Greater London, U.K. | Subterranean Sites
The River Fleet was a part of London life before London was even London. This tributary of the Thames is the largest of London’s mysterious lost subterranean rivers.
Originally known as the Holburna, it was called such by the Anglo-Saxons and meant hollow stream. Before the Anglo-Saxons, Fleet was a major river and was used by the Romans.
As London grew, the area around Fleet River during the Middle Ages became rife with industry and settlements, and the river became increasingly choked and polluted. Ironically, the disastrous Great Fire of London gave the ever-growing city a golden opportunity to rethink and rebuild London to better accommodate the burgeoning population. Fleet River was no exception. Christopher Wren, famous for designing Saint Paul’s Cathedral, tried his hand at re-imagining the river as well. Modeled after the Great Canal of Venice, Fleet received new stone embankments and was given four decorative bridges, at Bridewell, Fleet Street, Fleet Lane, and Holborn, all high enough to allow the passing of large barges.
Sadly, the barges rarely came and the under-used canal of Fleet River once again became as polluted as the rest of the Thames. The canal-cum-open-sewer became an embarrassment, and was bricked over in phases between the 1730s and 1870s . Incredibly, the Fleet River’s history doesn’t end there. The quick filling in of the canal sealed and preserved this piece of history until it was recently uncovered.
“It lay buried for 250 years until Wren’s Fleet Street bridge was re-discovered in 1999. Museum curator Simon Thurley studied old maps of the area, and worked in conjunction with the Thames Water authority. Thurley succeeded in finding stones from the western end of Wren’s bridge, embedded in brickwork from the 1700’s in the Fleet sewer, underneath Ludgate Circus.” (Source)
From major river, to open sewer, to empty canal, back to open sewer, to completely forgotten, today the Fleet River is a huge underworld cavern of Victorian brickwork and London history. Though it has been changed and redirected and polluted and encapsulated by man, the river has never stopped running, and continues to rush unseen, just beneath the sidewalks of London.
