Thread by @holland_tom

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

There is a palpably boggy & incipiently riverine quality to the ground underfoot. Despite all the draining of Branch Hill Pond, the #Westbourne oozes still...

We pass a house where Paul Robeson lived between 1929 & 1930, while playing Othello in the West End. Whatever else the #Westbourne may be, it is no Ol’ Man River...

Rushing waters! We hear the sound of the #Westbourne for the first time!

Massively exciting! This dip in the Finchley Road is the dip of a river valley: the unmistakable sign that the #Westbourne is passing underneath the tarmac & concrete...

Paul Robeson was not the only giant of 20th century music to have lived above the #Westbourne...

In 1815, this stretch of the #Westbourne was so rural that the inhabitants of West End Hall claimed to have heard the firing of cannons at Waterloo. H/t @teabolton

These were once the Decca studios where, in January 1962, the Beatles failed their audition. “We don’t like their sound & guitar groups are on their way out.” #Westbourne

A trace element of the time - not so very long ago - when the #Westbourne wound here through pastureland

And so we reach Kilburn - as this stretch of the #Westbourne has been known since at least the 12th century. Cuneburna gave its name first to a hermitage in the reign of Henry I, & then to a priory. It was this priory which gave its name to Abbey Road (as in the Beatles)

St Augustine’s, Kilburn - aka ‘the Cathedral of North London’. When opened in 1879, its spire was the tallest in London. It’s very beautiful!

This was the track where Roger Bannister practised before running his 4 minute mile. Fortunately, it’s since been turned into something much more useful... #Westbourne

Warwick Farm Dairies, built in 1882 by J. Welford & Sons, dairymen to Queen Victoria, & in service, apparently, until the 1980s. The developers have since made a total pig’s ear of it. #Westbourne

I'm up & down the Westway, in & out the lights
What a great traffic system, it's so bright
I can't think of a better way to spend the night
Than speeding around underneath the yellow lights.

I learn from @teabolton that the Westway was opened by Michael Heseltine #Westbourne

The #Westbourne flows directly under Hallfield Estate, Berthold Lubetkin’s modernist development built in the 50s directly in the river valley, & continues down Gloucester Mews West

Along this stretch of the #Westbourne, when it flowed through the open fields north of Hyde Park, the brook was known as the Bayswater

Elms Mews was supposedly, back in the Middle Ages, a place of public execution. Roger Mortimer (the earl responsible for having Edward II sodomised with a red hot poker) was hung, drawn & quartered here in 1330 by a youthful & vengeful Edward III #Westbourne

And so we come to Hyde Park & the Serpentine, created in 1730 at the behest of George II’s wife, Caroline, by damning the #Westbourne. Today the river flows through a sewer along the northern side of the Serpentine’s snake-like curve.

In the Middle Ages, the Knight’s Bridge crossed the #Westbourne amid wild and lonely swamps, much haunted by footpads and highwaymen

From this point on, the flow of the #Westbourne constitutes the boundary between Westminster & the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea

Just before Sloane Square, there is a garden with what appears to be a well directly over the flow of the #Westbourne (Massive h/t @teabolton)

The bus stop on Clivedon Place marks the spot where another medieval bridge crossed the #Westbourne. As its name - the ‘Bloody Bridge’ suggests - it was as notorious for robbery & muggings as the Knight’s Bridge.

At Sloane Square tube station, the #Westbourne crosses the District & Circle Line in an iron conduit. (The photo is courtesy of @Londonist, the tube station annoyingly being closed today.)

And so, with the pavilions of the Chelsea Flower Show behind us, we reach the Thames, & journey’s end. The mouth of the #Westbourne is roughly where the crane is. Annoying not to be able to see it closer up, but it’s been a fascinating walk, which I highly recommend to one & all!

To assuage our disappointment, we cross Chelsea Bridge, from where a second channel of the #Westbourne is visible - or at least, a canal into which a second channel of the Westbourne flows.

Huge thanks, as ever, to @teabolton’s incomparable guide, London’s Lost Rivers. Now that we’ve done the #Fleet, the #Effra, the #Tyburn & the #Westbourne, I need him to hurry up & write volume II!

FINIS