London in the 1800s and before - the original River Fleet
This site is about London history, and connects to my many pub history sites and
historical street directories.
The River Fleet was once a major highway. Today, it is a sewer which exits at
somewhere near to Blackfriars bridge. Near to this exit is the lifeboat station
slightly further down the River Thames - this is worth noting. There is also a
major new exhibition beginning in May 2019 at the docklands museum of London, of
which I am sure will be absolutely brilliant.
There are lots of sites, books and writings about the original River Fleet, I
think I have read quite a few of them. I do not suggest I am an expert on the
river systems of London, and therefore I will attempt to describe this river
with older facts as reported, plus some pictures.
Fleet ditch, 1749 - the entry of the Fleet from the Thames
The Fleet ditch, 1746 - the entry of the Fleet from John Roque's
map 1746
This is Chapter 50, or Chapter L, of Old and new London : a narrative of
its history, its people, and its places - Walter Thornbury 1875
CHAPTER L.
THE FLEET RIVER AND FLEET DITCH.
Origin of the Name—Rise of the Fleet—Its Course—Early Impurity—The Holeburne—Antiquities
found in the Fleet—How far Navigable for Ships—Early mention of it—Clearing of
the Fleet Valley—A Deposit of Pins—The Old Bridges—Fleet Bridge—Holborn
Bridge—Historical Associations—Discovery of the Arches of the Old
Bridge—Thieves' Houses—Pope on the "Fleet"—The River arched over—Floods on the
Fleet—Disaster in 1846—The Fleet under the Main Drainage System—Dangers of
Exploring the Sewer—A Strange Denizen of the Ditch— Turnmill Street and the
Thieves' Quarter—West Street—Chick Lane—The Old "Red Lion" known as "Jonathan
Wild's House."
The name of this ill-used stream, once fresh and fleet, now a mere sluggish and
plague-breeding sewer, is traced by some to the Anglo-Saxon fleotan, "to float;"
and by others, to the Saxon fleot, or flod, "a flood." The sources of the river
Fleet are on the high lands of Hampstead and Highgate, and the chief of them
rise near Caen Wood. The Fleet was fed by the Oldborne, which rose, says Stow,
"where now the Bars do stand," and ran down to Old Borne Bridge, and into the
River of Wells or Turnmill Brook. The Fleet was also fed by all the springs of
Clerkenwell, such as Clerkenwell itself, Skinner's Well, Fogg's Well, Tod's
Well, Loder's Well, Rad Well (near the Charterhouse), and the Horse Pool, at
Smithfield.
"The principal spring of the Fleet," says Mr. Pinks, "rises in a secluded lane
at the rear of Caen Wood, the seat of Lord Mansfield; another is on the left of
a footpath leading thence to Highgate; and the tiny brooklet formed by its
waters communicates by a small arch with a reservoir, the first of seven
storage-ponds, on different levels, belonging to the Hampstead Water Company.
Another of the spring-heads rises in the midst of Caen Wood. All three springs
are diverted so as to fill the reservoirs above mentioned, a small stream
carrying off the redundant water, which is very trifling, except in wet seasons.
A fourth spring flows from the Vale of Health, at Hampstead, in a narrow
channel, to another of the reservoirs, which are connected by means of large
pipes passing from one to another. At a lower level the main stream meanders
through the fields between Haverstock Hill and Kentish Town, in a wide, deep,
and rugged channel, indicating that a considerable body of water must have
originally flowed through it with a rapid current. The name of Kentish Town,
which was formerly a mere country village, is supplied by tradition, which
ascribes its origin to the place being situated on the bank of a stream (the
river Fleet) which rose among the hills about Caen or Ken Wood, and which was
formerly called Ken or Caen Ditch, hence Ken Ditch Town, the Town of Ken Ditch,
or Kentish Town. But the correctness of this etymology has been questioned by at
least one historian. The Fleet passes on through Kentish Town, its course there
being much hidden, and, flowing in a south-east direction, it passes under the
Regent's Canal to St. Pancras, where, until the year 1766, when it was arched
over, it bore the name of Pancras Wash. Running at the foot of the gardens in
the rear of the houses in the Old St. Pancras Road, it arrives at Battle Bridge,
and so makes its entrance into Clerkenwell. Following the line of the Bagnigge
Wells Road, its covered course nearly coincides with the parochial boundary in
this direction. Passing in an artificial channel alongside the western boundary
wall of the House of Correction, its course lies beneath the valley between
Turnmill Street and Saffron Hill; thence, under Farringdon Street and Bridge
Street, emptying itself into the Thames on the western side of Blackfriars
Bridge." It was called "the River of Wells" as early as the days of William the
Conqueror.
The Fleet seems early to have become impure, and hardly fit to drink, for, in
1290 (Edward I.), the prior of a Carmelite house in Whitefriars complained of
the noxious exhalations, the miasma of which had killed many of the hooded
brethren, and the corruption of which overpowered the odours of the incense. The
Black Friars and the Bishop of Salisbury, whose palace was in Salisbury Court,
Fleet Street, also signed the same doleful petition. Mr. Pinks, with whom we do
not in this case altogether agree, thinks that the Fleet was called the
Holeburne, or burne of the Hollow, above Holborn Bridge; and the Fleet, between
Holborn Bridge and its embouchure. The Holeburne is distinctly mentioned in
Domesday Book.
In the register of the Nunnery of St. Mary, Clerkenwell, of the time of Richard
I. or John, the oldest cartulary extant, mention is made of a meadow near
Holeburne, and of a ditch that led from Holeburne to the mill of the nuns. The
garden of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem was also situated upon the
Holeburne, thus perfectly proving, says an ingenious writer in the Gentleman's
Magazine for 1856, that Holeburne was only another name for that venerable and
injured stream, the Fleet, the southern part of it, the mere embouchure (between
Holborn Bridge and the Thames), probably always maintaining the name of Fleet,
or Flood. Stow is therefore incorrect in his description of the imaginary
stream, the old Bourne.
The same acute writer, who signs himself "T. E. T.," shows, also, that the word
"Flete," referring to a special limited place, is used in the ancient book of
the Templars' lands (1185) now in the Record Office; and the word "Flete Hithe,"
in the ancient "Liber A, sive Pilosus;" while in the first of King John, the
Templars received the grant of a place upon the Flete, near Castle Baynard, to
enable them to construct a mill, which was removed in the reign of Edward I., on
the complaint of Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, that it had lessened the breadth
and depth of water under Holeburne Bridge and Fleet Bridge into the Thames. The
holes that gave the Saxon name to the Holeburne are still marked by the sites of
Hockley-in-theHole and Black Mary's Hole, Bagnigge Wells (both already described
by us in previous chapters). The overflowing part of the Fleet, near its foul
mouth, probably gave the name to the stream, as the same cause led to the naming
the Fleets of the Trent; and the site of Paris Bear Garden, Southwark, now the
parish of Christchurch, Surrey, was anciently called Widefleet, from the
overflowing of the trenches at high tides, which formed a large stagnant
backwater to a river that, from man's neglect and idleness, has probably caused
the death of more Londoners than have been slain in English battles since the
Conquest.
But turning back to earlier times, let us dive far below the deepest Stygian
blackness of the Fleet Sewer. To see the antiquities found in the Fleet, which
really deserves a daring discoverer's attention nearly as much as the Tiber, let
us follow Mr. Pinks into the vast rag and bone shop of relics which his loving
and patient industry has catalogued so carefully. During the digging and
widening of the Fleet Ditch, in 1676, there, at a depth of fifteen feet, was
found the stray rubbish, bones, and refuse of Roman London. The coins were of
silver, copper, and brass, but none of gold. The silver was ring-money, of
several sizes, the largest as big as a crown, the smallest about the size of a
silver twopence, every one having a snip in the edge. At Holborn Bridge, thrown
away by spoilers or dropped by thieves, were two brass Lares (about four inches
high), one a Ceres, the other a Bacchus, both covered with a petrified crust,
but the stream had washed much of the oxydizing matter from the coins, "thrown
away on the approach of Boadicea," says the vivacious and imaginative Pennant,
his mind, like a true antiquary, of course reverting to the one special crisis
of interest in ancient London story. The excavators also discovered in the
miserly river various British and Saxon antiquities of interest—arrowheads,
broad spur rowels, keys, daggers, scales, seals, with Saxon names, ships'
counters, with Saxon characters, and medals, crosses, and crucifixes, of a later
date. In the bed of the Fleet, at Black Mary's Hole, near the end of Baker
Street, a ship's anchor, it is said, was found some years ago; and a
correspondent in the Gentleman's Magazine (1843) describes a small anchor, three
feet ten inches long, found in the Fleet Ditch, as then in the collection of Mr.
Walter Hawkins, F.S.A.
In 1856 there was exhibited at the British Archaeological Association a globular
iron padlock, so constructed that the whole shackle could be drawn out when the
bolt was thrown back. This was found in the Fleet Ditch, near the bottom of
Holborn Hill. In 1857 the same association exhibited a jug of hard-baked pottery
(the upper part covered with mottled green glaze), of the sixteenth century,
found in 1854, in the ditch, near Smithfield. In 1838 a beautiful hunting-knife,
of the seventeenth century, was found in the same dirty repository of
"unconsidered trifles." The ivory haft was wrought with a figure of Mercury,
with winged petasus, hunting-horn and caduceus. The blade was of the time of
George I. About 1862 two target bosses, of latten, of the time of Henry VIII.,
were dredged up. In 1862 Mr. Gunston exhibited, at the British Archæological
meeting, a rude penknife of the fifteenth, and one of the sixteenth century,
both Fleet relics; also the carved wooden haft of a dagger, and a little knife,
the bone haft carved with a female bust that resembled Catherine de Medicis;
also a knifeblade, with a motto, and a Roman sharpening steel.
Stow says that before 1307 ten or twelve ships used to go up the Fleet to Fleet
Bridge, "with divers things and merchandizes, and some of these ships went under
the bridge unto Holborn Bridge." A "Process of Recognition," in third folio of
the ancient "Liber A, sive Pilosus," containing the ancient evidences of the
Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, mentions Fleet Hythe as in the possession of
Henry the Woodmonger, a man, says Mr. Pinks, mentioned in the great "Roll of the
Pipe" for the 31st of Henry I., and also in the "Registrum de Clerkenwell," as
one of the earliest donors to the Clerkenwell nunnery. The process shows that
ships and store-barges belonging to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's unshipped
their lading at Fleet Hythe, and that the owners complained of a toll there
exacted from them. The river was no doubt navigable, ages ago, much further than
Holborn Bridge.
"In a parliament held at Carlisle, in the thirty-fifth year of Edward I. (1307),
Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, complained that in former times the course of water
running under 'Holeburne' Bridge and Fleet Bridge, into the Thames, had been of
such breadth and depth, that ten or twelve 'naves' (ships) 'were wont to come to
Flete Bridge, and some of them to 'Holeburne' Bridge, yet that 'by the filth of
the tanners and others, and by the raising of wharfs, and especially by a
diversion of the water in the first year of King John (1200), by them of the New
Temple, for their mills without Baynard's Castle, and by other impediments, the
course was decayed, and ships could not enter as they were used.' On the
petition of the earl, the constable of the Tower, with the mayor and sheriffs of
London, were directed by writ to take with them certain 'honest and discreet men
to inquire into the former state of the river, to leave nothing that might hurt
or stop it,' and restore it to its original condition. The creek was cleansed,
the mills removed, and other means taken for the preservation of the course; but
it was not brought to its old depth and breadth, and therefore it was no longer
termed a river but a brook, called Turnmill or Tremill Brook, because mills were
erected on it. 'But still, as if by nature intended for a common sewer of
London, it was soon choked with filth again.' The scouring of this muddy stream,
which seems to have silted up about every thirty or forty years, was a continual
expense to the City of London."
Several years ago, on making a great sewer, some piles of oak, apparently
portions of a mill-dam, were found in the Fleet Ditch, thirteen feet below the
surface of Ray Street, near Little Saffron Hill.
"In 1855," says Mr. Timbs, "the valley of the Fleet, from Coppice Row to
Farringdon Street, was cleared of many old and decaying dwellings, many of a
date anterior to the Fire of London. From Coppice Row a fine view of St. Paul's
Cathedral was opened by the removal of these buildings. 'In making the
excavation,' says a writer in the Builder, 'for the great sewer which now
conveys from view the Fleet Ditch, at a depth of about thirteen feet below the
surface in Ray Street, near the corner of Little Saffron Hill, the workmen came
upon the pavement of an old street, consisting of very large blocks of ragstone
of irregular shape. An examination of the paving-stones showed that the street
had been well used. They are worn quite smooth by the footsteps and traffic of a
past generation. Below the old street was found another phase of Old London.
Thickly covered with slime were piles of oak, hard and black, which had
seemingly been portions of a mill-dam. A few feet below were very old wooden
water-pipes, nothing but the rough trunks of trees. The course of time, and the
weight of matter above the old pavement, had pressed the gravel, clay, granite,
portions of tiles, &c., into a hard and almost solid mass, and it was curious to
observe that near the old surface were great numbers of pins. Whither have the
pins gone? is a query which has puzzled many. The now hard concrete, stuck with
these useful articles, almost like a pincushion, is a partial reply to the
query. The thirteen feet of newer deposit would seem to have accumulated in two
or three centuries. It is not unlikely that a portion of the rubbish from the
City, after the Great Fire, was shot here.'"
About the year 1502 (Henry VII.), Lambert, in his "London," says that the
intolerable Fleet Ditch was cleared, from Holborn to the Thames, and it became
once more navigable for large barges, laden with fuel and fish. In 1560 Aggas,
in his curious Map of London, marks two bridges over the Fleet—Holborne and
Fleet Bridge. Holborne Bridge was situated on a spot between Field Lane and
Victoria Street; and the Fleet Bridge, says Mr. Pinks, an excellent authority,
about the spot where the present Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill join (the circus
between the two obelisks). Southward stood a dwelling-house, or warehouse,
opposite the northern end of Bridewell, which reached to the Thames, and was
situated on the western side of the Fleet. From the dwellinghouse above
mentioned as far as the Thames, the Fleet was open, Bridewell Bridge (afterwards
built on its mouth) not being yet erected.
In Stow's "Survey" Fleet Bridge, without Lud Gate, is described as a stone
bridge, coped on both sides, with iron pikes, with stone lanthorns on the south
side for winter evening travellers. Under this ran the River of Wells, alias
Turnmill Brook, alias the Fleet Dyke, or Ditch. The bridge had been larger in
old times, but was lessened as the water-course narrowed. It had either been
built or repaired by John Wells, mayor in 1431 (Henry VI.), and on the coping
Wells "imbraced by angels" is engraved, as on the Standard in Cheape, which he
also built. This bridge melted away in the Great Fire, and its successor lasted
till 1765, when it was removed, to widen Farringdon Street, and the Fleet was
abandoned as incapable of improvement, and finally bricked over without any
respectful funeral service. Strype, in 1720, describes Fleet Bridge as having
sides breast high, and on them the City arms engraved. At Holborn Bridge the
Canal, as it was then called, was fed by Turnmill Brook. The Bridewell and Fleet
Bridges adjoining were ascended by steps. Between the six piers of Fleet Bridge
were iron rails and banisters at both sides. The roadway was level with the
street. There was a coffee-house (the "Rainbow") on the bridge in 1751. The
older bridge was a stone bridge of one arch, with no stone parapet, but wooden
rails and posts.
Prynne's "Records," folio, 1669, mention several old records referring to the
nuisances of the river of Fleet, and efforts to make it navigable, "as
formerly," to and under Holborn Bridge. He also quotes from the record itself
the interesting petition of the Commons of London (Edward I.), quoted by Stow,
complaining of the obstruction of the "Flete River," the corruption of the air
it had engendered, and the hindrance of the former navigation as far as "Holeburne"
Bridge. We have seen from the Earl of Lincoln's petition mentioned above that
ten or twelve ships had been known to bring merchandise as far as the Fleet
Bridge, and some of them to penetrate as far as Holeburne Bridge. The commission
was issued to perfect the work, which was, however, stopped by the king's death.
Prynne quietly urges the Government of Charles II., for the benefit of the
health and trade of the City, to make the river navigable to Holborn Bridge or
Clerkenwell.
In the celebrated "Liber Albus" or White Book of the City of London, compiled in
1419 (Henry V.), the street of "Flete Brigge" is mentioned, as is also the
cleansing of "the Foss of the Flete." Amongst the City tolls the compiler notes:
"Every cart that brings corn into the City for sale shall pay one halfpenny; if
it enters by way of Holburne or by the Flete, it shall pay one penny, the
franchise excepted. . . . . The cart that brings nuts or cheese shall pay
twopence; and if it enters by the Flete, or by Holeburn, it shall pay twopence
halfpenny."
In the "Calendar of State Papers" (Mary, 1553–1558), in connection with the
reign of Queen Mary the Sanguinary, we find a note of certain conspirators
against the queen meeting at Fleet Bridge, just as in the Rye House rebellion
(1683) we meet with Monmouth, Sir Thomas Armstrong, and Lord Grey, going from
the Fleet Ditch to Snow Hill, to arrange the Sunday-night rising, when at
midnight, according to the traitor, Grey, the train-bands at the Royal Exchange
were to be attacked, and the western City gates seized. At Fleet Bridge and Snow
Hill the conspirators were to wait the onslaught of the king's guard. At Snow
Hill there was to be a barricade thrown up, and mounted with three or four
ships' cannon, while at Fleet Bridge there were to be several regular cannon,
and a breastwork for musqueteers on each side of the bridge, while the houses on
the east bank of the Fleet were to be lined with firelock-men, who were to fire
from the windows as the royal troops approached the bridge. There were at least
two taverns on Fleet Bridge at the Restoration. In Aggas' Map of London (1560,
second year of Queen Elizabeth), Holborn Bridge had houses on the north side.
In 1670 (Charles II.), in rebuilding London, after the Great Fire, it was
decreed that Holborn Bridge being too narrow for the traffic of London, the
northern approach should be enlarged so that the "way and passage" might run in
"a bevil line from a certain timber house on the north side thereof commonly
called or known by the name or sign of the Cock," to the "Swan Inn." Wren,
therefore, built the new bridge on the north side of Holborn Hill accordingly;
and the name of William Hooker, Lord Mayor in 1673–74, was cut on the stone
coping of the east approach. In March, 1840, Mr. Tite, F.S.A., during the
opening of a sewer at Holborn Hill, was lucky enough to be passing, and saw the
southern face of the old bridge disinterred. The arch was about twenty feet
span. The road from the east intersected the bridge obliquely, and out of the
angle thus formed a stone corbel arose, to carry the parapet. The worthy mayor's
name and the date were still visible. The width of the bridge was eleven feet
six inches, says Mr. Crosby, who had spent many years collecting memorabilia of
the Fleet valley. It had probably originally been twelve feet six inches.
According to this best authority on the subject, Holborn Bridge consisted of
four different bridges joined together at the sides, and two of these had been
added, to widen the passage. The entrance of the old Swan Inn, with premises
that covered an acre and a half, faced what is now Farringdon Street.
A writer in the Times, August 22nd, 1838, states as follows:—"The rear of the
houses on Holborn Bridge has for many years been a receptacle for characters of
the most daring and desperate condition. It was here in a brick tenement, now
called by the Peachums and Lockets of the day 'Cromwell's House,' that murderous
consultations were held, by the result of one of which the assassination of the
unfortunate Mr. Steel was accomplished."
In the "Dunciad," Pope, lashing the poorer of his enemies, drives them headlong
past Bridewell to the mud-pools of the Fleet—
"To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams
Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames,
The king of dykes! than whom no slnice of mud
With deeper sable blots the silver flood.
'Here strip, my children! here at once leap in,
Here prove who best can dash thro' thick and thin,
And who the most in love of dirt excel,
Or dark dexterity of groping well.
Who flings most filth and wide pollutes around
The stream, be his the Weekly Journals bound;
A pig of lead to him who dives the best;
A peck of coals a-piece shall glad the rest.'
In naked majesty, Oldmixon stands,
And, Milo-like, surveys his arms and hands;
Then sighing, thus, 'And am I now threescore?
Ah, why, ye gods! should two and two make four?'
He said, and climb'd a stranded lighter's height,
Shot to the black abyss, and plung'd downright.
The Senior's judgment all the crowd admire,
Who but to sink the deeper, rose the higher.
Next Smedley div'd; low circles dimpled o'er
The quaking mud, that clos'd, and op'd no more.
All look, all sigh, and call on Smedley lost;
Smedley, in vain, resounds thro' all the coast.
Then * * essayed; scarce vanish'd out of sight,
He buoys up instant, and returns to light,
He bears no tokens of the sabler streams,
And mounts far off among the swans of Thames."
Gay again, in his "Trivia; or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London," in his
pleasant way sketches the same noisome place:—
"If where Fleet Ditch with muddy current flows
You chance to roam; where oyster-tubs in rows
Are ranged beside the posts; there stay thy haste,
And with the savoury fish indulge thy taste:
The damsel's knife the gaping shell commands,
While the salt liquor streams between her hands."
Swift, too, with his coarse pen, giving a description of a city shower, revels
in the congenial filth of the odorous locality:—
"Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow,
And bear their trophies with them as they go;
Filths of all hues and odours seem to tell
What street they sail'd from by their sight and smell.
They, as each torrent drives, with rapid force,
From Smithfield to St. 'Pulchre's shape their course,
And in huge confluence join'd at Snow Hill ridge,
Fall from the conduit prone to Holborn Bridge;
Sweepings from butchers' stalls, dung, guts, and blood,
Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud,
Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood."
The Fleet seems always to have been a sort of dirty and troublesome child to the
Corporation of London. In 1589 (Elizabeth) the Common Council collected a
thousand marks (£666 13s. 4d.) to draw the springs of Hampstead Heath into one
head, for the service of the City, and to scour down the Fleet; but the constant
encroachment on the Fleet banks, and the rubbish and dirt thrown into the narrow
channel, soon, says Stow, clogged it worse than ever. In 1606 (James I.)
flood-gates were erected, to dam the water back when required; and in Cromwell's
time (1652) the sewer was thoroughly cleansed, and many encroachments checked.
The ditch had now become impassable to boats, in consequence of the numerous
pigsties on the banks, and the vast quantities of offal and garbage thrown in by
the butchers.
"Fuller, writing in 1662," says Mr. Pinks, "remarks of the Fleet, that it was so
called 'from its former fleetness, though now it creepeth slow enough, not so
much for age as the injection of the City refuse wherewith it is obstructed.' In
an early play, one of the characters says, 'I was just dead of a consumption,
till the sweet smoke of Cheapside and the dear perfume of Fleet Ditch made me a
man again.' In Sir Christopher Wren's design for the rebuilding of London, after
the Great Fire of 1666, we find six bridges between the Thames and Clerkenwell,
viz., Bridewell-dock Bridge, Wood-market, Bridge, Fleet Bridge—a bridge in the
line of street, from the proposed piazza in Fleet Street to Pye Corner,
Smithfield—Holborn Bridge, and Cock Lane Bridge. But this design was not carried
out."
After the Fire, by cleansing and enlarging of Fleet Ditch, coal-barges, &c.,
were enabled to come up as far as Holborn Bridge, where Turnmill Brook fell into
the wider and equally sable flood. Wharves and store-houses were built on the
Fleet side, but they did not prove successful. The channel had five feet of
water at the lowest tide. The wharves were thirty feet broad, and had oak rails,
to prevent passers-by at night falling in. Sir Thomas Fitch, the bricklayer who
built the ditch, made a fortune by it, the cost being, as Ned Ward says, in his
"London Spy," £74,000.
The first Bridewell Bridge over the Fleet, according to Stow, was of timber,
through a breach in the City wall, opposite Bridewell. Hatton, in his "New View
of London," 1708, describes Bridewell Bridge as of stone, and right against the
back gate of the prison. It was ascended by fourteen steps, and was pulled down
in 1765.
The bridge at the end of Fleet Lane, called the Middle Bridge, was of stone, and
was, like Bridewell, ascended by fourteen steps; the arch being high enough to
admit of ships with merchandise to pass under it.
In 1733 (George II.) the Fleet, being so often tried and found guilty, underwent
at last its final doom. The City of London petitioned the House of Commons for
permission to cover it up out of sight, as all navigation had ceased, it had
become impossible to cleanse it, and several persons had fallen in and been
suffocated in the mud. A bill was accordingly passed, by virtue of which the
fee-simple of the site of the premises on the line of the Fleet Ditch was vested
in the Corporation for ever, on condition that proper drains were made, to
receive the mud-choked stream. In 1735 two sewer-arches, ten feet high and six
feet wide, were completed from Fleet Bridge to Holborn Bridge, and covered over,
and the new Fleet Market erected on the site, in 1737. The thing was only half
done, after all, for the noisome part, from the corner of Bridge Street to the
Thames, still remained open, and was not arched over till the approaches to
Blackfriars Bridge were completed, between 1760 and 1768, and even then one
stubborn conservative kept a small, filthy dock still uncovered. In 1763, a
drunken barber, from Bromley, in Kent, was found in Fleet Ditch, standing
upright and frozen to death.
Floods of the Fleet were not uncommon, before it was boxed up. In 1679, after
heavy rains, it broke down the back of several wholesale butcherhouses at Cow
Cross, and carried off cattle, dead and alive. At Hockley-in-the-Hole barrels of
ale, beer, and brandy floated down the black stream, and were treated by the
rabble as fair flotsam. In 1768 the Hampstead Ponds overflowing, after a severe
storm, the Fleet channel grew into a torrent, and the roads and fields about
Bagnigge Wells were overflowed. In the gardens of Bagnigge Wells the water was
four feet deep. A man was nearly drowned, and several thousand pounds' damage
was done in Coldbath Fields, Mutton Lane, and Peter Street and vicinity. Three
oxen and several hogs were carried off and drowned. A Blackfriars boatman took
his boat to Turnmill Street, and there plied, removing the inhabitants, who
could not leave their houses for the rising flood. In 1809 a sudden thaw
produced a flood, and the whole space between St. Pancras, Somers' Town, and the
foot of the hill at Pentonville was soon under water; two cart-horses were
drowned; and for several days persons received their provisions in at their
windows, from carts sent round to convey them.
In 1846 a furious thunderstorm caused the Fleet Ditch to blow up. The rush from
the drain at the second arch of Blackfriars Bridge drove a steamer against one
of the piers, and damaged it. The overflow of the Fleet penetrated into the
cellars on the west side of Farringdon Street, so that one draper alone had
£3,000 worth of goods destroyed or damaged. In the lower part of Clerkenwell,
where the sewer ran open, the effects of the flood were most severe, especially
in the valley below Brook Hill and Vine Street. In Bull's Head Court, Peter
Street, the water rose five feet, and swept away cattle and furniture. Three
poor houses in Round Court, Brook Hill, were partly carried away. From Acton
Place, Bagnigge Wells Road, to King's Cross the roads were impassable, and the
kitchens inundated. One baker alone lost thirty-six sacks of flour. A few days
after another storm produced a renewed flood, and two more houses fell in Round
Court, Brook Hill. The introduction of the cholera into Clerkenwell Prison, in
1832, was attributed to the effluvia of the river Fleet, then opened.
In 1855, the Fleet, as one of the metropolitan main sewers then vested in the
Commissioners of Sewers, became vested in the newly-created Metropolitan Board
of Works. The gigantic maindrainage system began with the great subterranean
roads, the high, the low, and the mid level, which, intercepting all lesser
sewers, carry their united floods to Barking Creek and Crossness Point. The high
level runs from Hampstead to Bow; the midlevel from Kensal Green to Bow; the low
level, from Cremorne to Abbey Mills on the marshes near Stratford. The mid-level
main-drainage works were commenced in Clerkenwell in March, 1863, in Wilderness
Row. From Goswell Street to Wilderness Row it was an open cutting, with the
exception of a short tunnel under the Charterhouse grounds. The distance from
Old Ford, Bow, to Kensal Green is 9 miles 2,650 feet, exclusive of 2½ miles of
junctions. The sewer through Clerkenwell is 8 feet 9 inches in diameter. There
were generally 400 or 500 men at work, with eleven steam-engines to pump water
and draw earth.
"The Fleet Sewer," says Mr. Pinks, "the 'Cloaca Maxima' of our metropolis,
receives the drainage of parts of Hampstead and Highgate, all Kentish Town,
Camden Town, and Somers' Town, parts of Islington, Clerkenwell, and St.
Sepulchre, and nearly all that part of the Holborn division of sewers south of
the New Road, the total surface draining into it in the Holborn and Finsbury
division being about 4,220 acres. In 1746 about 400 acres of this district were
covered with houses. At present there are nearly 2,000 acres built upon, of
necessity requiring a sewer of large capacity to carry off the refuse waters.
The dimensions of the Fleet vary according to the locality: at its northern
portion it is 6 feet 6 inches high, and 6 feet 6 inches wide; at other parts it
varies from 12 feet high and 12 in width, to 9 feet high by 10 feet wide; then 8
feet 6 inches wide by 8 feet 3 inches high; and before reaching the Thames the
dimensions of this huge sewer are 14 feet wide by 10 feet 6 inches high, and at
its mouth 18 feet by 12. The ordinary movement of the current from Bagnigge
Wells is three miles an hour, but after heavy showers, when sometimes the water
rises almost instantly five feet or more, the speed is greatly accelerated. The
amount per day of sewage discharged by this monster sewer is on the average
1,741,775 cubic feet."
The dangers of exploring the Fleet Sewer have been described by Mr. Crosby, who
made great collections for a history of the Fleet Valley:—"At near twelve
o'clock on Tuesday night, the 28th July, 1840," says this gentleman, "the tide
flowed in so fast from the Thames to Fleet Bridge, that myself and Bridgewater
were obliged to fly. It reached the hip, and we got somewhat wet before arriving
at Holborn Bridge, quite safe, but much exhausted in splashing through the water
in our heavy boots.
"Fleet Bridge, Tuesday, July 28th, 1840.— As I could not depend upon the
admeasurements, which at the beginning of the year I had taken in a hurried
manner at Fleet Bridges, while bricklayers were placing in a brick bottom in
place of the original one of alluvial soil, I determined to obtain them the
first opportunity. This evening, therefore, at ten o'clock, I met Bridgewater
(one of the workmen employed in constructing the new sewer from Holborn Bridge
to Clerkenwell) by appointment at the hoard there. Water boots being in
readiness, I lighted my lamps, and, assisted by the watchmen, King and Anon, we
descended the ladder, and got into that branch of the sewer which joins Wren's
Bridge at Holborn. We then walked carefully till we reached Fleet Bridge. I
suspended my argand lamp on the breakwater of the sewer, and with my lanthorn
light we proceeded towards the Thames. We got a considerable distance, during
which the channel of the sewer twice turned to the right at a slight angle. The
last portion we entered into was barrelled at the bottom, and the middle so full
of holes, and the water so deep as we approached the Thames, that we thought it
prudent to return to Fleet Bridge. Here I lighted up four candles, which, with
my two lamps, enabled me to see the admeasurements I required. Bridgewater, who
is a sober, steady, and good-tempered man, was of great use to me in so doing. I
measured the heights with a fishing-rod, twelve feet in length, joined to my two
measuring-rods, which, tied, gave me another rod of nine feet six inches. All
went on well till about a quarter to twelve o'clock, when, to our surprise, we
found the tide had suddenly come in to the depth of two feet and a half. No time
was to be lost; but I had only one more admeasurement to make, viz., the width
of the North Bridge. I managed this, and we then snatched up the basket, and,
holding our lamps aloft, dashed up the sewer which we had to get up one half
before out of danger. The air was close and made us faint. However, we got safe
to Holborn Bridge with all our things, and the argand lamp did not blow out till
we just reached it."
Mr. Archer, in his "Vestiges of Old London," 1851, says that by the opening at
the Thames "many persons enter at low tide, armed with sticks to defend
themselves from rats, as well as for the purpose 'of sounding on their perilous
way' among the slimy shallows; and carrying a lanthern to light the dreary
passage, they wander for miles under the crowded streets in search of such waifs
as are carried there from above. A more dismal pursuit can scarcely be
conceived; so near to the great concourse of London streets that the rolling of
the numerous vehicles incessantly thundering overhead, and even the voices of
wayfarers, are heard, where, here and there, a grating admits a glimmer of the
light of day; yet so utterly cut off from all communion with the busy world
above, so lonely in the very heart of the great and populous city, that of the
thousands who pass along, not one is even conscious of the proximity of the
wretched wanderer creeping in noisome darkness and peril beneath his very feet.
A source of momentary destruction ever lurking in these gloomy regions exists in
the gases, which generate in their confined and putrefying atmosphere, and
sometimes explode with a force sufficient to dislodge the very masonry; or
which, taking light from the contact of the lantern, might envelope the
miserable intruder in sudden flame. Many venturers have been struck down in such
a dismal pilgrimage, to be heard of no more; may have fallen suddenly choked,
sunk bodily in the treacherous slime, become a prey to swarms of voracious rats,
or have been overwhelmed by a sudden increase of the polluted stream."
The polite Lord Chesterfield was asked by an enthusiastic Parisian whether
London could show a river like the Seine. "Yes," replied his lordship, "we call
it Fleet Ditch."
The following serves to show what nourishing contributions of refuse were made
to the Fleet:— "A fatter boar was hardly ever seen," says the Gentleman's
Magazine for 1836, "than one taken up this day (24th August, 1736) coming out of
Fleet Ditch into the Thames. It proved to be a butcher's, near Smithfield Bars,
who had missed him five months, all which time he had been in the common sewer,
and was improved in price from ten shillings to two guineas."
Turnmill Street, pulled down in the Clerkenwell improvements of 1856–7, was
undoubtedly for several centuries one of the most disreputable streets in all
London. It is mentioned as Trylmyl Streate as early as the reign of Henry IV. It
is marked in Aggas's map, and is noticed in a letter from Recorder Fleetwood to
Burleigh in 1585 as a place for thieves' houses. The name was sometimes
corrupted into Turnbull and Trunball Street. It seems to have been the very sink
of the vice of London, and to have been frequented by highwaymen and rogues of
every description. It is mentioned as an infamous resort by some half-dozen of
the Elizabethan dramatists, more especially by Beaumont and Fletcher, Lodowick
Barry, Marston, Middleton, Ben Jonson, Randolph, Webster, &c. Nor must we forget
that it was of his wild and youthful feats in Turnbull Street that Justice
Shallow brags of to Falstaff. Here the Pistols and Bardolphs of the time
swaggered and cheated, and here the Tybalts of the day occasionally received
their quietus from a subtle thrust.
"At the close of the last century," says Mr. Pinks, "a reward of £300 was
offered by proclamation for the apprehension of one Bunworth, the leader of a
desperate gang of thieves; yet none dared to attempt his capture, such was the
weak state of the law. Once, with daring effrontery, 'on the approach of evening
(to quote the Newgate Calendar), he and his gang ventured towards London, and
having got as far as Turnmill Street, the keeper of the Clerkenwell Bridewell
happening to see Bunworth, called to him, and said he wanted to speak with him.
Bunworth hesitated, but the other assuring him that he intended no injury, and
the thief being confident that his associates would not desert him, swore he did
not regard the keeper, whom he advanced to meet with a pistol in his hand, the
other miscreants walking on the opposite side of the street, armed with
cutlasses and pistols. This singular spectacle attracted the attention of the
populace. A considerable crowd soon gathered round them, on which Bunworth
joined his companions, who thought their safest plan would be to retreat towards
the fields; wherefore they kept together, and, facing the people, retired in a
body, presenting their pistols, and swearing they would fire on any who should
molest them.'
"This same Bunworth gave another proof of his audacity. Sitting down at the door
of a public-house in Holborn, where he was well known, he called for a pint of
beer and drank it, holding a pistol in his hand by way of protection. He then
went off with the greatest apparent unconcern.
"The 'White Hart,' in Turnmill Street, opposite Cock Court, was formerly a noted
house of call for footpads and highwaymen. It was long since pulled down."
"In 1740, Cave, the printer," says Mr. Pinks, "purchased a machine to spin wool
or cotton into thread yarn, or worsted, consisting of one hundred spindles, and
he had a mill erected to work it, on the course of Turnmill Brook. The patentee,
Paul of Birmingham, undertook its management, but it was never brought into
profitable order."
In 1416, a parchment-maker of Turnmill Street, says Stow, was drawn, hanged, and
beheaded, for harbouring Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham, the leader of
the insurgent Lollards. The parchment-maker's head was spiked upon London
Bridge. Lollard books were found in the house of the unfortunate man. In 1624
Dr. Thomas Worthington, one of the translators of the Douay Bible, and author of
"The Anker of Christian Doctrine," lived in Turnmill Street.
In Faithorne's Map of London, 1658, the houses on the west side of Turnmill
Street are represented as having gardens leading down to the Fleet, which is
fenced on both sides. At the sign of the "Swan," on the west side of Turnmill
Street, lived, in 1661, Giles Russell, a brewer, who left an estate in
Hertfordshire for the education of three poor children of Clerkenwell parish in
Christ's Hospital.
"The stream north of Fleet Bridge," says Mr. Pinks, "justified the epithet of
Turnmill Brook till a comparatively recent period, as even in the present
century it gave motion to flour and flatting mills at the back of Field Lane."
In 1741 an advertisement in the Daily Courant announces a house to let in
Bowling Alley, Turnmill Street, with a common sewer, with a good stream and
current, "that will turn a mill to grind hair-powder or liquorish, and other
things."
Among other infamous lurking-places of thieves pulled down for the Clerkenwell
improvements of 1857, was the notorious West Street, formerly known by the
innocent name of Chick Lane. Stow mentions it, in 1633, as near a timber bridge
that crossed Turnmill Brook (near the end of Field Lane). In a flood in 1661,
when casks swam down the streets, several hogs were washed out of their sties in
Castle Inn Yard, Smithfield, and were carried down to Chick Lane.
There was a cruel murder committed in Chick Lane in 1758. Two women named
Metyard killed a woman named Naylor, and then cut up the body, intending to
throw the pieces down the gulley-hole in Chick Lane, but eventually left them in
the mud which had collected before the grate of the sewer. The two women were
convicted of the murder ten years after, and were both hung at Tyburn in 1768.
At an inquest, in 1834, at the "Horseshoe and Magpie," Saffron Hill, on a man
found dead in a low lodging-house in West Street, the landlady deposed that in
her house there were eight beds in one room, and two or three persons in each
bed.
Near Chick Lane was Cow Bridge, mentioned by Stow as north of Oldbourn Bridge,
over the River of Wells. In the time of Elizabeth the ground from Cow Cross
towards the river Fleet, and towards Ely House, was either entirely vacant, or
occupied with gardens.
"Among the houses in West Street," says Mr. Pinks, "was one which was, at the
time when it was demolished, supposed to have been built about three hundred
years. It was once known as the 'Red Lion Tavern,' but for the century preceding
its destruction it was used as a lodging-house, and was the resort of thieves,
and the lowest grade of the frail sisterhood. It was numbered 3 in West Street,
and was situate on the north-west side of the Fleet Ditch, a few houses from
Saffron Hill, and at the eastern corner of Brewhouse Yard. It was sometimes
called Jonathan Wild's House, and 'the Old House in West street.' From its
remarkable adaptation as a hiding-place, with its various means of escape, it
was a curious habitation. Its dark closets, trapdoors, sliding panels, and
secret recesses rendered it one of the most secure places for robbery and
murder. It was here that a chimney- sweep named Jones, who escaped out of
Newgate about three years before the destruction of the house, was so securely
hidden for about six weeks, that, although it was repeatedly searched by the
police, he was never discovered until his lair was divulged by one of its
inmates, who, by incautiously observing that he knew whereabouts Jones was
concealed, was taken up and remanded from time to time as an accessory to his
escape, but who, at last, tired of prison fare and prison discipline, pointed
out the place to obtain his own liberty. Jones was concealed by parting off a
portion of a cellar with brickwork, well besmeared with soot and dirt, to
prevent detection. This cell, or, more properly, den, was about four feet wide,
by nine in depth; and during Jones's incarceration therein, he had food conveyed
to him through a small aperture, by a brick or two being left out next the
rafters. It was here that a sailor was robbed, and afterwards flung naked
through one of the convenient apertures in the wall into the Fleet, for which
crime two men and a woman were transported. A skull, and numerous human bones,
were found in the cellars. Numerous parties daily visited the premises, among
whom were many of the police and county magistrates. It was said to have been
the rendezvous, and often the hiding-place, of Jack Sheppard and Jerry Abershaw;
and the place looked as if many a foul deed had been there planned and decided
on, the sewer or ditch receiving and floating away anything thrown into it. On
one occasion the police had surrounded the house to take a thief, whom they knew
to be there, but he made his escape in their actual presence. At another time an
officer went into one of the rooms to apprehend a man, and saw him in bed. While
at the door, calling to another to help him, he turned his head and saw the man
getting under the bed. He did not take any notice of it, but when the other man
came up, on looking under the bed, the man had vanished. After some search they
discovered a trap-door through which one of them jumped, but he, breaking his
leg in the fall, the fellow escaped. In this house was a place where a gang of
coiners carried on their trade, and had also a private still. This place, like
all the rest, had a communication with the sewer. In one of the garrets was a
secret door, which led to the roof of the next house from which any offender
could be in Saffron Hill in a few minutes. Amongst Mr. Crosby's drawings are a
view of this old house, taken August 10, 1844; and an inner view of the cellar
windows, taken August 19, 1844. The pulling down of this house was commenced on
the first-mentioned date. It appears to have been left standing several years
after some of the surrounding buildings had been removed." Three views of the
old house taken shortly before its demolition are given on page 421.
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