There are no written records or other traces of any brook descending from the northern heights through London west of the Strand, till we come to the Tyburn.
This brook, like the Fleet, took its rise near Hampstead, but turning westward, and receiving several tributary streamlets, it ran due south through the Regent's Park, where it was joined by another affluent from the site of the present Zoological Gardens, from which point it turned to the west and crossed the Marylebone Road opposite Gloucester Terrace, and after running parallel with it for a short distance it took a sharp turn to the east, following the hollow in which the present Marylebone Lane stands, the windings of which indicate the course of the brook. On reaching the southern end of High Street, it again turned to the south, crossed Oxford Street, ran down part of South Molton Street, turned west again to the south of Berkeley Square; thence it flowed through the narrow passage between the gardens of Lansdowne House and Devonshire House, whose hollow sound seems to indicate the existence of the watercourse below. It next crossed Piccadilly, ran due south through the Green Park, passed under Buckingham Palace, directly after which it divided into three branches, one of which ran through the ornamental water in St. James's Park, whence it fell into the Thames: the middle branch ran into the ancient Abbey at Westminster, where it turned the mills the monks had erected there. But from old maps it appears that this arm of the Tyburn, at a point a little north-west of the Abbey, threw out a branch which in a northerly course rejoined the park, and then in a curved line to the east reached the Thames at a point not far from Westminster Bridge, and to the north-east of it. The spot where this branch touched St. James's Park was close to Storey's Gate. Now last year (1898) when the ground was being excavated for the foundations of the new Institute of Mechanical Engineers, the workmen came upon the piles and brickwork of an ancient wharf. The structure was wonderfully well preserved; it had evidently been well constructed, probably by the monks, and may have been for the accommodation of the fishermen bringing their goods to the monastery. But at present, and until further information is obtained, if ever it is obtained, we can only form conjectures as to the purposes of the wharf; but its discovery on that spot is curiously illustrative of the history which still lies hidden under our streets.
We have yet to mention the third branch of the Tyburn, which started south of Buckingham Palace. It ran in a southerly direction across Victoria Street, for a short distance skirted the Vauxhall Bridge Road, then crossed it and ran through the marshy grounds then existing down to the Thames a little to the west of Vauxhall Bridge.
Such was the course of the Tyburn. Of the bridges that once must have crossed it not a vestige remains; but we have the record of one which was at the spot which is now Stratford Place, and where the Lord Mayor's Banqueting-house stood, to which he resorted when he, the Aldermen, and other distinguished citizens went to inspect the head conduits from which the City conduits were supplied, on which occasions they combined pleasure with business, hunting the hare before and the fox after dinner. The Tyburn must at one time have been a stream of considerable size; in the year 1238 it was so copious as to furnish nine conduits for supplying the City with water. It had rows of elms growing on its banks, and as it generally, but erroneously, is supposed to have flowed past the southern corner of the Edgware Road, the name of Elm Place was given to a street (now pulled down) west of Connaught Place. How this error arose we shall show when speaking of the West Bourne. On the Tyburn stood the church of St. Mary la bonne; by the vulgar omission of letters 'burn' became 'bone,' hence Marylebone. The Tyburn, like the other brooks already discussed, is now a mere sewer.
Proceeding still further west, we come to the Westbourne, which, like the other brooks, rose in the northern heights above London. Around Jack Straw's Castle at Hampstead various rills sprang from the ground, which, forming a united stream a little north of the Finchley Road, that stream, flowing west towards the spot known as West End, continued its western course till it reached Maygrove Road; it crossed that road, and taking a sudden turn south, it ran through Kilburn down to Belsize Road, south of which a small lake was formed, by its confluence there with a considerable tributary in the form of a two-pronged fork and its handle, coming from the lower southern heights of Hampstead. From the lake the Westbourne flowed in a westerly course, and near Cambridge Road received another affluent from the high ground where Paddington Cemetery now stands; still running west at Chippenham Road, its volume was further increased by the reception of a stream coming from the neighbourhood of Brondesbury, and from this point it ran due south, but with many windings, through Paddington, and across the Uxbridge Road, through part of Kensington Gardens, through the Serpentine in Hyde Park and across the Knightsbridge Road, and what was then called the Five Fields, a miserable swamp, and formed the eastern boundary of Chelsea till it discharged itself into the Thames, west of Chelsea Bridge, but divided into a considerable number of small streams.
Such was its course, and from its description we see that it was no insignificant stream, and may assume that the first settlers in those northern parts of London must be looked for on its banks. Like the Fleet, it had various names in different localities; thus at Kilburn it was known as the Keele Bourne, Coldbourne, and Kilbourne; at Bayswater it was called the Bayswater Rivulet; the name of Bayswater itself is supposed to be derived from Baynard, who built Baynard Castle on the Thames, and also possessed lands at Bayswater. At the end of the fourteenth century it was called Baynard's Watering-place, which in time was shortened to its present appellation.
The bridge which gave Knightsbridge its name was a stone bridge; by whom or when erected is not on record, but probably Edward the Confessor, who conferred the land about here on the Abbots of Westminster, also built the bridge for their accommodation. The road was the only way to London from the west, and the stream was broad and rapid. The bridge was situated in front of the present entrance into the Park by Albert Gate, and part of it still remains underground, while the other portion was removed for the Albert Gate improvements. In the churchwardens' accounts of St. Margaret's, Westminster, are the following entries regarding the bridge:
1630. Item, received of John Fennell and Ralph £ s. d.
Atkinson, collectors of the escheat, for repair
of Brentford Bridge and Knightsbridge . . . . 23 6 4
1631. Item, paid towards the repairs of Brentford
Bridge and of Knightsbridge, etc. . . . . . . 24 7 10
The Westbourne was occasionally a source of inconvenience and even danger to the inhabitants of Knightsbridge. After heavy rains or in sudden thaws it overflowed. On September 1, 1768, it did so, and did great damage, almost undermining some of the houses; and in January, 1809, it overflowed again, and covered the neighbouring fields so deeply that they resembled a lake, and passengers were for several days rowed from Chelsea to Westminster by Thames boatmen.
On the site now covered by St. George's Row, Pimlico, there stood in the middle of the last century a house of entertainment known as 'Jenny's Whim.' A long wooden bridge over one of the many arms of the Westbourne led up to the house. The present Ebury Bridge over the Grosvenor Canal, which this river-branch has become, occupies the site of this old bridge. 'Jenny's Whim' had trim gardens, alcoves, ponds, and facilities for duck-hunting; in the gardens were recesses, where, by treading on a spring, up started different figures, some ugly enough to frighten people, a harlequin, a Mother Shipton, or some terrible animal. Horace Walpole occasionally alludes to 'Jenny's Whim'; in one of his letters to Montagu, he says: 'Here (at Vauxhall) we picked up Lord Granby, arrived very drunk from Jenny's Whim.' Towards the beginning of this century 'Jenny's Whim' began to decline; at last it sank down to the condition of a beershop, and in 1804 it was finally closed. The origin of the name is doubtful. Davis, the historian of Knightsbridge, accepts the account given him by an old inhabitant, that it was so called from its first landlady, who directed the gardens to be laid out in so fantastic a manner as to cause the noun to be added to her own Christian name. Other reports say that the place was established by a celebrated pyrotechnist in the reign of George I.; but that does not account for the name.