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Today - having previously walked the #Fleet, the #Effra, the #Tyburn, the #Westbourne & the #Wandle - we are planning to walk London's shortest but most formative lost river: the #Walbrook
London was founded by the Romans in the river-valley of the #Walbrook, between Ludgate Hill & Cornhill. The river flowed through the centre of Londinium, & - fortunately for archaeologists - was used by the city's inhabitants as a dumping ground for all kinds of rubbish.
The earliest mention of the #Walbrook was in 1086, in a charter issued by William I, where it is referred to as “wylrithe”, Old English for “spring rivulet”. Etymologists debate whether 'Walbrook' derives from this, or from 'Wealhbroc': 'the brook of the Foreigners/Britons/Welsh'
To Hampstead, there to start tracing the line of the #Westbourne, from Whitestone Pond to the Chelsea Embankment. 
Like the Tyburn & the Fleet, the #Westbourne rises at Whitestone Pond, the highest point in inner London. Jack Straw, a leader of the Peasants Revolt beacon was captured here, a beacon warned of the Spanish Armada, & it was a notorious haunt of highwaymen when known as Horse Pond
This was once Branch Hill Pond, which Constable painted back in 1825, when London was poised like a tsunami waiting to break over the rural environs of Hampstead... #Westbourne
The source of the #Tyburn: the bucolically named Shepherd’s Well. The waters from the spring were famously clear, & until well into the 19th century rose amid spreading fields...
The name of the neighbouring house & passageways still bear witness to the vanished spring, & the pastoral quality of its environs... #Tyburn
What Freud - who spent the last year of his life beside the #Tyburn - would have made of London’s lost rivers, buried & suppressed, who can say?
I learn from @teabolton’s excellent guide that this stretch of the river boasts the highest concentration of psychiatrists in the UK
I learn from @teabolton’s excellent guide that this stretch of the river boasts the highest concentration of psychiatrists in the UK
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Whitestone Pond: inner London’s highest point, reputed site of the capture of Jack Straw, & source of the Westbourne & Tyburn as well as the #Fleet - the course of which I am now going to follow...
The caravan site in Hampstead’s Vale Of Health. “It is owned by the Abbotts family, Irish showmen who have lived here for 150 years, and is still somewhere fairground folk lay up when they are in town” - @teabolton #Fleet
Until 1965, these markers apparently marked the official boundary of London #Fleet
