Lost Rivers of South London

River Effra

A while back, I decided on a ride across London to Dartford, because why not?   I was to discover why not later on.  It was a nice day with a fresh tail wind.  It’s quite a hilly ride, with plenty of valleys, only some of which still have rivers.   Many of the rivers draining into the Thames from the North Downs are now subterranean, victims of London’s sprawl.   North of the Thames, the buried rivers are better known – the Fleet, the Tyburn, the Rom and so on.   To the south, they’re perhaps not so famous.

Crossing the Thames at Richmond, I headed to Richmond Park, encountering a branch of the Beverley Brook which drains the Pen Ponds, as well as Worcester Park and possibly even Nonsuch Park.   Then a valley with no river: the ancient River Wymble, with its tributary Rayns Brook, is nowhere to be seen.   Perhaps it pops its head up in Wimbledon Park, but it pops down again.    King George’s Park in Wandsworth announces the Wandle, still very evident in its concrete channel.  Another hill, Wandsworth Common, another dry valley: this time the Falconbrook, which drains Streatham and Tooting under Clapham Junction.  

River Effra

Up (a bit) to Clapham Common next, before the very gentle valley of the Effra, a long river flowing from Norwood in the south (work that one out) through Brixton before doing a victory lap of The Oval and exiting, perhaps under the MI6 building in Vauxhall.  The Effra was converted and diverted to be used as a storm sewer by Sir Joseph Bazalgette in the 1850s and is now used for sewerage overflow.  When it rains, the river deliberately backs up and flows into man-made channels, arriving at Crossness in the east.  If you’re keen to know more, a local “moderately foul” flow can be seen through a drainage grate in the crypt of St. Luke's Church, West Norwood.

River Peck

Brixton Hill and Brockwell Park lead to Belair Park, and the topography gets a bit complicated.   A proper hill near Dulwich village leads to Peckham Rye Park,  where one of the two branches of the River Peck emerges, skirting Peckham and turning into the Neckinger (a short stub of this still exists just downstream of Tower Bridge).  However it appears that the rivers were diverted via the Earl’s Sluice to emerge far downstream at Surrey Quays.  Perhaps this was part of the Surrey Canal development?

Earl's Sluice

Earl's Sluice

Onwards, ever eastwards, took me to Ladywell Fields, crossing the Waterlink Way with its ‘overground’ river variously called the Ravensbourne River, the River Pool, Deptford Creek, and at one time the river Catte with its nine tributaries (leading to the saying a Cat o’ Nine Tails), draining places as diverse as Beckenham, Bromley and Plaistow (that is, Plaistow in Bromley).

View from King John's Walk, Eltham

Eltham Palace

Now I was into territory I’d never visited before.  Lee, and the unlikely-named Quaggy river.  A tricky crossing of the A20 led me to King John’s Walk, with gorgeous views of a sunlit City of London and a feeling of being out in the countryside, before visiting Eltham Palace; a proper moat but not really counting as a river, and down to Avery Hill Park.  Now the rivers (River Shuttle and River Cray – named after the Kray twins?) were flowing east towards my unwise destination, Dartford.  

On a Saturday morning, Dartford was a snarling mess of traffic all wanting to get to the shopping mall first, so I left it via the River Darent and the extensive Dartford Central Park.  A long stretch of rather dubious route planning led me along the A225 on a cycle path before several miles southwest to rejoin the river Cray at St Mary Cray, which had a very welcoming (and licensed) tea shop.

My route back was ‘simply’ direct west over the higher ground towards Beddington Park.  Into the wind now.  No rivers were in evidence, but plenty of leafy suburbs as Orpington, Petts Wood, Southborough and West Wickham eventually gave way to Croydon.  Waddon Ponds was my first sight of the Wandle again, and finally the welcome cafe at Beddington Park.

In hindsight, I felt a bit of a fool for looking for all these rivers, of which there is no visible evidence.  Some of them may only exist in my imagination...