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To Croydon, there to start tracing the line of the river #Wandle!
The #Wandle is supposedly named after Wændle, a Saxon adventurer who also gave his name to Wandsworth, but otherwise seems not to have intruded upon the pages of the history books.
Even in the 11th century the #Wandle was a hive of industry (the Domesday Book records 13 mills along its length) and by the time of the Industrial Revolution it boasted 90. Long a polluted sewer, it is now one of the most improved rivers in the whole of Britain.
In honour of William Morris, whose Merton Abbey Works stood on the banks of the #Wandle, my wife & I are wearing the great man’s designs for our walk of the river. #VeryMiddleClassTweet 
Based on the fossil evidence, the #Wandle valley once boasted hippopotami.
This is a cause I would like to see @GeorgeMonbiot take up...
This is a cause I would like to see @GeorgeMonbiot take up...
Here - where the Swan & Sugarloaf Hotel (now a Tesco) was built - is the source of the #Wandle. It seems a long way removed from prehistoric hippos...
Southbridge Road commemorates the time in the early 19th century when 2 bridges crossed the trout-filled waters of the #Wandle as they flowed through fields south of Croydon
“A lovely rivulet, about 5 ft wide & from 1 to 2 ft deep, with a nice gravelly bottom for the trout to spawn in, & here they used to catch trout a foot long.” (1830) #Wandle
“Things modest, humble & pure in peace, under the low red roofs of Croydon, by the cress-set rivulets in which the sand danced and minnows darted about the Springs of #Wandle” - John Ruskin
This stretch of the #Wandle was once called Bog Island. When in flood, “the river would come up as far as the girths of passing horses” - @teabolton
Old Palace School, once surrounded by ponds. It originally belonged to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but the location was so boggy that it was sold in 1781. Henry VIII complained that it was “rheumatick, like unto Croydon, where I could never be without sickness.” #Wandle
Croydon Minster, as its name suggests, was originally a Saxon foundation. 6 Archbishops of Canterbury are buried here. The #Wandle - now buried beneath a 6 lane highway - was originally 20 ft wide & repeatedly flooded the graveyard, bearing off coffins on its turbid waters...
The dead of the First World War remembered by the banks of the #Wandle
#Wandle Park. The Wandle itself, which was only culverted in 1968, runs beneath the sweep of the trees. @teabolton reveals that there are plans to remove the culvert & return the river to public view.
#Wandle Park was once Wandlebank House, owned by James Perry, a newspaper editor, & one of the benefactors who bailed Emma Hamilton out of debtors' jail after the death of Nelson
Waddon Ponds, a sudden touch of the bucolic after the tarmac & concrete of Croydon. In the Middle Ages these were millponds, feeding a corn mill, & as late as the 1890s the area was used to grow watercress. It is full of happy water fowl... #Wandle
A small boy sees a swan. ‘Birdie!’ he cries in a rapture of delight. Then he sees 2 ducks. He pauses in wonder. ‘BIRDIES!’ Then a pigeon lands in front of him. ‘BIRDIE, BIRDIE, BIRDIE!’ he cries to his mother, jumping up & down with joy.
Ruskin would have been thrilled. #Wandle
Ruskin would have been thrilled. #Wandle
Woohoo - emerging from underneath an industrial estate, our first sighting of the #Wandle!
Beddington Mill - probably one of the four mills at Beddington recorded in the Domesday Book. This incarnation of the mill was built c. 1850, & only stopped working in the 1950s. #Wandle
Adorable. I do not feel like we are in London. #Wandle
Like a high water mark left by the past... #Wandle
We see our first fish! #Wandle
It is true, the waters are beautifully clear!
Carew Manor School. Carew Manor featured a 15th c great hall with a hammer-beam roof; it still survives. Nicholas Carew, an #EliteSportsman & favourite of Henry VIII, was accused of treason by Thomas Cromwell & sent to the block. #Wandle
Nicholas Carew’s son, Francis, was a keen gardener & planted oranges, pomegranates, myrtle, and lemons at Carew Hall. He also planted what are supposed to have been England’s first orange trees by the banks of the #Wandle, from seeds given him by Raleigh.
Before becoming a school, between 1866 & 1939, Carew Hall was the Royal Female Orphan Asylum. This is a memorial to the girls who died there. Their names, almost faded, are still just about legible. #Wandle
We wander along the banks of the #Wandle, through what was once the Carews’ deer park 🦌
A family of dinosaurs on the #Wandle
Lots of coots with their chicks as well... #Wandle
The #Wandle is getting wide now
We meet our first fisherman - & he’s had a successful afternoon #Wandle
Sweet #Wandle, run softly, till I end my thread.
These were the grounds of an Elizabethan manor named Mitcham Grove, once owned by Clive of India, purchased with his colonial loot. #Wandle
Meeting with my friend who lives by the #Wandle, I wordsworth away about its beauty. He responds by telling me about a headless corpse found floating in its waters after a gangland killing.
Merton Priory - founded in 1117, the alma mater of Thomas Beckett, the scene of Henry VI’s coronation - stood here until Thomas Cromwell did for it. (This, a pathetic chunk of the precinct wall, barely hints at its scale & wealth.) #Wandle
This stretch of the #Wandle, between Morden Hall Park & Merton High Street, was once fished by Nelson. In 1801, Emma Hamilton found a large house, Merton Place, right next to the river, & Nelson paid £9000 for it. A tributary, forming a moat, was named by Emma ‘the Nile’.
Merton Place was demolished way back in 1823, but to this day the entrance to the grand drive that once lead up to it from the London Road is marked by a pub called The Nelson Arms. #Wandle
The #Wandle is, to coin a phrase, a river of contrasts. Passing through Earlsfield, there is on one side a horse; on the other, a power station.
Oh good. We’re not lost. #Wandle
We pass Garratt Mills - what was, following its foundation in 1600, the second largest supplier of gunpowder in Britain, & then, in the 19th century, began specialising in snuff. #Wandle
And so we come to Wandsworth - ‘the enclosure of Wændel’... #Wandle
This, until its closure in 2006, was the Ram Brewery - supposedly Britain's oldest brewing site in continuous operation, reaching all the way back to 1550. Eheu fugaces... #Wandle
And so the #Wandle heads in the last stretch of its journey towards the Thames. Even here, amid the pipes & the cranes, there is a swan...
Farewell, sweet #Wandle, as your waters join with those of the heedless Thames! What a journey it has been...
Anyone tempted by this thread to walk the #Wandle - go for it!There are lots of guides - most notably @teabolton’s wonderful London’s Lost Rivers: A Walker’s Guide & this: wandlevalleypark.co.uk/map/
The walk is longer (12 miles) than the Fleet, Tyburn or Westbourne - or even than the Effra. But as well as extra exercise, you get the pleasure of walking through London along the banks of a river with lots of wildlife - and not a little history. We had a lovely day! #Wandle
