London Souvenirs

by Charles William Heckethorn

Like other London rivers, the Westbourne in the end became a sewer; it was gradually covered up; of the two chief branches by which it reached the Thames, the eastern one became the Grosvenor Canal, and the western the Ranelagh Sewer. The canal was crossed by several other bridges, Stone Bridge being one of them.

We stated above that the Westbourne formed the western boundary of Chelsea; its eastern boundary was also a river, or rather rivulet, which it appears never even had a name, though in one old map I find it called Bridge Creek. It rose in Wormwood Scrubs, skirted the West London and Westminster Cemetery, and entered the Thames west of Battersea Bridge, where, in fact, there is still a creek going some distance inland. The rest of the stream has been absorbed by the West Kensington Railway. No vestige of it remains, and it has no history.

Brook Green took its name from a brook which once rose near Shepherd's Bush, but it has no records.

The next river we should come to, if we pursued our journey westward, would be the Brent; but as that is still existing—how long will it continue to do so?—it does not enter into the scope of our investigations.

Having now given an account of all the extinct brooks north of the Thames, we will cross that river and see what watercourses formerly existed on the Surrey side.

The southern banks of the Thames, being low and flat, originally were a swamp, continually overflowed by the river—Lambeth Marsh commemorates that condition of the locality. Down to Deptford, Peckham, Camberwell, Stockwell, Brixton, and Clapham did the flood extend. But by the gradual damming up of the southern bank of the Thames, the erection of buildings on the Surrey side, and the draining of the soil, the latter was gradually laid dry, and the numerous rivulets which meandered through the marsh were reduced to three between the still-existing rivers—namely, the Ravenscourt to the east, and the Wandle to the west. The first brook, again going from east to west, is the Neckinger, which rose at the foot of Denmark Hill and adjacent parts, and, after passing in two streams under the Old Kent Road, united north of it, and reached the Thames at St. Saviour's Dock, which, in fact, is the enlarged mouth of the old river. But according to some old maps we have consulted, it had a branch running in a more easterly direction, and entering the Thames at a point near the present Commercial Docks Pier. But of this latter branch no trace remains, whilst the northerly course to the Thames is indicated by various roads, such as the Grange and the Neckinger Roads. The brook ran past Bermondsey Abbey, up to the gates of which it was navigable from the Thames. The Grange Road took its name from a farm known as the Grange, and here the Neckinger was spanned by a bridge. When Bermondsey Abbey was destroyed, a number of tanneries were established on the site, which took their water from the Neckinger, in connection with which a number of tidal ditches, to admit water from the Thames, were cut in various directions. Near the Upper Grange Road stood a windmill, and at the mouth of the Neckinger a water-mill, the owner of which shut off the tide when it suited his purpose, which led to frequent disputes between him and the tanners. But in time the latter sank artesian wells, the mill was driven by steam-power, and the water of the Neckinger being no longer required for manufacturing purposes, the river was neglected and finally built over. The Neckinger Mills had been erected in the last century by a company to manufacture paper from straw; but, this enterprise failing, the premises passed into the hands of the leather manufacturers. A street to the east of St. Saviour's Dock, and parallel with it, is still known as Mill Street. There was another bridge over the Neckinger where it crossed the Old Kent Road, near the spot where the Albany Road joins the latter road. It was known as Thomas-a-Watering, from St. Thomas, the patron of the dissolved monastery or hospital of that name in Southwark. The bridge was the most southern point of the boundary of the Borough of Southwark, and in ancient days the first halting-place out of London on the road to Kent. Chaucer's pilgrims passed it on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas-a-Becket at Canterbury:

'And forth we riden ...

Unto the watering-place of St. Thomas,

And then our host began his hors arrest.'

Deputations of citizens used to go so far to meet royal or other distinguished personages who came to visit London. From the end of the fifteenth century the spot was set apart for executions, and numerous are the records of criminals who were hanged there until about the middle of the last century.

In 1690 two very handsome Janus heads—i.e., heads with two faces—were discovered near St. Thomas-a-Watering. They were found near two ancient piers of a large gate—Janus was the God of Gates. One was taken up and set up on a gardener's door; but the other, being embedded in quicksand, from which springs flowed out pretty freely, was left. Dr. Woodward, who founded the Professorship of Geology in the University of Cambridge, afterwards purchased the head which had been saved, and added it to his collection of curiosities. At the beginning of this century there was still a brook running across the Kent Road on the spot mentioned above, with a bridge over it, and the current from the Peckham and Denmark hills was at times so strong as to overflow at least two acres of ground. East of the Mill Street above mentioned there is a spot which has been rendered famous by Dickens in 'Oliver Twist'—namely, Jacob's Island. As the description he gives of it is known to everyone, we need not here repeat it; it applies, partially only, to the locality now.

It is, or to speak correctly was, a 'Venice of drains.' But it was not always so; in the reign of Henry II. the foul, stagnant ditch, which till recently made an island of this pestilential spot, was a running stream, supplied with the waters which were brought down in the Neckinger from the southern hills. On its banks stood the mills of the monks of St. John and St. Mary, dependencies of the Abbey of Bermondsey, which were worked by it. In those days the neighbourhood consisted of blooming gardens and verdant meadows. Close to Jacob's Island were Cupid's Gardens, a kind of Ranelagh on a small scale, but still a very pleasant place of public entertainment. Tanneries, and many still more objectionable trades now carried on in the locality, were then undreamt of.