Thread by @holland_tom

What better way to celebrate my birthday than to walk across a plague-stricken London to Stepney, there to walk one of the city's more obscure lost rivers? - a river so lost in fact that it is commemorated not as a river at all, but as a sewer: the #BlackDitch

Stepney is first mentioned c. 1000. Stybbanhyð - 'Stybba's landing place' - conjures up romantic images of a Saxon adventurer arriving off whatever Limehouse was called back then, and navigating the river that would one day come to be called the #BlackDitch

In 1913, an antiquarian claimed that the #BlackDitch had originally been called the Barge River, & cites "old records of place names in the parishes and hamlets along the Thames side" as evidence - but if these ever existed, they cannot be found today.

A map of 1746 shows Limekiln Dock, where the #BlackDitch joins the Thames, and a riverlike line inland from Limehouse, next to what is now Mile End Stadium, but back then was still open fields.

"In 1835 there was an old resident of Narrow-street, Limehouse, who recalled through his father, some strange yarns of smugglers and Revenue Officers on the Barge River when it was navigable for ships and boats for a considerable distance at some seasons and tides."

Even if the antiquarian quoted above is correct in calling the river the Barge, a map printed in 1799 suggests that it had already begun to be known as a "Common Sewer" by the end of the 18th century, and was vanishing beneath the eastwards spread of London. #BlackDitch

The #BlackDitch seems to have had three sources: the one at Stepney, and two east of what is now Brick Lane. The rivers which flowed from them are now - as @teabolton puts it in Volume 2 of his wonderful walking guides to London's lost rivers - 'spectral rivers'.

Perhaps, when these alms houses were built nearby the source of the #BlackDitch, it was still a stream & not a sewer...

Behind Stepney Green tube station, this picturesque spot is the likely source of the main tributary of the #BlackDitch. “The Horwood Map of 1799 includes a dead-end street called Spring Garden Court that has now become Stayner’s Road. Its name is highly suggestive” - @teabolton

What is now the Anchor Retail Park in the Mile End Road was, until 1975, Charrington’s Blue Anchor Brewery. The springs which fed the #BlackDitch would have provided the original brewery with clean water.

Beaumont Square - flattened in the Blitz - preserves just a hint of the open green spaces that once surrounded the #BlackDitch. The stream itself had been covered here by the 1790s.

Stepney Green leads down to Stepney Way, site of the splendidly named Great Place, a Tudor mansion supposedly much frequented by Thomas Cromwell. In the 18th C it was the site of the Spring Gardens Coffee House:
At Stepney now, with Cakes & Ale,
Our Tara their Mistresses regale.”

St Dunstan’s - “The Mother Church of the East End", & miraculously spared in the Blitz - was founded by the eponymous grabber-of-the-Devil’s-nose in 952, on the site of an earlier church. It features a 10th C Crucifixion, a Norman font, & a 12th C Annunciation #BlackDitch

I love these two recent additions: a medieval-style brass by the altar commemorating Father French, the rector during the Blitz, & his wife; & a spandrel over the door showing St Dunstan’s tongs #BlackDitch

“This window was unveiled by Admiral of the Fleet Lord Cunningham of Hyndhope and dedicated by the Lord Bishop of Portsmouth 13 February 1951.”

In 1890, it was reported of this stretch of the #BlackDitch that the inhabitants “think nothing of assaulting the policeman.”

Rhodeswell Common. The original Rhodes Well was a pond fed by the #BlackDitch.

Woohoo! “Twin drains mark the course of the storm sewer that carry the #BlackDitch.”

There’s no one like @teabolton for pointing out the must-see sights of London...

The rats along this stretch of the #BlackDitch - according to the Booth Report in 1890 - were “the size of cats”

Stink pipe! #BlackDitch

Into Poplar, where in 1832 the #BlackDitch was fetid with cholera. Locals complained that its waters were “liable to be choked up & the waters thereof rendered stagnant from dead animals, offal, broken vessels & other materials of an offensive kind.” It was covered in the 1860s.

Où sont les neiges d'antan?

All that remains of the White Horse, a pub demolished in 2003 that had stood on the site for over 300 years. A pond fed by the #BlackDitch stood in front of the pub, & was used to water livestock. A stone bridge, first mentioned in 1452, crosse the Black Ditch at this point.

The Limekiln Dock, the only stretch of the #BlackDitch that remains above ground. Beyond it - the Thames!

Journey’s end. #BlackDitch

And now to walk back home...

Many thanks to @teabolton for his chapter on the Black Ditch. His two books on London’s lost rivers are the essential guide to the subject. Just look at the commendation!

Some fascinating additional information here, that I will be sure to follow up. It makes me happy to think of the #BlackDitch, before it become the Black Ditch, flowing freely past Iron Age fortifications & enigmatic medieval structures.

https://twitter.com/ArchAdamLondon/status/1346392255477788672?s=20

All the walks along London's lost rivers have a melancholic quality, but the #BlackDitch especially. How sad that it should have vanished so utterly that it does not even have a name. All that is left of it is the memory of a putrid sewer.

https://twitter.com/WaterVole/status/1346442705098969089?s=20

Sombre especially to have walked the #BlackDitch amid a time of pandemic. 6,583 died in Stepney during the Great Plague of 1665; cholera was pestilential in the 19th century until the sewer was finally culverted in the 1860s.

I would also like to thank @DunstanSt for their wonderful welcome. Not only did they provide us with shelter from the cold, but they provided a completely eye-opening tour round the treasures of their church.

Ashamed I'd lived in London all these years, & had never been before.