. Containers of reeking refuse are piled up at Walbrook Wharf until high tide when they're taken away by barge to some unfortunate part of Essex. The barges have lost-river-related names (Walbrook, Holebourne, Turnmill etc) and they're huge, especially when viewed from the pebbly beach [photo]. Access is along the edge of the station, past the chlorine-pumping gym and down a set of slippery steps beside The Banker pub, should you fancy a spot of mudlarking. The beach is littered with fragments of brick, tile and china, as well as rounded glass fragments and considerably more seashells than you might expect. A row of damp squidgy wooden posts marks the line of some old jetty [photo], and the smell of rotting vegetables and vinegar hangs in the air. That'll be the Walbrook - long vanished on the ground, but impossible to disguise.

www.flickr.com: my Walbrook gallery

[22 photos altogether - some fascinating, some tedious] [map]

• An approximate map of the Walbrook's course (my best Google map attempt)

• A history of the Walbrook (from a group campaigning for its restoration)
• In search of the Walbrook (with Spitalfields Life)
• Amy Sharrocks walks the Walbrook (with ribbons) (pdf)
• Exploring the London Bridge Sewer (which the Walbrook has become)

» Previous rivers in this series: Fleet, Westbourne, Falcon Brook, Counters Creek, Neckinger, Hackney Brook, Effra

2010-06-30T21:00:00.002+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Effra

If the Fleet is North London's iconic lost river, then South London belongs to the Effra. It's got a brilliant name for a start. Nobody's 100% sure where the name came from - possibly from "efre" the Anglo-Saxon word for 'bank', or from "yfrid" which is the Celtic word for 'torrent'. I'm not entirely convinced by the latter, given that this six mile stream could never genuinely be described as torrential. There are a few semi-steep slopes at the Norwood end, but any lower the gradient's so shallow you'd never guess there was ever a river here. Through Brixton down to Vauxhall, the Effra's long gone.

Two centuries ago, if you'd have been standing in the rural wilds of what is now the London borough of Lambeth, a small brook would have trickled by. It ran through fields and meadows and peaceful countryside - a landscape almost impossible to imagine today. Norwood really was a wood, Brixton was only a few scattered cottages, and Kennington was just a big common where convicted criminals got hung. The Effra widened as it flowed towards the Thames, eventually broad enough for a small boat, but for most of its length think 'paddling-depth stream' and you'll not go far wrong. Then came the railways, and the onslaught of suburbia, with housing easily built on the raised terraces above the floodplain. The Effra dwindled to an unwanted sewer, covered over around the same time as the Albert Embankment was built, with its waters culverted and buried.

The original Effra wasn't simply one river, it was a series of tiny tributaries covering a broad catchment area. Most of these ran down from a long ridge of high ground running roughly from Sydenham to Crystal Palace. One of these tributaries, for example, was known as the Ambrook. It kicked off in Sydenham Hill Woods (across the valley from the Horniman Museum), where there are still ponds and occasionally-damp channels to be found in the undergrowth. A poorly-used railway once ran this way, along an artificially flat terrace leading to a bricked-up tunnel under Crescent Wood Road. The Ambrook, meanwhile, ran downhill across what is now Dulwich Golf Club, past Dulwich College towards the main Norwood trunk of the river.

I'll not be writing much about the Effra's many tributaries. It would take too long, and others have done the job too well anyway. Here for example is a fine page about the geology and geomorphology of the Effra basin, which contains far more proper detail than I'm going to write about below. And here's Edith's blog, currently following the various Effra tributaries and writing about what's there now and what was there then. The historical detail is fantastic, and again is far more useful than the skim-past I'm going to deliver here.

The Effra lives on as an urban legend, untraceable for most of its length by the uninitiated, apart from the odd major road in the Brixton area since named after it. There are occasional attempts to resurrect its memory, most notably in 1992 when a local arts group opened up an office under the banner of the "Effra Development Agency". Theirs was a tongue-in-cheek attempt to inspire a revival for the river valley, much as the unloved Docklands had recently been reborn. Posters and newspapers amplified the message, only for a short time, but long enough to lodge the river firmly back in south London consciousness.

As for raising the river back above ground, I really wouldn't recommend it. An awful lot of Victorian terraces would become uninhabitable, the centre of Brixton would switch from market to watergarden, and there's even a major cricket ground where the boundary might become a water hazard. Better that we remember where the Effra used to run, and recognise the enormous influence it's had on settlement and communications. Starting tomorrow, up Crystal Palace way.

If you're especially interested (and south Londoners tend to be rightly passionate about their own patch), the Brixton Society published a 28 page booklet about The River Effra back in 1993. It has a full history from source to mouth, plus a proper map without which I'd have got proper stuck while producing what follows. The Society's website alleges that it's available for £1.50, if indeed it's still in print, although I found a copy lurking upstairs in the Local Studies section of Brixton Library.

• An approximate map of the Effra's course (my best Google map attempt)

• Walking the River Effra (with Hatmandu, 2002)
• Dowsing the River Effra (with Amy Sharrocks and Peter Watts, 2009)
• The geography of the River Effra (especially around Dulwich) (with Martin Knight)

2010-06-30T18:00:00.000+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Effra
1) Norwood

The chief headwaters of the Effra arose from springs in Upper Norwood, approximately where Westow Park stands today. That's just off the Crystal Palace one-way system, if you're trying to find it, between the Sainsbury's superstore at the top of the hill and the tower blocks of College Green partway down. Should you ever walk the Capital Ring you'll pass straight through, probably rapidly, before moving on to the slightly more interesting Upper Norwood Recreation Ground. A small patch of grass in the eastern corner often appears damp, if not outright wet, hinting that the river has refused to disappear completely. The drinking fountain nearby's not Effra-fuelled, alas, it's too high up. [photo]

Even in its first half mile, the valley carved by the fledgling Effra is clearly evident. It flows along a pronounced depression beyond Chevening Road, now infilled with housing and a school, but once the site of nothing more than a four-plank bridge. Traffic negotiating Hermitage Road from ridgetop to ridgetop must descend steeply, then climb again, to cross the broad valley of a vanished stream [photo]. But trace the river along Hancock Road, to a grassy verge at the end of a short cul-de-sac, and it's still possible to hear 21st century Effra waters rushing beneath an anonymous manhole cover [photo]. Allegedly, that is - I'd recommend not wasting your time listening to find out.

Legend tells that Queen Elizabeth I's royal barge once sailed up the Effra as far as Hermitage Road. A quick glance at the gradient of the hill beneath this spot should be sufficient to confirm that this supposed regal voyage never took place. After exiting the grounds of Virgo Fidelis convent school, the Efrra emerged onto flatter ground through an obvious dip between Crown Dale and Central Hill [photo]. It then curved across Elder Road into what is now municipal Norwood Park, close to the multi-purpose sports court. In the early 1800s this stretch of the Effra marked the western boundary of Great Elderhole Coppice - one of the last surviving remnants of the 1400 acre Great North Wood (after which the suburb of Norwood was named).

This area has long been susceptible to flooding. A particularly heavy storm on 17 July 1890 caused the Effra to become a raging torrent, sweeping away part of the Virgo Fidelis convent wall. Repairs in the brickwork are still visible to the right of the school gates. Properties in Elder Road were also badly affected. A plaque marking the 1890 flood level is alleged to exist on the south wall of the Outdoor Relief Station at Elderwood Place [photo], although I've looked and looked (as much as any man can without trespassing) and I can't see a thing. I even asked the owner of a neighbouring cottage, and she told me she'd been living there for 30 years and had neither seen nor heard of it.

The river valley remains more than obvious here, dipping across suburban sidestreets to the east of Elder Road. At Gipsy Road's lowest point, beside the rear entrance to Lambeth's pupil referral unit, stands a mysterious green post [photo]. At pavement level it looks like a fairly ordinary lamppost, apart from the fact that it's the wrong colour, ribbed and rather thicker than usual. Look up and you'll see there's no lamp atop the column, just a pipe open to the sky, and considerably taller than the commonplace telegraph pole alongside. Because this green post is a Victorian stinkpipe, erected to provide essential ventilation for the sewer that now passes immediately beneath. One hopes that local residents don't need to keep their windows closed during hot weather as a result.

The river hugged the railway (or, chronologically speaking, the other way round) on its approach to West Norwood station. At the foot of Pilgrim Hill there's a business-like address called "The Boat House", which geographically could have been true, but I suspect is little more than a coincidence. Immediately before the station comes East Place [photo], currently little more than a row of arches where cars get mended and deals get struck. Here in June 1914 the floods struck again as the sewers bubbled up - trapping animals, inundating cellars and ruining many a Sunday roast. A more effective flood relief sewer was built later, and this protects even those asleep within West Norwood Cemetery from any unexpected deluge.

2010-06-30T15:00:00.001+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Effra
2) Dulwich/Herne Hill

The Effra exited West Norwood through its cemetery. This is one of London's Magnificent Seven cemeteries, is West Norwood, containing some of the finest funereal monuments in the capital. Obelisks, mausoleums, catacombs, that sort of thing, all jammed together in a beautiful higgledy-piggledy configuration [photo]. Sugar magnate Henry Tate, cookery goddess Mrs Beeton, even the Charlie who launched the FA Cup, they're all buried here. As too is the Effra, now landscaped out of all existence.

After crossing several residential streets to the north, the Effra met up with an incoming tributary close to West Dulwich station. Nearby is Belair Park, which may be the only place where the river Effra can still be seen on the surface. The park's tree-lined lake certainly looks convincingly river-ish. It's long and sinuous. It has reedy banks where waterfowl bask and feed [photo]. And it lies roughly along the same north-south alignment as the original stream. It could easily be a last remaining chunk of river, or a tributary amputated for decorative effect. All that's certain is that a lake existed here in 1785 when the surrounding estate was leased from Dulwich College by John Willes, a Whitechapel corn merchant. His grand house, later named Belair, grew over the years to become a 47-room mansion. Today it's rather smaller, restored by the council and used as a restaurant [photo], but the lake still forms the ornamental centrepiece of its grounds.

Onwards to the point where Half Moon Lane meets the eastern tip of Brockwell Park - a road junction originally known as Island Green. Victorian art critic John Ruskin grew up close by, and recorded his memories of the Effra for future generations. He was four years old when his parents leased a grand house atop Herne Hill, from which he recalled a southern descent "beautifully declining to the vale of the Effra". Later in his childhood, in the 1820s, the river was "bricked over for the benefit of Mr Biffen, chemist, and others." Aged 13 he sketched a view along Norwood Road at the foot of the hill. This was "just at the place where, from the top of the bridge, one looked up and down the streamlet, bridged now into putridly damp shade by the railway, close to Herne Hill station. This sketch was the first in which I was ever supposed to show any talent for drawing." All that flows across the foot of Herne Hill today is a relentless stream of vehicles, and the restructured traffic island opposite The Chutney restaurant is no place for any aspiring young artist. [photo]

The 19th century Effra ran along the eastern edge of the Brockwell Estate (now Brockwell Park), tamed to run in a channel alongside Water Lane (now Dulwich Road). That's the opposite side of the road to Brockwell Lido, whose presence today is a mere watery coincidence [photo]. South of the Prince Regent tavern a series of footbridges led across the stream into the grounds of seven detached villas, while beyond lay an expanse of market gardens. Although the river's gone, three telltale green pipes mark the progress of its replacement sewer alongside Dulwich Road [photo]. One stinkpipe stands tall in front of the Meath Estate [photo], opposite the Lido, while the other two are at the northern end beyond Chaucer Road. [photo]

Meanwhile, back on the western slopes of Brockwell Park, it's possible to trace one of the Effra's many tiny tributaries. Its course survives, somewhat artificially, as a series of three linked ornamental ponds. The highest of these was once a Victorian bathing pool, while the other two remain out of reach to all but the local waterfowl [photo]. A short stretch of potentially-genuine stream meanders down beneath the lowest cascade, on whose banks grow yellow iris, pendulous sedge and hemlock water-dropwort. Not quite how the Effra used to be, but about as close as you're ever going to get. [photo]

2010-06-30T12:00:00.001+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Effra
3) Brixton

Two street names in south Brixton appear to provide a very obvious reminder of the river's former passage [photo]. Effra Road is one and Effra Parade the other, the pair linked by the very rivery-sounding Brixton Water Lane. But neither runs along the former route of their eponymous river, which instead meandered through former farmland between the two. In medieval times this area was part of the Manor of Heathrow (nothing airport-related, merely 70 acres of agricultural freehold). Over subsequent centuries it's possible that typically lazy London pronunciation – casual dipthongs and dropped aitches – caused the manor's name to evolve from Heathrow via Hethra to Effra. A likely story.

By the early 19th century the river valley south of Coldharbour Lane belonged not to Heathrow Manor but to Effra Farm. And it was this lowly half-mile swathe of rural meadow and market garden which, it's believed, lent its name to the entire river. Effra Road started out in 1810 as a quiet track along Effra Farm's western boundary (the former farmhouse is marked today by the Effra Road Trading Estate). Improved road access soon encouraged property development which devoured the entire farm site, with Effra Parade part of the second wave of building in the 1830s. For a glimpse of how things used to be, crouch down on the pavement outside the Happy Shopper on Effra Parade [photo]. Beneath the minimart window is a tiled panel, origin unknown, depicting a sylvan scene of the Effra from yesteryear. A river curves through open fields past some pristine farmhouses and an unlikely blue cow. It could be any imaginary river anywhere, to be honest, although let's give the artist the benefit of the doubt and believe it's Brixton's Effra.

Proceeding northwards comes the Effra Hall Tavern - unrelated to the old river except in location [photo]. The stream then wiggled north beneath Coldharbour Lane, once a rural thoroughfare, now at the heart of bustling Brixton. This historical legacy was exploited one summer Saturday in 1998 by a bunch of anti-car protesters calling themselves the "Effra Liberation Front". They blocked off the western end of Coldharbour Lane (and a chunk of neighbouring Brixton Road) to make their point, and five thousand people attended the street party that ensued. As for liberation, however, a few hastily-filled paddling pools were the only evidence of surface water.

Romantic though it might seem to "reclaim" the Effra, Brixton's residents probably wouldn't appreciate the upheaval. Rehabilitation would require roadworks to reinstall a bridge across Coldharbour Lane [photo], the flooding of one of Brixton's famous covered market arcades [photo], a ford bisecting the eastern half of Electric Avenue [photos] and a new channel dug through the motley collection of shops beneath the station. More radical souls might however delight in the demolition of Brixton Police Station, itself first housed in a hut on a bridge above the Effra.

Between Brixton and Kennington the river ran for about a mile immediately along the eastern side of Brixton Road. The Effra here might still be visible had Baron Henry Hastings, 17th century resident at nearby Loughborough House, lived a few years longer. Parliament granted him the right to make the river navigable from Brixton to the Thames, but on his death the plans fell through. Instead this stretch of the Effra, known locally as the Shore, remained for drainage only. By the 19th century the road/river combination had become the Washway, "so called from its low and plashy state". Handsome townhouses and ornamental villas grew up on each side, some accessed by means of small wooden bridges across the lilac-banked stream. 21st century Brixton Road is rather less idyllic, but the broad strip once occupied by the pastoral Effra is still evident in front of some of the older terraces on the eastern side. [photo]

2010-06-30T09:00:00.002+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Effra
4) Vauxhall/Kennington

At the top of Brixton Road (at Hazard's Bridge) the Effra veered left, forming the south-western boundary of Kennington Common. Throughout the 18th century this open space was a gathering place for public speaking, and also an infamous place of execution for the county of Surrey. St Mark's church, built in imposing classical style beside the Effra in 1824, now occupies the corner of the common where the gallows were erected [photo]. The creek continued west beneath Clapham Road (at Merton Bridge), approximately where Oval tube station stands today. This old Roman Road formed the dividing line between the medieval manors of Kennington and Vauxhall.

A short distance to the north, one gentle meander unexpectedly inspired an international landmark. In the 1790s the river's natural curve was echoed by an elliptical road built around a former cabbage garden. The Kennington Oval, as this patch of green became known, was leased by the fledgling Surrey County Cricket Club in 1845. The landlord was, and still is, the Duchy of Cornwall. As for the Oval's famous gasometer, this was erected three years later on the site of the former South London Waterworks. This private utility company had drawn water from the tidal Effra via an artificial channel, supplying the local population from two small reservoirs to the north of the cricket ground. Other top-level sports have been played at the Oval over the years, including the first twenty-or-so FA Cup Finals and the first ever England v Scotland Rugby Union match. Rest assured that the Effra never crossed the pristine grass, flowing instead out beyond the southern perimeter road. [photo] [photo]

In its lower reaches, west of the Oval, the Effra originally split into two branches. A smaller stream meandered west to meet the Thames at Nine Elms, while the main river ventured a little further north. Known locally as Vauxhall Creek, it was sufficiently deep and wide to bear the passage of large barges. The creek flowed beneath Wandsworth Road at Cox's Bridge - a crossing mentioned in ecclesiastical records as early as 1340, but which is probably now buried somewhere beneath the twin prongs of Vauxhall bus station. [photo] [photo]

Not far now to the Thames, which the Effra entered approximately a hundred metres to the south of Vauxhall Bridge [photo]. Slightly upstream, a few wooden posts sticking out of the mud are thought to be the remains of a Bronze Age crossing - notionally the first ever 'London Bridge'. The mouth of Vauxhall Creek has been overlooked by many diverse structures since, including a defensive Civil War quadrant fort (17th C), the entertaining delights of Smith's Tea Gardens (18th C) and the Phoenix Gas Works and Belmont Candle Manufactory (19th C). Alas, by the time the windowless Nine Elms Cold Store was erected alongside in 1961, even the last few hundred yards of river had vanished beneath the refrigerated lorry park. The Effra's end is now marked only by a sewer pipe outfall [photo], occasionally disgorging rainwater into the Thames between the owl-topped towers of St George's Wharf [photo] and the spooky fortress of MI6 HQ. [photo]

» Previous rivers in this series: Fleet, Westbourne, Falcon Brook, Counters Creek, Neckinger, Hackney Brook

2010-05-31T23:00:00.001+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Hackney Brook

All of the other lost rivers I'm writing about in this series flow into the Thames. This one's different - it flows into the Lea. Also atypically, it flows eastwards. Utterly typically, it's completely vanished. OK, so there are a couple of telltale fluvial remnants along the way, but not many, and very few that'd make you go "oh blimey, there really did used to be a river here". Things were very different back when Queen Victoria came to the throne, with a considerable stream wending its way round Stoke Newington and through the centre of rural Hackney. But pressure to build housing saw the river rapidly buried, some of it diverted into Bazalgette's Northern Outfall Sewer, and within a generation all brookside vistas had vanished.

An acknowledged expert on the Hackney Brook is Iain Sinclair, London's very own semi-impenetrable narrator. Should you own a copy of his Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire you'll know that the penultimate chapter is devoted to the borough's lost river. The text meanders rather, as is Sinclair's way, generating atmosphere rather than revealing anything of substance. But look more carefully at the map on the book's cover and you'll spot a pale blue line threading down from top left to bottom right. That's the Hackney Brook, that is - apart the bottom right section which heads in completely the wrong direction. It definitely flowed via Hackney Wick, not Well Street Common, for which geographical inaccuracy I blame the good man's illustrator.

• Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire (Penguin) (Amazon)
• The book's cover as a poster (but not in quite good-enough resolution)

• Water - a Sony Award-winning Hackney Podcast featuring Iain following the route of the Hackney Brook (oh this is good)
• Iain's talk - The Hackney Brook and Other North West Passages (listen, or read the transcript)
• Podcast from Resonance FM - includes Iain tracing the Brook's route with a dowser

That's the problem with Lost Rivers - you can't even trust what you read about them in books, because so much remains hearsay and supposition. But I'm going to give it a try here. From Holloway to Hackney, via two football stadia, several parks, a cemetery and a Tesco car park. Some of the river's route remains admittedly woolly, particularly in the upper reaches on the slopes of north Islington and through the shifting marshland of Hackney Wick. But its path through most the London borough of Hackney is rather better documented, and the dips across Stoke Newington High Street and Mare Street are pretty obvious once you think to look. Plus there is one spot where you can still say "oh blimey, there really did used to be a river here". A Brook in Hackney. Who'd have thought?

• An approximate map of the Hackney Brook's course (my best Google map attempt)

• The Hackney Brook on Wikipedia (it's not much, but it'll have to do)
• Map of the Hackney Brook (and the Lea Valley) (from 1611)
• Cary's London map of 1837 (Hackney) (Hackney Wick)
• Sketch Plan of the Hackney Brook, Compiled by E. Bolus (a zoomable art-print)
• North London drainage basins (the Hackney Brook's is in blue) (pdf map)

2010-05-31T22:00:00.000+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Hackney Brook
1) Holloway/Highbury

Did I ever mention how hard it is to track down a river that isn't there? Take the headwaters of the Hackney Brook as a case in point. They're not in Hackney, they're in Islington, but precisely where is a bit of mystery. I Googled for maps, and visited the local library, and scrawled a line on an A-Z which I thought best fitted the information I'd found. Then I headed up to Holloway to wander the modern landscape with my camera, and confirmed that the contours below Mercers Road sloped in an appropriate direction. But since then I've Googled again and found a map which suggests the top of the river was to the west of Finsbury Park station, somewhere around Tollington Place. Might be, might not, but no amount of field trips to the area will ever confirm one way or the other. So all I can say is that there used to be a tiny stream parallel to the Holloway and Hornsey Roads, on one side or the other, probably, near enough. And there most definitely isn't any more. [photo]

The river's path becomes a little clearer somewhere rather famous, around Arsenal's Highbury stadia. If you've ever streamed out of the front of the Emirates and seen a railway bridge off to your left, know that the Hackney Brook used to flow on the other side of that. Then to the north of the stadium proper [photo], approximately underneath the northern tip of the Ashburton Triangle flats [photo]. More railways to cross [photo], and then round the back of Arsenal tube station [photo] through the nature reserve at Gillespie Park. This is a delightful green backwater, lorded over by an ecology centre, created on the site of former railway sidings. The larger pond is artificial, not brook-filled, and a very peaceful place to sit and watch the reed-loving wildlife. [photo]

Go back a few centuries and the land to the south of the stream was pasture known as Long Mead. Today it's better known as the site of Highbury Stadium. Arsenal's North Stand was the closest to the old riverbanks, although that's now been replaced by characterless newbuild flats (and the only local water feature is a series of bubble tanks on the shared lawn where the pitch used to be). The rest of Long Mead disappeared under Victorian housing, with the Hackney Brook culverted and Gillespie Road laid in its place. The stream crossed the Blackstock Road at the dogleg where the Arsenal Tavern stands [photo] - a location still obviously at the foot of a valley slope. And then along Mountgrove Road (home to all your Sylvanian Family needs), where the Hackney Brook finally passed from Islington into the borough after which it was named.

2010-05-31T21:00:00.000+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Hackney Brook
2) Stoke Newington

The only visible surviving remnant of the Hackney Brook is to be found in Clissold Park. Not the curved stream segment in the southern half of the park because that's part of the New River (an artificial channel which used to bring drinking water from Hertford to Finsbury). Instead head to the northern half where you'll find two eye-shaped ornamental lakes inhabited by pondweed and waterfowl [photo] [photo]. These pools have names - the larger one's Becksmere and the smaller Runtzmere, in honour of the two civic dignitaries who presided over the park's opening in 1889. Both are currently fenced off for major drainage works and are less than scenic, but they remain the only water features any pre-19th century Londoner might recognise as part of the stream's original course.

East of Runtzmere comes Grazebrook Road - a well-named echo of the past - and on to the delights of Abney Park Cemetery. This is one of London's 'magnificent seven' garden cemeteries, with a towering chapel at its centre and countless memorials scattered between the trees all around [photo]. It's very easy to get very lost inside, although tracing the route of the Hackney Brook is rather simpler. This flowed along the northern perimeter of the cemetery, just beyond the ivybrick walls, and can be seen marked on Stanford's 1862 map as "former course of Hackney Brook - now obliterated". It emerged by the cemetery gates at the foot of Stamford Hill (another London placename explained by a lost river) [photo], crossing beneath the main road to flow through the grounds of a cluster of almshouses. Those no longer exist, nor the Weavers Arms Inn alongside, but you can always buy some white goods from Sellfridges, N16's legendary deliberately-misspelt appliance outlet. [photo]

Stoke Newington's triangular common was originally known as Cockhanger Green, for some apocryphal reason which might have involved a local brothel. The Hackney Brook flowed along the northern edge of the triangle, which later became Northwold Road, before turning south close to the ordinary suburban terrace where Marc Bolan spent his childhood years [photo]. There are plenty of ordinary suburban terraces on the slopes of Shacklewell below, with rather less famous residents, although it's quite a desirable patch all the same. The ex-river won't be heading anywhere quite so classy down its lower course.

2010-05-31T20:00:00.000+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Hackney Brook
3) Hackney

The Hackney Brook ran along the western edge of Hackney Downs - a grassy recreational plateau ideal for jogging, kickabouts and general horizontal laziness. That western edge was swallowed up by the Stoke Newington Railway in the 1870s, leaving the river well-buried beneath a leafy embankment [photo]. The river/railway continued southward through an area of market gardens, where now stands Mossbourne Academy - a striking flagship academy designed by Richard Rogers. And then across Dalston Lane, where a peaceful countryside bend has evolved into a busy road junction. Two adjacent roads were formerly waterways. The lower half of Amhurst Road follows the meandering Hackney Brook, while Graham Road was originally its tributary - the Pigwell Brook. This trickled down from Kingsland Green in Dalston and passed roundabout Fassett Square - the inspiration for BBC1's EastEnders [photo]. Let's hope there's a similar lost river under Albert Square, and that someday it carries a few of the most annoying characters away.

Even the hurly burly of central Hackney was once a bucolic riverside scene (1820s map). Mare Street was then Church Street, a wigglier affair named after 13th century St Augustine's. The old tower survives*, but the scenic footbridge over the stream has been swept away by railways, progress and shopping [photo]. The river's passing indentation remains evident alongside Hackney Central station, with a definite dip in the road between Iceland and the pawnbrokers opposite [photo]. See Tesco's car park? [photo] That used to be a watercress bed - and quite frankly it'd be lovelier if it still was. The Hackney Brook then flowed north of Morning Lane (formerly Water Lane), roughly along the route of the North London Line. An army of dubious greasemonkeys populate the arches under the viaduct, while to the north lies a curious mix of council blocks, Victorian terraces and Tudor homestead [photo]. It's the council blocks that proliferate, alas, as the valley rolls on.

* St Augustine's Tower is open (for free) on the last Sunday of the month, courtesy of the Hackney Historic Buildings Trust. So that's where I went yesterday afternoon, and climbed the diddy spiral staircase to the top. There are three rooms on the way up - one to hold the pendulum, one supporting the clock mechanism and the third with the bell. But it's the view from the roof that's the most impressive. A 360° panorama around Hackney and beyond, plus the opportunity to peer down into Mare Street below and watch the little ants doing their shopping. Highly recommended. [photo] [photo] [photo] [photo]

2010-05-31T19:00:00.001+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Hackney Brook
4) Hackney Wick

Wick Road, which lies on the path of the former Hackney Brook, isn't a lovely street. Its one-way racetrack is bounded by a variety of apartment blocks - some tall, others merely squat - with only the occasional glimpse of anything vaguely pre-war lurking in the near distance. Partway down are several traditional pubs (plus a bookmakers) to cater for local residents' most urgent needs, although if they fancy Pukka Pies or Mighty Chicken they have to walk a little further. At the fiveway junction by the Tiger pub there used to be a brook-fed silk mill employing more then 600 local women [photo]. Brookfield Road rises here, its name and gradient the only reminders that this is a former river valley. Meanwhile Wick Road continues gently downhill, past the entrance to Victoria Park, to a mammoth flyover on the A12 [photo] [photo]. This should have been the point where a motorway from Camden joined the melee, but public protest prevented an entire swathe of residential north London from vanishing beneath concrete.

Hackney Wick village, as this once was, marks the edge of the floodplain of the River Lea [photo]. The Hackney Brook used to meander on through marshland, taking the long route down to the major river, until more direct drainage channels were dug to keep the Lea's waters under greater control (1820s map) (1830s map). The original route's hard to trace, long since obliterated by modern housing development to the north, and light industry to the south. But, as far as I can tell, the Brook first flowed northeast (through an area of pleasant council bungalows) before turning south (around Gainsborough Primary School) parallel to the Lea (past the factory on Wallis Road where the world's first plastic was manufactured). White Post Lane is the only surviving road from two centuries ago [photo], formerly crossed by a ford close to the Lord Napier pub outside Hackney Wick station [photo]. After the Hertford Canal was dug, the Brook's drainage channels passed no further south. But back in the day they'd have continued across what is now Fish Island to enter the Lea at the basin between Old Ford Lock and The Ironworks [photo]. On the opposite bank, a mere javelin's throw away, the Olympic Stadium now looms down on this once pastoral scene. From the Emirates to 2012, that's the Hackney Brook for you.

www.flickr.com: my Hackney Brook gallery (30 photos altogether)

• An approximate map of the Hackney Brook's course

» Previous rivers in this series: Westbourne, Falcon Brook, Counters Creek, Neckinger

2010-04-30T06:30:00.001+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Neckinger

The Neckinger is Southwark's lost river. It earned its name from a macabre installation near its mouth at St Saviour's Dock where was erected a gibbet for the execution of convicted pirates. This became known as the Devil's Neckerchief, a nickname soon echoed by the river flowing out into the Thames. The Neckinger's headwaters rose two miles away on Lambeth Marsh, round the back of what is now Waterloo station. From here it flowed in a grand curve away from the Thames round to Elephant and Castle, then on to Bermondsey through the grounds of the former Abbey. The entire course is unusually flat, with not even the slightest hill at its source, which has led some to suggest that the Neckinger might possibly have been the leftover remains of an oxbow lake. That's probably wishful thinking by geeky geographers, but it might help to explain why the river was linked to the Thames at both ends via artificial channels. Of the three western conduits nothing survives, but a substantial chunk of manmade waterway still lives on downstream of Tower Bridge. Urban expansion swallowed the Neckinger faster than most other inner London rivers, so be warned that much of what I'm about to write is potentially inaccurate supposition. But I'll try to guide you along its two mile length as best I can.

• An approximate map of the Neckinger's course

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Neckinger (part 1)
Lambeth Marsh

Lambeth Marsh, across the Thames from the Palace of Westminster, remained mostly fields until the end of the 18th century. A raised road ran through the centre along which houses and businesses prospered, but the surrounding meadows flooded with predictable regularity. Only in the late Georgian era were the market gardens sold off piecemeal for development, and the arrival or Waterloo station in 1848 sealed the area's fate as yet another swathe of urban London. Drainage to the south had been provided by the Neckinger, whose reputed source was a pond on Lambeth Road at the edge of St George's Fields. A public house was established here called the Dog and Duck, named after two neighbouring ponds whose outlines allegedly resembled the beasts in question. Close by was established the Bethlem Royal Hospital, an infamous asylum whose buildings are currently home to the Imperial War Museum [photo] [photo]. There are no pubs or ponds in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park today. Instead the northwest corner of the park is covered by flowering bulbs planted in memory of "Rita, the lady with the little dog". Here too little wannabe soldiers run amok on the grass, at least until their parents drag them inside the museum for a look at the big guns.

There's no sign either of the three artificial millstreams dug to feed water between the Thames and the Neckinger here in the heart of Lambeth. One started under Waterloo Bridge [photo] (not that the bridge was there at the time), then progressed inland through the auditoria of the National Film Theatre (ditto). Past the IMAX and the rail terminus along Waterloo Road, then past the end of Lower Marsh (which did actually exist at the time) to join the other channels near the Ambulance Station on Great Morley Street. A second ditch left the Thames between Blackfriars Bridge and the Tate Modern [photo], following the orange lampposts down Suffolk Street to the cabbies' haunt on the corner of Surrey Row. And the third ditch started between Coin Street and the Oxo Tower [photo], running due south down Hatfields past the Young Vic.

It's amazing how many lost rivers live on as modern boundaries. This third artificial channel, the central of the trio, can be traced today by following the boundary between the boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark. Sure there have been a few administrative tweaks over the years, but council tax rates in the neighbourhood are ultimately dependent on the location of a Georgian ditch. This dividing line continues past the Neckinger's source-pond at the end of King Edward Walk, then hugs the appropriately named Brook Drive round to the east. Today's boundary may finally veer off before this elegant terrace reaches its end, but the Neckinger once continued to the very heart of the Elephant.

2010-04-30T06:00:00.000+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Neckinger (part 2)
Elephant & Castle

It's hard to imagine Elephant and Castle as a rural riverside backwater. But 250 years ago, then known as Newington Butts, this was a quiet lane on the edge of St George's Fields forded by a small stream. The Neckinger flowed in from the west through the 'Fishmongers Almshouses' - soon to be demolished to make way for Spurgeon's Tabernacle (now a firmly evangelical hotspot) [photo]. It crossed a small village green, long since buried between E&C's two mega-roundabouts. And then it passed east between a row of cottages, now the site of the much derided pinky-red shopping centre. The transformation here is dramatic. The only flow now is of people, bustling around the double-decker mall in search of nothing very expensive [photo]. Here the less-than-affluent folk of Walworth come to buy stuff no rejuvenated hub would ever sell, be that substandard market millinery or a polystyrene tub of goat stew. Outside the front entrance a turreted elephant stands guard, positioned almost directly on the line of the old stream. And high above rises the nearly-complete Strata tower, its trademark turbines relatively well concealed from the streets below [photo].

Next along the Neckinger valley comes the Heygate Estate. If you thought the shopping centre was grim, this similarly-dated architectural project beats all. A series of residential "barrier blocks" surround the site, each ridiculously long and crammed with stacked-box accommodation [photo]. The various parts of the site are linked by elevated walkways, while ground level is reserved for the parking of cars. No wonder Southwark Council took a long deep look at their creation and decided the the only way forward was to demolish all 25 acres. Tenants started being moved out two years ago, and the Heygate now resembles a ghost estate inhabited by a last few lonely souls [photo gallery]. Every abandoned window is being blow-torched shut, and every quarter-mile balcony sealed off at either end [photo]. And yet there's still full access to the walkways and stairwells, not just for the remaining 5% of residents but for any urban adventurer who fancies poking around abandoned concrete purgatory [photo]. But hurry, if you think you're brave enough, because it won't be too long before proper demolition begins and this inhuman jungle is reborn as aspirational Heygate Boulevard.

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Neckinger (part 3)
Bermondsey

The Neckinger followed the line of the New Kent Road before passing just to the north of the Bricklayers Arms gyratory and passing into Bermondsey. It ran immediately behind Tower Bridge Road, in an area once the preserve of large scale industry. Hartley's built their jam factory on the former riverbank in Rothsay Street, employing more than 2000 locals to squish sugary fruit into glass jars. It'll not surprise you to hear that their plant is now a gated residential development called The Jam Factory, retaining the Hartley name only in white bricks across one wall and down a chimney [photo]. Another pocket of ultra-modernity can be found just downstream at Bermondsey Square. Look one way and it's a bijou plaza with its own hotel, micro-cinema and pavement cafe [photo]. Look another and it's a glittering bikeshed surrounded by mysterious multi-coloured icosahedrons [photo]. But look south and one defiant corner of Georgian terrace remains... and that's still the side of the Square where anyone with taste would prefer to live.

At St Mary Magdalen church [photo], the Neckinger turned right. Despite being more than 300 years old this isn't Bermondsey's oldest place of worship, not by a long chalk. Nearby stood Bermondsey Abbey, a Cluniac priory dating back to the Norman invasion, and at one time second in importance only to Westminster across the Thames. Bermondsey Square marks the site of the monks' inner courtyard, while the main church building straddled modern Abbey Street to the east [photo]. The top end of the nave is marked by a commemorative plaque on the wall of a block of council flats overlooking Tower Bridge Road [photo]. Much of Bermondsey Abbey survived Henry VIII's dissolution, only to have its stone plundered for the construction of other local buildings over succeeding centuries. Today no trace remains, bar parts of a gatehouse along the western end of Grange Walk (lovely street, Grange Walk). As for the Neckinger, the stream was reputedly navigable all the way from the Abbey down to the Thames. Nearly there, only half a mile to go.

2010-04-30T05:00:00.002+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Neckinger (part 4)
Neckinger Mills

Where there's a river, there's often a mill. The Neckinger had several, mostly on the tidal stretch close to its mouth, with some dating back to Tudor times. Only one survives, although it's a rather more recent 19th century building resembling more the dark satanic mills of the Industrial North. Neckinger Mills were originally owned by papermaker Matthias Koops - reputedly the inventor of recycled paper. In 1805 he sold up and handed the keys over to the Bevington family, who continued their leather-making activities on site until 1950. Their tannery was typical of Bermondsey's light industry, all long since swept away (along with the river that powered them). The mill buildings live on as office space with "character features", and half the ground floor is currently available for rent at very non-Victorian rates. [photo]

The river's name lives on in several guises nearby. To the south is the Neckinger Estate, home to more than 300 fairly anonymous post-war apartments. The road alongside goes by the unusual single-word name of "Neckinger", and runs down to the elegant old Town Hall on the corner of Bermondsey Spa Gardens [photo]. The river was once fed by a chalybeate spring here, to which fashionable Londoners flocked in the late 1700s to drink the waters. The only fashionable waters here today are those thrown into the gutter by runners on the London Marathon, who would have crossed the Neckinger close to the modern Bermondsey Spa development on Jamaica Road [photo]. Close by there's even a Neckinger Street, now reduced to a stubby sideroad on the Arnold Estate and lacking even a nameplate to remind passers-by of its watery past. [photo]

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
The River Neckinger (part 5)
Jacob's Island

And finally, quite the most complicated ending of any of London's lost rivers. A series of tidal ditches ran towards the Thames, dug courtesy of the monks upriver at Bermondsey Abbey, and forming a roughly rectangular grid. Originally the surrounding land was taken up with orchards and market gardens, but by the late 17th century a dense commercial area of factories, warehouses and mills had grown up. The area became known as Jacob's Island, a 'rookery' where the poorest folk lived side by side with polluting waste in slum conditions. By Victorian times the lower Neckinger was nicknamed "The Venice of Drains" and "The Capital of Cholera". Dickens immortalised the place as the final refuge of Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist ("dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations; every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage; all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch"). If you'd like to know more about Jacob's Island, Howard has the definitive webpage.

The old slums have been wiped away, more than once, and the latest development on Jacob's Island is a gated community called Providence Square. Even the central water feature is pristine, supporting waterfowl and lush vegetation rather than puddles of pathogenic bacteria [photo]. Dickens might still recognise a few of the surrounding wharves along Mill Street, whose lofty brick façades tower above the uglier modern infill alongside [photo] [photo]. Where dockers laboured and urchins crawled, now Ocado delivers and suited businessmen pop out for a fag. Beyond the line of wharves is the Neckinger's original outfall [photo], later diverted to feed a Thamesside watermill. This stumpy inlet is St Saviour's Dock, first widened by the medieval monks of Bermondsey Abbey for convenient off-river mooring [photo] [photo]. Today a hydraulic cable swing bridge crosses the mouth [photo], close to a cluster of riverfront houseboats which dip in and out of the mud twice a day [photo]. The ancient Neckinger marks the eastern tip of London's South Bank, beyond Shad Thames, beyond the Design Museum, beyond which tourists rarely venture. [photo]

www.flickr.com: my Neckinger gallery

• 30 photos altogether

• Back to my main blog

2010-03-31T22:00:00.000+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Counter's Creek
An overview

Counter's Creek, named after a medieval bridge over Kensington High Street, ran for four miles in an almost straight line from Kensal Green to the Thames at Chelsea. It may have been a relatively insignificant stream in its day, but its course has left a lasting legacy across West London.

• View Counter's Creek on a Google map

The river's first transformation was from natural stream to artificial channel. In 1827 the speculative Kensington Canal was built along the alignment of Counter’s Creek between Kensington High Street and Battersea Reach. The canal rapidly proved highly unprofitable and so was sold off to a railway company, who built an equally unprofitable line up the valley to link Kensington Docks with Willesden.

More about...
• The Kensington Canal (proper historical facts)
• The Kensington Canal (modern description with photos)

The river's second transformation was from canal to railway. In 1863 the Kensington Canal was filled in with ballast and then tracks were laid on top, allowing the West London Railway to run connecting services between Willesden and Clapham. This line was a success, and lives on today as part of the London Overground network. Catch any train from Shepherd's Bush to Imperial Wharf and the modern journey mirrors the old river bed.

More about...
• West London Railway (Wikipedia)
• West London line (abandoned stations)
• West London line history (at Subterranea Britannica)
• London Overground maps (including Willesden Junction → Clapham Junction)

The original line of Counter's Creek still forms much of the boundary between the boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham to the west and Kensington and Chelsea to the east. Its waters may long have been diverted down an unseen sewer, but the creek's path can still be traced with relative ease.

More about...
• Map showing border of Hammersmith and Fulham (river formed eastern boundary)
• Thames Water plans for Counters Creek Sewer Flood relief
• Flooding Alleviation plan (public presentation, with maps) (pdf)

2010-03-31T21:00:00.002+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Counters Creek
1) Kensal Green Cemetery

Counter’s Creek arose from springs beneath Kensal Green, on gentle slopes just to the south of the Harrow Road. Before the 19th century there was little here but farmland, then in 1801 the Paddington Arm of the Grand Junction Canal carved through from west to east, severing the headwaters of the fledgling brook. [photo]

It was on this unforgiving clay soil, sandwiched between the road and the canal, that London's first garden cemetery was established in the early 1830s. The General Cemetery of All Souls, Kensal Green was created as a peaceful final resting place for well-to-do Londoners, and was inspired by a visit to Père-Lachaise in Paris.

Over a quarter of a million Londoners have been buried here over the years [photo], and the grounds are littered with monuments, mausoleums and semi-toppled gravestones. Notable internees include engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Charles "Mr Computer" Babbage and the novelist Wilkie Collins.

Kensal Green is only the first of London's "Magnificent 7" Victorian cemeteries to lie along the former banks of Counter's Creek. But the ridges and valleys visible here today aren't river-worn, they’re nothing more than funereal landscaping. [photo]

Following Counter's Creek: If it wasn't for the canal, it would be really easy to follow the river's path south from the cemetery. The canal and the railway, that is. It's easy to follow on a map, you simply follow the borough boundary, but in real life the canal and the railway get in the way. Instead you have to hope that the gate out of the cemetery into Scrubs Lane is unlocked, then turn south through light industrial nothingness. A hop across Mitre Bridge, bypassing a railway maintenance depot, then duck back under the viaduct towards Little Wormwood Scrubs. All told it's a one mile detour. The river had it easy.

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Counters Creek
2) Little Wormwood Scrubs

Wormwood Scrubs, for centuries a single expanse of unfertile upland, was divided into two unequal chunks by the coming of the railways. The larger western section gained notoriety through construction of a Victorian prison, while the severed eastern 10% became the lesser-known Little Wormwood Scrubs.

Counter's Creek once ran in a rivulet along the eastern perimeter of Little Wormwood Scrubs, with the line of the river marking the parish boundary between Kensington and Hammersmith. In the late 19th century several estates sprang up on the Kensington side, and residents soon came to rely on the Scrubs for their recreation.

In 1892 the Metropolitan Board of Works decided that a "portion of the brook on the eastern boundary should be widened and kept full by means of weirs and that a gravel walk should be formed alongside with a plantation for shade". The river became a purely ornamental feature, fenced off behind iron railings, for viewing only.

Persistent drainage issues arose, which led to the channel being concreted in 1924 and ultimately covered over. Little Wormwood Scrubs feels distinctly less ornamental today, and only a meander in the concrete footpath survives as a hint to its secret past. [photo]

Following Counter's Creek: From Little Wormwood Scrubs, unlikely as it sounds, head south towards the North Pole [photo]. That's a pub on the eponymous North Pole Road, where there used to be a station but now there isn't. Counter's Creek ran roughly parallel to Latimer Road, which used to be an important thoroughfare but no longer has the traffic to justify its width. Severed in its prime by a much larger road, it no longer reaches as far as the H&C tube station to which it gives its name.

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Counters Creek
3) West Cross Route

Not content with burial beneath a canal and then a railway, almost the entire length of Counter's Creek might have disappeared beneath a motorway had post-war planners had their way.

The West Cross Route was to be one small part of a major orbital road system for London called Ringway 1. This western link would have joined Willesden Junction to the Chelsea Embankment via an eight lane motorway. Plans show the intended route hugging the existing West London railway, in places running directly above the tracks on a concrete viaduct.

Unfortunately for motorists, but fortunately for owners of the many properties that would otherwise have been demolished, only one short section of the West Cross Route was ever built. This was the M41 linking the White City and Holland Park roundabouts – much as Counter's Creek once did except more direct and rather faster.

Public outcry following construction of the neighbouring Westway led to the remainder of the Ringway plan being permanently shelved in 1973. Today only two stumpy concrete spurs off the White City roundabout, directly above the river's former course, survive as evidence of the former motorway's elevated northward threat. [photo] [photo]

Following Counter's Creek: The space under the Westway, where the river once ran, is now taken up by the Westway Sports Centre. A marvellous example of communal ingenuity, its sports hall, climbing wall and basketball courts are squeezed within and beneath the centre of a giant roundabout. There's even a 'fives' court, which feels terribly snooty for the children of a hapless housing estate, but has been provided by a long-standing charitable outreach project initiated by Harrow School. As for the Westway stables, who now run riding lessons beneath the A40 [photo], this is where Steptoe and Son used to be filmed. BBC Television Centre is but a brief clip-clop away.

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Counters Creek
4) Holland Park

Holland Park could never have become one of London's most desirable neighbourhoods had Counter's Creek remained visible. Upper classes homeowners would never have tolerated a smelly rubbish-strewn stream as their main form of waste disposal, so the area's transformation from rural estate to residential development rested on the construction of an expensive sewer.

Landowner Lord Holland seized his chance when the West London Railway asked to lay tracks across the west of his estate, granting passage subject to the burial of Counter's Creek. A deal was struck in 1838, and one mile of river duly vanished. Two major housing developments sprang forth – the Norland and Holland Estates.

The new sewer followed St Ann's Road southwards, then carved through a gap in the splendid stuccoed arc of Royal Crescent [photo]. From here it continued downhill via Holland Villas Road – a street still hugely aspirational even by Holland Park standards.

The river may now flow out of sight, but basement inundation remains an ever-present risk. In the sodden summer of 2007, for example, particularly heavy rainfall caused Counter's Creek sewer to overflow and more than 450 local properties were flooded.

Following Counter's Creek: To trace the river south from the Westway, stick to the east side of the dual carriageway. Not the side where the mega Westfield shopping centre is [photo], but the opposite residential flank [photo]. Here highrise council estates cosy up against uber-affluent Notting Hill, with Counter's Creek forming the stark boundary between the two. Once past the Holland Park roundabout, your best bet for following the river's course is to hop on a train. [photo] [photo]

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Counters Creek
5) Counter's Bridge

At the far end of Kensington High Street, on the main road to Hammersmith and all points west, is the location of the medieval bridge that gave Counter's Creek its name.

It's fortunate that the river wasn't named too early. During the 15th century this crossing was known successively as Contessesbregge, Contassebregge, Cuntassebregge and Countesbregge – at least one of which might have proved terminally embarrassing in later years. The noblewoman to whom the bridge refers is thought to be Matilda, Countess of Oxford, then in residence at Earl's Court.

The view north from the modern bridge is dominated by the iron and glass covered halls of the Olympia exhibition centre [photo]. The first and largest of these was erected in 1886 as the National Agricultural Hall, although the space within was soon taken over by less pastoral exploits such as the Motor Show and Ideal Home Show.

And that's no stream down there, that's the old West London Railway exploiting the creek's former course. The cutting may be considerably wider than the brook here ever was, but the entire line remains an under-served backwater, with sporadic services up and downriver to nowhere terribly exciting. [photo] [photo]

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Counters Creek
6) Kensington Canal Lock

In the early 18th century, at the height of canal mania, it seemed like a good idea to transform the lower two miles of Counter's Creek into "a Canal for the Navigation of Boats, Barges and other Vessels." The perfect route, so shareholders hoped, for transferring cargo inland from the Thames. Thus was the Kensington Canal created, linking Chelsea to a new dock basin just south of Counter's Bridge.

The canal opened with a flourish in 1828, but it led nowhere useful and traffic soon proved 'very limited'. Eleven locks would have been needed to extend the navigation north to the Grand Junction Canal, but no further investment was forthcoming. It wasn't long before the entire canal was sold off to the West London Railway and most of the waterway disappeared beneath its tracks. Limited trade continued on a short stretch south of the King’s Road, delivering coal to the Imperial Gas Light and Coke Company, with the last barge running in 1967.

The dock basin disappeared beneath a Homebase store in the 1990s, leaving a boarded-up lock-keepers cottage as the last surviving remnant of the Kensington Canal. Alas the arrival of a Tesco hypermarket on the West Cromwell Road sealed its fate and, despite considerable local opposition, the cottage was demolished in 1998 to make way for a particularly unattractive multi-storey car park. [photo]

2010-03-31T20:00:00.001+01:00

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Counters Creek
7) Earl's Court

In the early 19th century the site of the future Earl's Court Exhibition Centre was an unremarkable patch of market gardens on the banks of Counter's Creek. A trio of railway lines sealed its fate. One was the West London Railway, built along the line of the river. The other two belonged to the Metropolitan and District Railways, which bifurcated to the west of Earl's Court station hemming in a triangle of unwanted wasteland.

The triangle's potential was recognised by showman John Robinson Whitley who hired the site in 1887 to host an American-themed exhibition. His star turn was the Buffalo Bill Roughriders and Redskin Show, a Wild West spectacle which drew large crowds including Queen Victoria and William Gladstone. Further exhibitions followed and an extended entertainment park was created, but interest slowly waned and all were shut down during WW1 to make way for a Belgian refugee camp.

The present triangular exhibition hall dates back to 1937 [photo] [photo]. It was one of the largest reinforced concrete structures of its day and conceals an Olympic-sized swimming pool at its heart. A second major hall, the barrel-roofed Earl's Court Two, was constructed alongside in 1991. It stands directly above West London Railway tracks and boasts Europe's largest unsupported roof span. [photo]

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Counters Creek
8) Lillie Bridge

Bridges were plentiful in the lower reaches of Counter's Creek. Lillie Bridge was built to carry the Old Brompton Road across the stream [photo], and still gives its name to the railway depot west of Earl's Court station.

Peer over the edge of platform 4 at West Brompton station and you might still see what looks like Counter's Creek disappearing into a big pipe alongside the railway. It's not the genuine article alas, merely a water feature in a council-run wildlife garden, although it does serve as drainage almost precisely where the old river ran. [photo]

A few yards up the slope is the site of Lillie Bridge Athletic Ground whose sporting star shone briefly but brightly in the late 19th century. The arena's greatest claim to fame, long forgotten except by pub quiz afficionados, is that Lillie Bridge hosted the second ever FA Cup Final. Battersea-based Wanderers retained the trophy here in 1873 by defeating challengers Oxford University two-nil.

On the opposite side of the station, with the railway shielded behind a high brick wall, lie the formal avenues of Brompton Cemetery [photo]. This outstanding Victorian burial ground was laid out on water meadows in the 1830s, shortly after Kensal Green upstream, and is filled with characterful monuments surrounding a central colonnade. [photo] [photo]

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Counters Creek
9) Stamford Bridge

Chelsea's top flight football ground derives its name from a bridge over one of London's lost rivers. [photo]

This lowly span, now barely noticeable as a mild hump in the Fulham Road over a railway line, has had many names over the years [photo]. In the 15th century it was Samfordesbrigge, meaning the bridge at the sandy ford. 18th century locals knew it briefly as Little Chelsea Bridge, while an 1827 map gives the name as Sandford's Bridge. Further evolution (maybe confusion with Stanley Bridge to the south) nudged Sandford to Stanford, after which there was only one slipped consonant to go.

By the time Chelsea Football Club was established on an adjacent athletics ground in 1905, the locality was most definitely Stamford Bridge. Early supporters cheered from the single East Stand [photo], or else perched themselves atop terraces constructed from earth excavated during construction of the Piccadilly line.

Numerous upgrades have boosted the ground's capacity since, but no amount of Russian roubles can shift the stadium into Chelsea proper. The borough boundary persists along the line of Counter's Creek, ironically leaving Chelsea F.C stranded a few yards into neighbouring Hammersmith and Fulham. [photo]