Thread by @holland_tom

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

The #Fleet flows out from Vale of Health pond through a grille, to re-emerge on the far side of the path on its way down to join the Thames

What an adorable little river the #Fleet is! No tribute of dead dogs yet...

The Hampstead ponds, separated by dams along the course of the #Fleet, were the theme of a paper presented by Mr Pickwick: ‘Speculations on the Sources of the Hampstead Ponds, with some Observations on the Theory Of Tittlebats’. H/t @teabolton

At the end of Hampstead Number One Pond, the #Fleet vanishes through a grille, not to be seen again until it reaches the Thames at Blackfriars

Hmmmm - think we’re still in the right track... #Fleet

“The circular space at the centre of Gospel Oak estate is Lismore Circus, a faint remaining trace of the Victorian suburb which occupied the site of the estate” - @teabolton #Fleet

“When the Regent’s Canal was excavated in 1812 its route through Kentish Town overlapped with a short stretch of the #Fleet, so the river was buried directly under a stretch of the new canal” - @teabolton

St Pancras hospital looks exactly what it originally was: a workhouse complete with wards for ‘imbeciles’ & ‘lunatics’, & oakum picking rooms. “This is the first of several correctional facilities located along the lower #Fleet” - @teabolton

The roots of the Hardy Tree “graspest at the stones” (with apologies to Hardy for quoting Tennyson...) #Fleet

The medieval church of St Pancras, complete with bathers in the #Fleet, & how it looks today. It is claimed - on the basis of pretty much zero evidence - to have been a place of Christian worship since Roman times. The Beatles were photographed in the churchyard in July 1968...

A heart-rending inscription inside St Pancras Church

My wife requests that I inscribe something similar on her tomb...

The tomb of Mary Wollstonecraft & William Godwin in St Pancras graveyard

The curve of the new concourse at Kings Cross (the King was George IV) follows the line of the banks of the #Fleet, carved out long ago - apparently - by the grinding of a glacier londonist.com/2012/08/how-ki…

The Fleet Valley winds on from Kings Cross towards the Thames. The Metropolitan Line follows the line of the #Fleet, which was buried in a sewer. The earth from the excavations was carted to Stamford Bridge & used to build the terraces for @ChelseaFC

“At the junction with Frederick St, the #Fleet erupted from its sewer in 1862 during construction of the Metropolitan Line. In a final show of resistance it flooded the railway line to a depth of 10 ft all the way to Kings X, before it was wrestled into submission” - @teabolton

We pass Mount Pleasance Sorting Office, once the site of the chillingly named Cold Bath Fields Prison - compared unfavourably by Coleridge to hell... #Fleet

Conveniently adjacent to Smithfield Market, the #Fleet was long filled - as Swift put it - with “sweepings from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts & blood.’ It was also much used by gangs as a dumping ground for their victims: ‘a sluggish & plague-breeding sewer’.

The view of Rosebery Avenue from the course of the #Fleet shows how high the Victorian roads had to be built above the river valley

Listening through a grate outside the Coach & Horses on Warner St to the waters of the #Fleet rushing down to the Thames

We pass under Holborn Viaduct, built on the site of a medieval bridge that was as far as boats sailing up the #Fleet could get.

We cross #Fleet Street: site of a ford until 1197, when it was replaced with a bridge. When built a replacement over the Fleet after the Great Fire Of 1666.

And so we come to journey’s end: the mouth of the #Fleet. In the Middle Ages it was dominated by 2 monasteries - the Whitefriars & the Blackfriars. It is the latter, of course, which gives its name to the bridge which crosses the Thames where the Fleet debouches

And now I must rush to Broadcasting House, where I am due to speak on the Moral Maze tonight!

Sweet Fleet, run softly, till I end my song...

Huge thanks to @teabolton, whose excellent book London’s Lost Rivers provided us with our guide to our walk along the #Fleet. Next up - the Effra...

OMG. CANNOT. WAIT #Effra