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Category: london

Lost Rivers for Underground Energy

Jason Kingaquifers, case study, city, climate, energy, infrastructure, london, maps, research, rivers, streamsLeave a Comment on Lost Rivers for Underground Energy

I was combing through the writings on my original Hidden Hydrology blog, with the idea of bringing in some of the ‘best of’ content still relevant today. This 2018 post, “Underground Energy For London” was worth reconsidering, focusing on a report that identified a significant potential latent in hidden hydrological systems, to provide heat and cut carbon emissions through tapping into underground lost rivers. The specifics came from a group called 10:10 Climate Action, who focused on using London’s now-buried rivers as a source of power, asking the question:

“But what if we could use them to power our city once again? Through the magic of heat pumps, London’s lost rivers could provide low cost, low carbon heating and cooling to the buildings above. They could help us solve the big challenge of decarbonising heat. There’s huge potential for London’s lost rivers to provide clean, efficient and reliable heating for the city – tackling climate change and air pollution. And of course the same technology can be used in other underground waterways like sewers in towns and cities across the country.”.

Unfortunately, the report, nor the group 10:10 Climate Action as far as I can tell, is no longer available online from the original source. I tracked down an online version, so you can download a copy here.

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The use of heat pumps is fairly common practice. Extracting heat from these now piped subterranean waterways, and using this heat for buildings and other uses is more novel, offering an potential alternative power option for London and other cities.

The idea was well-covered at the time: “Lost rivers could heat London to cut capital’s emissions” (The Guardian, 07.08.18) “ noted the potential for underground heat to “cut capital’s emissions”, and the articles “Underground river could heat Buckingham Palace” (The Times, 07.16.18) and “Could Buckingham Palace Be Heated By A Lost River?” (The Londonist, 07.11.18) echoed this, focusing on Buckingham Palace as a visible example of the potential for heating buildings. “London’s lost rivers could heat the city, reduce emissions.” (Earth.com, 07.10.18) took a slightly different slant, focusing on helping curb carbon emissions, similar to the article “A new way to tackle climate change? Heat from underground rivers in London could help cut the capital’s emissions, claim campaigners.” (Daily Mail, 07.09.18).

The concept had also already been implemented in some areas, including Borders College in Scotland, tapping into local wastewater, and the State Ministry Building in Stuttgart, Germany, which tapped into flow from the Nesenbach, a buried river adjacent to the site.  A map extracted from the report (image below) shows a number of the potential sites in London, including The Effra, Stamford Brook, The Tyburn, and the Fleet, all of which have potential sites for the use of these technologies.  Specific places include Buckingham Palace (mentioned in a few of the articles above), which would tap the Tyburn, Hammersmith Town Hall which flows above Stamford Brook, and other buildings like schools and site elements like heated swimming pools, which is currently being done in Paris. 

The following video explains the idea in a specific location, showing an example of a London pub that sits atop an ancient subterranean water source, using this heat pump technology for its heating and cooling for beer and wine.

There are questions on the cost-benefit, and each of these systems would require some infrastructure to be viable, however, it’s pretty exciting to consider the potential of these systems to contribute to energy savings and reduction of carbon emissions. The potential for savings of energy is significant. The Times article noted: “A report from the Greater London Authority concluded that water-source heat pumps could meet 4.8 per cent of London’s heat demand, with sewer heat offering another 6.7 per cent.”

The idea of giving back some of their benefits to the city, even while still being buried underground, is also worth exploration.  While the original report is over six years old, I think the idea is still one that seems worthy of revisiting around the globe, identifying projects that could utilize similar techniques, as we search for expanded tools to battle climate change and rising energy costs. I’d be interested to know if any readers know of other cities today using this for district or building scale systems, or projects that have explored this idea of tapping buried rivers in water and sewers for heating and cooling. Let me know if you have any that come to mind.

Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 11/16/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.

Literary Hidden Hydrology

Jason Kingcultural, general, history, landscape, language, literature, london, places, riversLeave a Comment on Literary Hidden Hydrology

There is a rich literary history around hidden hydrology, which I was reminded of by the recent publication of the novel “There Are Rivers in the Sky” by Elif Shafak. The book has gained attention for its interwoven stories around water, and, notably, specific references to ‘lost rivers’.

The novel includes three storylines from different eras, with the characters of Arthur from 1840s London, Narin from 2014 in Turkey, and Zaleekah in 2018 in London, each occupying a specific water-based narrative. As summarized in the Penguin Random House blurb:

“… There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”

I’ll try to avoid any spoilers, while I discuss how this relates to hidden hydrology. It’s an engaging tale, touching on the discovery of the Epic of Gilgamesh, a reference to A.H. Layard’s ‘Nineveh and Its Remains’, mudlarking and toshers, some cameos like John Snow and his ‘Ghost Map’ investigations of water-borne cholera near the Broad Street pump, some interesting ideas of water dowsing, and my new favorite cuneiform symbol for water.

Symbol for Water via Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid

AQUATIC MEMORY

The wildest idea is ‘aquatic memory’, which provides some narrative drive, alluded to in the description above, that a single drop of water connects multiple people through time. The ideas in the book were formulated by Zaleekah’s fictional mentor, who was ultimately disgraced by his pursuit of what others considered unreliable pseudo-science, as noted (187):

“…under certain circumstances, water — the universal solvent — retained evidence, or ‘memory,’ of the solute particles that had dissolved in it, no matter how many times it was diluted or purified. Even if years passed, or centuries, and not a single original molecule remained, each droplet of water maintained a unique structure, distinguishable from the next, marked forever by what it once contained. Water, in other words, remembered.”

The idea seemingly makes for compelling storytelling, however, it seemed a bit underdeveloped in the novel itself in my opinion. It does provide a loose framework for the same water molecule’s memories (loosely based on the real-life ideas of Jacques Benveniste), but fails to explain what this idea means beyond the 3 main characters and their narratives. There’s a ‘summary’ table of the water path through the story at the end, but, to me, it didn’t really mean much and the result is a lot of missed potential.

LOST RIVERS

The lost river content was also somewhat underdeveloped, reading as minimal and tangential anecdotes that seem forced into the story versus being fundamental to any of the plotlines. Zaleekah, the character supposedly studying this phenomenon honestly didn’t do a lot, although she had the most potential to expand the ideas of how lost rivers connect with aquatic memory and even the larger storyline. Her role in the story becomes muddled with a failed marriage, and dysfunctional family dynamics that connect to the greater story in the end but don’t contribute much more.

She makes the bold claim early on, “I’m part of a project — we’re collaborating with scientists worldwide to help restore lost rivers.” (151) but never really discusses what they do in a meaningful way, or how it relates to the story. It leads to a forced conversation touching on the River Bièvre in Paris and giving a cursory ‘these are everywhere’ sort of list, and how we buried them.

She later discusses London’s lost rivers, which reads like a guidebook entry (or a marginally more interesting recounting of Barton’s Lost Rivers of London), rather than something enlivening the story. For instance, this passage (183-184):

“Then there is the River Effra in South London, concealed and culverted, nowadays a conduit for drainage and waste matter, silently coursing under not only houses and offices but also cemeteries, whence it sometimes unearths and carries off buried coffins. There is also the Tyburn, a source of delicious fresh salmon in the distant past, though barely remembered these days, as it flows unseen and unheard underneath celebrated urban landmarks. The Walbrook, once a sapphire-blue river running through the Roman fort of Londonium into the Thames, shimmering like the wing of a dragonfly, provided residents with clean water; now it only feeds into a malodorous sewer.”

Later on, she discovers a note on her desk in her office when searching for something, with the following jotted down: (186)

“HOW TO BURY A RIVER

  1. Build concrete troughs along both sides of the riverbed.
  2. Add a roof to the troughs.
  3. Encase the river completely on three sides, turning it into one long, winding coffin.
  4. Cover the roof with earth, making sure no trace is visible.
  5. Build your city over it.
  6. Forget that it was there.”

It’s all sort of random and snippets like this are a throw-away with little context and less relationship to the overall narrative. There’s nothing to follow up on why we should care and how lost rivers tie into the bigger story. I will admit that having a specific agenda about how lost rivers and hidden hydrology fit into fictional narrative structures is a little pedantic. So my defense is that, on the whole, I liked the story, while I was also disappointed in how these subjects of water and lost rivers were incorporated.

My disappointment comes from a desire to see more opportunities in embedding the ideas of lost rivers into creative writing, to inform and engage a larger audience about the concepts. I am always excited and a little worried when I hear about examples that promise such. Much of the writing around lost rivers only appeals to a very interested subset of people, so connecting these ideas to mainstream culture, popular media, and entertainment could help spread the word to folks who would not be interested otherwise.

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THE EXPANDED LITERARY FIELD

On that note, the first time I connected with the idea of hidden hydrology in literature was a few years back when I wrote an essay related to a novel by Ben Winters from 2016 “Underground Airlines.” The story features Pogue’s Run, a hidden urban stream in Indianapolis, which plays a vital role in the narrative of the novel. Since then, I’ve been collecting previous explorations of literature around hidden hydrology, where subsurface waterways play a significant role in the plot and action of the story.

From a purely hidden hydrology, there’s a short list of titles, some of which I’ve read and others I’ve found or have been clued into by research or other readers. This resulted in a short loose working bibliography.

  • There are Rivers in the Sky (Shafak), 2024
  • Rivers of London (Aaronovitch), 2016-2024
  • Underground Airlines (Winters), 2016
  • The City of Ember (DuPrau), 2013
  • Dodger (Pratchett), 2012
  • Montmorency (Updale), 2003
  • Neverwhere (Gaiman), 1996
  • The Doom of the Great City (Delisle Hay), 1880
  • Journey to the Center of the Earth (Verne), 1864
  • Les Miserables (Hugo), 1862

This investigation intersects with much broader and fascinating areas of inquiry like the Underworld, and a literary subgenre known as Subterranean Fiction. Beware of rabbit holes, as these yield wild threads like Hollow Earth theory (which makes for great fiction). Works span centuries and many genres like sci-fi and fantasy, delving into the literal underworld below the surface. However they do not always specifically touch on waterways, so not all are relevant.

HELP EXPAND THE LIST

The list above is modest, so I hope to expand this initial catalog and explore the full spectrum of possible literary hidden hydrology references. Let me know if you have other examples or favorites you’ve encountered where the concept and context of buried creeks, sewers, and lost rivers play a part in novels, stories, or other fictional works. I would love to expand my overall library of options, hear your thoughts, and explore more deeply.

Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 10/15/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.

Captured Streams

Jason Kingcity, daylighting, history, infrastructure, literature, london, portland, research, rivers, zurichLeave a Comment on Captured Streams

In response to the NY Times article related to the Tibbetts Brook daylighting to boost capacity for sewers and some discussion on Twitter, Adam Broadhead (@losturbanrivers) sent a great 2013 journal article in Water Research, “Captured streams and springs in combined sewers: A review of the evidence, consequences and opportunities” by Broadhead, Horn, Lerner, which addresses the issue with some research. The article is paywalled, but let me know if you’d like a copy and I can email it to you.

It’s more of a deep dive into some of the research, but the general thrust is that water intrusion in systems has reduced capacity, and that the intentional encasement of streams and springs in pipes reduces the capacity of infrastructure which has a significant economic, environmental and social implications for the infrastructure, as it reduced the baseflow reduces the overall effectiveness of gray infrastructure.

The typical mechanism for intrusion into pipes is related to cracks, which is assumed to be residual groundwater entering pipes in ‘dry weather’ times, where there should be no flow into the system. Groundwater intrusion should not be discounted, but there are other sources of intrusion that are typically not considered, specifically “capture of streams and springs” that impact combined systems capacity.

The figure below shows the change in baseflow and runoff response due to the intrusion of the additional water from streams and springs.

The paper continues to identify the issue, also highlighting the lack of research on this topic, and answers some fundamental questions about how this capture occurs, how to identify it, what is the magnitude and impacts, and ways to manage it. Always interested in language, one item of interest explores key terminology – culverting, extraneous water, groundwater infiltration, sewer inflows and the key element, stream and spring capture. The wordplay is compelling, with some uniquely evocative terms emerging such as parasite flow, misconnected surface waters, sewer leakage and illicit connections all telling a story of water that is in a sense, ‘out of place’.

The how and why is interesting. The most basic version is to take a free flowing stream and incorporate it into a pipe (Type A in graphic above). “Urban streams were frequently culverted and buried, especially during the period of rapid urban expansion in the 19th century.” It’s not a stretch to show that the literature confirms that “old sewers were frequently the covered channels of brooks”, as early development merely hid the streams, but didn’t generate as much additonal flow to overwhelm the piped streams. This happened with additional development and expansion of cities and impervious zones. Often the buried streams become the names for the sewers themselves, such as those specifically mentioned in the article like Garrison Creek Sewer in Toronto and Minetta Brook Sewer in New York.

The baseflow in the streams, unlike sewage, is clean, so the incorporation into pipes and transportation to wastewater treatment plants means additional strain on purification infrastructure with water that doesn’t need treatment. This relates to the original conceptual idea of the Tibbetts Brook example today, with a clear path to remove ‘clean’ water that is reducing combined capacity and overall resilience to deal with larger storms.

Additional capture happens by interception (Type B in graphic above). The most visible example is the massive interceptor sewers in London developed by Bazalgette in response to the ‘Big Stink’ in the the 1850s, acting as a divertor to sewage entering the Thames. This model was copied around the globe, with numerous examples of streams disconnected from their outfalls and no longer making it to their original destinations in the name of water quality. Portland has a large, expensive example of this called the Big Pipe. Many other cities have similar interceptor systems.

Another mode of is by directly capturing and draining spring and seeps in combined sewers, in this case through leaky pipes with cracks and joint openings. Beyond being shoddy construction, this was intentional, designed as deliberately leaky to provide drainage in areas of perched or high groundwater. The 3 types are summarized graphically above, showing variations of combined sewers and stream capture typologies.

The connection here to lost rivers is outlined in the article: “Not all streams and springs are fully captured by these modes of entry. London’s lost rivers diverted into the High, Mid and Low Level Interceptors to the WwTW, (wastewater treatment works) such as the Walbrook, Fleet, Tyburn and Westbourne, do still discharge to the River Thames during heavy storm events, where the original courses of the rivers serve as CSOs.” This is also a pattern in the United States (New York) and Asia (Tokyo) where many of the piped streams never make it to their original drainage water bodies.

The 19th Century was a historic time for burial of waterways, as the rate of urbanization outpaced the ability of natural streams to remove wastes. Thus: “Urban streams that had become open sewers were frequently culverted and buried to provide more sanitary conditions, and this concept is a popular narrative predominantly explaining the conversion of many smaller watercourses to combined sewers (type A).” Beyond the main drivers of pollution reduction and removal of the streams to create land for development, the introduction of seeps and springs provided some necessary baseflow to ‘flush’ sewers as a method of ‘self-cleansing’, and thus was in common practice in sewer design.

It is obviously difficult to identify these captured streams, as they exist under the surface and the original hydrology has been erased. This is where hidden hydrology methodology, using mapping and other primary sources to show where routes of surface flows used to run. Often these were parts of combined sewers, but in some cases the streams were just dumped into pipes. While still important, it is less impactful to combined systems and wastewater treatment facilities as they are often just draining into the same waterbodies that the original creek flowed in to.

Urban exploration is another method of finding routes of streams mentioned (which I’ve covered in depth here in many cities). Mapping of sewers and streams supplement this work, with many cities having robust sets of maps dating centuries in the past to fill in gaps of knowledge of what was there and what was replaced. More sophistical modeling can be helpful, but simple cues like place and street names and other subtle clues can also be extra data to be used to pinpoint old routes of waterways. As mentioned:

“Relevant information on lost urban watercourses helps to establish the pre-development hydrology, but the usefulness of historic maps depends strongly on spatial and temporal coverage, with many older towns and cities having altered the hydrological landscape before the first available maps. The smallest streams and springs may also not be marked on maps at certain scales, particularly intermittent and ephemeral channels.”

The ability to quantify these captured streams is equally challenging – there is adequate knowledge of the phenomenon but lacking in specific data on volumes, routes and baseflow contributions to the systems. While even knowing the levels would be helpful, measuring current flows will yield radically different results today versus pre-development conditions. When quantities can be estimated, the economic benefits can be modeled to see impacts, but this is not common. How the water is distributed is also variable and depends on unique qualities of each stream.

The major consequences are two-fold. First, the introduction of clean stream water increases the amount of water handled by treatment plants, which has larger infrastructure costs in terms of facility construction and operations. Second, loss of surface streams has impacts to habitat, less ecological connectivity, and overall less ecosystem services, including amenity value. It can even have secondary impacts on urban heat by reduction of linear corridors of riparian vegetation. While the anecdotal benefits of ‘flushing’ using the streams was developed early-on, it’s not understood if there’s actual value of these approaches.

A summary of the impacts on the industry are included:

  • More land and costs needed for wastewater treatment infrastructure
  • Additional operational costs and use of chemicals
  • External impacts, such as public health impacts of CSOs, impacts due to loss of ecosystem services due to diversion of local streams, and economic losses.

There’s a more detailed cast study from Zurich, Switzerland that’s worth exploring more. In summary, the authors mention the city as a pioneer through “innovative management of capture streams and springs in combined sewers,” typically through separation using daylighting. This was driven by understanding the “lost social ad environmental values of watercourses that had become culverted and had historically been used as wastewater sewers.”

The benefits to the public include amenity spaces, and also more efficient infrastructure through additional capacity. This dual benefit is key to the Stream Concept, and became codified into planning policy and laws. The dramatic reducing in streams due to urbanization is similar to other cities, with development displacing larger areas of open space and burial of streams, many of which were converted into combined sewers between 1850 and 1980 as seen in the figure below.

The transformation of streams from this point in 1980 shows the changes in approach used by Zurich in the Stream Concept. This is outline in the existing condition (1) which includes stream capture in a traditional combined sewer system, a severing of the hydrological system and piping; the first transformation (2) consisting of separation of the combined systems to removed capture streams, and eventually the final phase of the Stream Concept (3) “separating captured streams and springs into daylighted urban watercourses.”

An important aspect which reflects my approach allows for hybrids of ‘daylighting’ without and zero-sum outcome of daylight or nothing, but allow for a continuum of potential options – as I’ve discussed, between art and science (abstraction vs. pure restoration) or more specifically, interventions that can be located in a triad of artistic, design, or engineering. The street streams, per the articles:

“Naturalistic stream channels and riparian corridors are used where possible, but where space is limited, engineered “street streams” are installed. The latter may have a lower ecological potential, but nevertheless offer architectural value in urban areas.”

The two different typologies seen above show a ‘naturalistic’ approach in a more suburban location (Albrisrieder Dorfbach), versus the more urban ‘street stream’ in Zurich (Nebelbach). The street streams may mimic green infrastructure solutions like green streets as linear corridors, with the conceptual difference of being able to be hydrologically connected from source to outfall to re-connect the old stream corridor, versus merely being site specific insertions.

The article concludes that there is value in disconnecting streams and springs from combined systems (or if we could spin time back, not connecting them in the first place), with economic, environmental and social benefits. The diversion of clean, constantly flowing water out of combined systems provides capacity, and by daylighting (vs. piping) these streams, we have the additional ecosystem benefits. The need for more research is mentioned: “By using daylighted urban streams to convey the clean water baseflow, highly promising social and environmental benefits
have been suggested; an independent peer-reviewed appraisal of this approach would be strongly recommended.” Since this is a 2013 article, I’m curious what additional scholarship has emerged in the last decade.

I also am intrigued by two of the US examples identified in the article were in Portland and Seattle, both of which mention combined sewers with springs running in them. Worthy of more exploration, but both of these do related to a location where a stream was buried and integrated into the pipe infrastructure of the city, which was common in many streams in both cities (for instance Ravenna Creek in Seattle, or Tanner Creek in Portland). Perhaps with the continual increasing impacts of climate change on these systems would drive another look at some daylighting to increase the resilience of the pipes to handle more capacity, while also providing habitat, amenity, recreation, and a range of other essential urban ecosystem services?

Full Citation: A.T. Broadhead, R. Horn, D.N. Lerner, Captured streams and springs in combined sewers: A review of the evidence, consequences and opportunities, Water Research, Volume 47, Issue 13, 2013, Pages 4752-4766, ISSN 0043-1354, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2013.05.020

Header Image: Figure from the article: Historic loss of Zurich’s streams (water in blue) with increasing urbanisation (grey).

Illustrating London’s Lost Fleet River

Jason Kingart, canals, city, history, landscape, london, rivers, streams1 Comment on Illustrating London’s Lost Fleet River

I’ve written pretty extensively here about London’s Lost Rivers, however this recent article in the Telegraph “The forgotten Fleet – London’s lost river as it used to look” offers some really awesome historical imagery worth sharing. (all images via the article, which also have extensive captions).

Artistic depiction of the Thames in 30BC – the Fleet is the bottom right
Londinium, the walled Roman City, with a Roman ship docking at the entry to the Fleet
Painting of Hampstead Heath – the headwaters of the Fleet
Fleet flowing through Kentish Town

The legacy of hidden rivers lives on in names, as mentioned in the image caption:

“The river may have disappeared from view but evidence for its existence remains in the modern place names. Kentish Town is probably derived from Ken-ditch, meaning “bed of a waterway”, and for centuries it was a pleasant riverside village known for its clean air. Spring Walk, Anglers Lane, Brookfield Park and, further downriver, Turnmill Lane, sit on the path of the Fleet.”

The location near Bagnigge Wells – which was also a great Spa destination
Battle Bridge (now Kings Cross) in 1810, per the caption: “referred to an ancient bridge over the Fleet where Boudica’s army is said to have fought the Romans.”
Confluence of the Thames at the Fleet in the 17th Century

The caption to the above image alludes to the eventual demise of these rivers through constant fouling due to rapid development, “As London grew, the river became increasingly a sewer, filled with ‘the sweepings from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts and blood,” according to Jonathan Swift.” Adding to this, a passage from Alexander Pope:

“To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams / Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames / The king of dykes! than whom no sluice of mud / with deeper sable blots of silver flood.”

The development beginning to cover the “Fleet Ditch” in 1812, covered by the mid 19th Century.

Great to see the evolution of one stream – and London, perhaps more than any city, seems to have extensive documentation that tells these visual stories with a richness that adds to the maps and words. Plenty more images on the original article, and load more history of the Fleet and it’s adjacent developments in the captions, as well as this previous article by Tom Bolton from last year.

HEADER: Fleet Market, between Holborn and Ludgate Circus, 1736 – image via Telegraph

Geoarchaeology and Lost Rivers

Jason Kingarchaeology, city, creeks, geology, history, landscape, london, maps, places, precedents, research, riversLeave a Comment on Geoarchaeology and Lost Rivers

Our understanding on the arc of history around hidden hydrology is informed with maps and accounts from early explorers and settlers to areas, augmented with records, diaries, and oral histories. Often this neglects and misses the valuable stories of indigenous inhabitants of areas, and leaves us with a significantly shorter timelines for reference. The role of archaeology is vital to unlocking the layers of hidden hydrology that don’t emerge from these illustrative written histories, so I was really intrigued with a recent tweet from the Museum of London Archaology (MOLA) (Twitter: @MOLArchaology) that told of their current work, called London’s lost river: the Tyburn.  From their site, the project is the result of “…a team of expert geoarchaeologists  whose work is helping us to understand London’s lost rivers. As an educational charity, we want to share what we’ve learnt, so please join us to explore the story of this long-lost river.”   

Using the interactive ESRI Story Map, MOLA developed a narrative to describe the process and some of the key findings.  Much of the work is conducted along with construction sites, which gives an opportunity to look below the surface while excavation is happening.  The River Tyburn flowed on the north bank of the Thames, and most famously, was routed and defined the space called Thorney that Westminster Abbey was located, seen in this view circa 1530.

The origins of the river are tied to the longer history of the Thames, which is illustrated (see header image) and reaches back to the last glacial period of 11,500 years ago.  From there in, “…this new epoch, known as the Holocene, the Thames began to take the shape we know today, but many channels still criss-crossed the river’s floodplain within the wide gravelly valley. One of  these channels was the Tyburn, which flowed into the Thames.”   In this zone, there are hundreds of sites, or ‘deposit logs’ that are recorded, and these are modelled to create a snapshot, particularly focusing on the depths of land (depicted below as green – high ground and purple – low ground.  From this model, “projected possible courses for the River Tyburn, following the lowest-lying areas of the modelled 11,500-year-old topography.” with a caveat that “the river would have migrated over time.”

Drilling down (literally) into the specificity of the deposits shows the ranges of material and how it can inform, looking at “ancient flora and fauna” and focusing on things like Diatoms, Pollen, and fossils of things like “Ostracods, the remains of small crustaceans, can indicate salinity, water depth, temperature, water acidity/alkalinity”.

Below is “…a cross section, or transect, running north–south from Westminster to Vauxhall Bridge, along the north bank of the Thames. This connects deposit sequences recorded in trenches and boreholes, and helps us look at these sequences over wide areas.”

They also connect their study with the work of Barton and Myers 2016 book ‘The Lost Rivers of London‘ (see here for a post on the same), which speculated on a number of scenarios for the Tyburn, and various routes.  There’s some graphic things I’d change here (namely it’s hard to read the Barton and Myers layers) but the concept is interesting, to overlay varying studies and ‘proof’ the concepts of routing. In essence, does the data reflect the speculation on routes, either reinforcing or disputing what was speculated?  The below map is a composite of this

There’s links to some coverage in London Archaeologist, such as a 2014 article in which “… Tatton-Brown and Donovan used historic documents and maps to suggest that the medieval waterways separating Thorney Island from Westminster were man-made and that the Vauxhall Bridge route was the original and only course of the river.”  The 3D views of the route and the illustration of the provide a speculative view of the area.  From the site:  “Our topographic model supports Barton and Myers’s suggestion that discussing two distinct branches (towards Westminster and towards Vauxhall Bridge) is an over-simplification of what was probably a more complex delta-like network, as shown [below] (artist Faith Vardy).  This geoarchaeological study provides a baseline for reconstructing the evolving landscape; when combined with historical records and archaeology, even more detailed models could be created. The research done by others, such as Tatton-Brown, which focuses on later periods, may be supported by geoarchaeological work undertaken in the future.”

The concept of geoarchaeology is pretty fascinating as well, and worthy of some further exploration.  In the interim, you can check out the MOLA site for what their team does, which focuses on using “…auger or borehole surveys and interpret the archaeological soils and sediments retrieved, allowing us to reconstruct past landscapes and environments.”  The reason for this particular subset is to pick up “…where the archaeology is too deeply buried for traditional excavation techniques to succeed. It is also a cost-effective archaeological evaluation tool and geoarchaeological deposit modelling, which maps buried landscapes and deposits.”  This is relevant as the surface remnants of these, but the underground deposits, so they work in a “…wide range of depositional environments, including alluvial floodplains, fluvial environments and estuarine/intertidal zones. Using palaeo-environmental proxy indicators, such as pollen and diatoms, we reconstruct past environments. Our specialists also use a range of sedimentological techniques.”

These techniques don’t answer every questions, but coupled with expertise and interdisciplinary research, enables us to see further, and deeper than previousl.  The role of archaeology and geoarchaeology in hidden hydrology is vital, as shown above. While we often rely on maps, photos, sketches, and written histories to reconstruct places,

HEADER:  Artist’s reconstruction of a cold climate, braided river, such as the Late Glacial Thames (artist Faith Vardy) – via

Underground Energy for London

Jason Kingcity, climate, creeks, energy, history, infrastructure, london, research, rivers, streams1 Comment on Underground Energy for London

A recent story picked up by multiple sources focused on the potential for hidden hydrological systems to provide heat and cut carbon emissions through tapping into underground lost rivers.  The crux of the argument is that heat pumps could extract heat from these now piped subterranean waterways, and this heat could be used for buildings and other uses, offering an alternative power option for London.  The Guardian offered the potential for heat to “cut capital’s emissions”, and the Times and The Londonist echoed this, focusing on Buckingham Palace as a visible example for the potential for heating buildings.   Mother Nature Network and Earth.com a took a slightly different slant, focusing on helping curb carbon emissions, similar to the coverage from the Daily Mail about using heat from underground rivers to “tackle climate change”.

The specifics come from a group called 10:10 Climate Action, and a recent report highlights ‘Heat seeking in London’s lost rivers’, and looking at the variety of now-buried rivers as a source of power:

“But what if we could use them to power our city once again? Through the magic of heat pumps, London’s lost rivers could provide low cost, low carbon heating and cooling to the buildings above. They could help us solve the big challenge of decarbonising heat.  There’s huge potential for London’s lost rivers to provide clean, efficient and reliable heating for the city – tackling climate change and air pollution. And of course the same technology can be used in other underground waterways like sewers in towns and cities across the country.”

 

y for heat pumps to transfer heat from one place (the subterranean pipes) to another, specifically buildings or other areas via refrigerant, where it is compressed to form heat at the top of the loop, and then expanded to cool down and capture more of the heat.  A primer on heat pumps, as well as a video showing how heat pumps work also helps explain the concept, along with this diagram.

This is already happening in some areas, including Borders College in Scotland, tapping into local wastewater, and the State Ministry Building in Stuttgart, Germany, which is tapping into flow from the Nesenbach, a buried river.  A map extracted from the report (image below) shows a number of the potential sites in London, including The Effra, Stamford Brook, The Tyburn, and the Fleet, all of which have potential sites for the use of these technologies.  Specific places include Buckingham Palace (mentioned in a few of the articles above), which would tap the Tyburn, Hammersmith Town Hall which flows above Stamford Brook, and other buildings like schools and site elements like heated swimming pools, which is currently being done in Paris.  [click to enlarge map below]

A video from 10:10 explains this in a bit more detail, showing an example of a London pub sits atop a lost river and uses this heat pump technology and for it’s heating and cooling.

There’s questions on the cost-benefit, and each of these systems would require some infrastructure to be viable, however it’s pretty exciting to consider the potential of these systems to contribute to energy savings and reduction of carbon emissions, giving back some of their benefits to the city, even while still being buried underground.  I’m sure we’ll hear more about this process in cities around the globe, all of which could utilize similar techniques, as we search for expanded tools to battle climate change and rising energy costs.

HEADER: Image of the now subterranean mouth of the Fleet, via The Guardian

Sennett & the Cult of Bazalgette

Jason Kingcity, creeks, history, infrastructure, london, rivers, streamsLeave a Comment on Sennett & the Cult of Bazalgette

Today I picked up a copy of Richard Sennett’s new book ‘Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City’. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, April 2018).   From the website: “Building and Dwelling is the definitive statement on cities by the renowned public intellectual Richard Sennett. In this sweeping work, he traces the anguished relation between how cities are built and how people live in them, from ancient Athens to twenty-first-century Shanghai. He shows how Paris, Barcelona, and New York City assumed their modern forms; rethinks the reputations of Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, and others; and takes us on a tour of emblematic contemporary locations, from the backstreets of Medellín, Colombia, to the Google headquarters in Manhattan. Through it all, he laments that the “closed city”—segregated, regimented, and controlled—has spread from the global North to the exploding urban agglomerations of the global South. As an alternative, he argues for the “open city,” where citizens actively hash out their differences and planners experiment with urban forms that make it easier for residents to cope. Rich with arguments that speak directly to our moment—a time when more humans live in urban spaces than ever before—Building and Dwelling draws on Sennett’s deep learning and intimate engagement with city life to form a bold and original vision for the future of cities.”

While the book aims to hit on a much broader range of topics that we typically cover, the first part resonated on the Hidden Hydrology front with some interesting analysis of the work of that prominent figure in the history, that of Joseph Bazalgette.  For a bit of a primer to the unfamiliar, check out this good post about Bazalgette as “Scientist of the Day” and also behold his amazing mustache below.

Sennett discusses this in Chapter 2, which looks at the evolution of cities in the mid-19th Century, which was a turning point for urbanization that was leading to overcrowding, pollution, and disease, many issues of which had been somewhat unprecedented in modern cities.  As he mentions, “Plague had always been a danger in cities — the Black Death wiped out a third of Europe in the late Middle Ages. As early modern cities became bigger and denser — and so more shit-and-urine filled — they became fertile gardens to feed rats and rat-borne disease.” (21)

Sennett mentions that the first actors in combating this trend were not doctors, but engineers.  Working to improve the quality of urban life, he mentions the ideas around paving of streets as a way to encourage cleaner urban areas, as well as the development of the pissoir  a simple yet seemingly necessary advance in urban sanitation.   The effect of these improvements were functional, but as Sennett points out, the ripple into more livable cities was a unique cross benefit.  As quoted:

“… a knock-on effect of removing shit and urine from the street was that it made the outdoors more usable as social space; the huge outdoor cafe fronting a boulevard was the sanitary engineer’s gift urban civilization.” (23)

The idea that engineering was the major driver for public health in the 19th century, and that it had the residual impact of creating better cities, was often “accidential and unintentional” as Sennett mentions, but often it did come with a direct purpose.  This action-oriented and experimental approach was best embodied by Joseph Bazalgette, and his engineers, working incrementally and often experimentally, invented technologies through trial-and-error:

“The engineers working for Joseph Bazalgette, for instance, when building London’s sewers in the 1850s to 1860s, invented such technology as solid-waste screens in the course of fitting sections of piping together, experimenting with several different filter designs, rather than knowing right away which size to use.  Bazalgette was what to do overall: the realm of the sewer — the realm of Les Miserables — had to be made into a network of pipes mirroring the streets above.”  (24)

The concept of experimentation was an interesting point, as he “often built sewers with pipes larger in diameter than seemed to be needed, saying that planning could not predict future needs,” (24) and as Sennett contends, “One of the truly admirable aspects of Bazalgette’s character is that he exuded Victorian confidence without claiming that he knew exactly what he was doing, believing only that he would get it right in the end.  This is more largely true of civil engineers in the city at the time; their technical knowledge was open-ended.” (25)

The simplified version of the Bazalgette plan shows the series of cross connected interceptors that are all funnelling pollution away from the Thames.

The other element brought up, which deserves more thinking is the “…experimental process required the engineer-urbanist to develop new visual tools,” and that “the messy compound forms along a dense, disordered street requires a different means of representation” (24).

Classical techniques such as plan and section worked to build the infrastructure, as seen above, however they failed to work to communicate concepts as “the infrastructures the engineers were building below ground were invisible” (25).

An image I did find that hints at these new techniques, via the Linda Hall Library, shows the use of cutaway section-perspective to outline the multiple layers of surface and subsurface systems working in tandem.

While I don’t purely think that Bazalgette was motivated by anything beyond doing the right thing, I think the idea of ‘what was the right thing?’ is perhaps the bigger question.  The fact that this ‘modernization’ is often times purely reflected as only a positive move, rubs me the wrong way, as it discounts all the other impacts.  Maybe there was a lack of understanding or lack of imagination at the time, and that burying urban rivers, creeks and streams was the only means available to solve the issues of pestilence, smells, and disease.

The implications, in London, but also world-wide, as these approaches were copies and applied often elsewhere around the globe, had such massive ecological consequences on the hydrology of cities that is, without hyperbole, impossible to reverse. A river or creek sacrificed into a pipe is not the same as a more holistic plan understood and valued the myriad benefits of urban streams and saved these waterways while protecting public health. Sennett’s take that the engineers, as mentioned in the photo caption “Joseph Bazalgette, the finest engineering of the modern city…” (Fig. 1) were saviors and their focus on public health saved many lives is indisputable.  But the cult of this benefit misleads about the cost, and it would be great to counterpoint this message with the worldwide implications of what he and many future engineers wrought on the urban ecology everywhere.

 

HEADER:  London Sewer Plan Map from 1882 – via Wikipedia 

London: Mapping Lost Rivers

Jason Kingart, city, creeks, explorations, history, infrastructure, london, maps, places, projects, rivers, streams1 Comment on London: Mapping Lost Rivers

So much London – and time to wrap up the comprehensive overview and move on to other things.  For the last post, similar to New York, I’ve compiled a fun summary of the maps, depicting hidden hydrology and others, that existing in London.  Some maps and mapping projects have already been discussed in the previous posts, either in the plethora of books, as well as some of the art & explorations.  The article from the Londonist entitled “The Best Old Maps of London” is a good starting point, which highlights the quintessential map, John Roque’s map of 1746

Close ups reveal the detail of this map, which is widely cited as a resource of locating lost rivers.  For locating these historic maps, there’s no better resource that Locating London’s Past, which “This website allows you to search a wide body of digital resources relating to early modern and eighteenth-century London, and to map the results on to a fully GIS compliant version of John Rocque’s 1746 map.”

Going back a bit is a great Agas Map depicting “Civitas Londinum is a bird’s-eye view of London first printed from woodblocks in about 1561. Widely known as the “Agas map,” from a spurious attribution to surveyor Ralph Agas (c.1540-1621), the map offers a richly detailed view both of the buildings and streets of the city and of its environment. No copies survive from 1561, but a modified version was printed in 1633…”   An online version of the map, offers the ability to zoom in and highlight specific features.  An excerpt of the map shows the level of detail (and lots of boats).

And while not a historical map, this creation and update by the Londonist of Anglo-Saxon London take us in a time-machine “…showing the London area in Anglo Saxon times (roughly speaking, 500-1066AD). It’s pieced together from many resources, showing our guess at the roads, rivers, forests and marshland that characterised the region. The main purpose was to highlight the many villages, hamlets and farmsteads whose names are still part of modern London.”  A snipped below shows the idea, and a high-res download is also available.
And similarly illustrative, I really love this sketch (although I’ve yet to find what it is from) from a Twitter post by Poly-Olbion, captioned “Where the Thames and the Isis marry.”  Anyone help me out on a source, would be grateful.
A post on “London Maps You Should Know” from the London Historians’ Blog, has a long list of additional historic maps, including another old one, coming soon after the Agas map, by the Civitates Orbis Terrarum I by  Braun and Hogenberg depicts London circa 1560, published first in 1572.
The London Sound Survey has tons of great resources including their Sound maps, as well as amazing historical maps of London.  The 1849 Cruchley map has a pleasing aesthetic, as seen below:
This one via JF Ptak Science Books, is of “A Great Map of the “Other” London Underground: the Sewer System, 1990“, which shows the snarl of underground and some great history. “The map appears in the Report of the Results of an Examination Made in 1880 of Several Sewerage Works in Europe, by Rudolph Hering, in the Annual Report of the National Board of Health 1881 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1882), pp. 99-223.”

A fun and more clear version is this map Underground London, which does include items like “Underground River” and Sewer, takes a different graphical style.  “This light-hearted map, originally produced for Heritage magazine, charts the secrets under London’s streets in the style of Frank Beck’s famous tube map. It has since been taken up by Metro, the Independent on Sunday and thetube.com.  Illustrative rather than definitive, it includes the (now-closed) Post Office Railway, a selection of the capital’s buried rivers, Joseph Bazalgette’s sewer system and some of the curiosities of the Northern Line. In a similar style is a Beck-style map of London’s canals and navigable rivers, currently not publically available pending discussions between British Waterways and Transport for London.”

The hand-drawn versions are also fun, including this one of the Fleet River, via Londonist, shows a version involved “…a bit of research to trace the path of the lost River Fleet as it meanders under the streets of London. As you can see the map is completely hand drawn in pencil as well as the street indicators. The river is indicated by the rubbed out streets.”

As I’ve mentioned previously, the aerial perspectives are fun, and this on from the British Library of a “Balloon View of London, from the North” from 1851 provides a nice snapshot of the rapidly industrializing city.

Other locations for online maps come in a diversity of sources, including Subterranea Britannica,  Layers of London,  from the National Library of Scotland, (NLS) In the broader context, the Ordnance Survey (OS) is a great resource for modern and historic maps, and also check their GB1900 site that is an effort to “We need help in collecting all the names of places and features in Britain from the Ordnance Survey’s six-inch to a mile maps of around 1900”.  A version of London here from the NLS site, shows a highly detailed OS map from 1888-1913 timeframe, and below a 1:25000 version from the 1937-1961 range, depicting a similar level of detail as USGS maps.

And the realm of climate change would not be complete without one of Jeffrey Linn’s Spatialities view of sea-level rise inundated transformation of the Thames into “London Bay”.

A few outside the realm of hidden hydrology, but worth a reference, you can read about British maps and map-makers    as well as check out some other maps.  An interesting initiative for London National Park City, which is an interesting endeavor that hits on corridors and green spaces.  Some background via Geographical “‘The only difference really between a national park and a national park city,’ explains Daniel Raven-Ellison, Chief Exploration Officer of the National Park City Foundation, ‘is the acknowledgement that the urban environment, the urban habitat, the urban landscape, is just as important as rainforest, or polar regions, or a desert area. It’s not more important, it’s not less important, but we shouldn’t alienate ourselves from nature just because we are the dominate species within this landscape. “

Another that’s pretty interesting is London North/South, which shows a color coded split at the Thames, along with some reference points like stations. Not sure the usefulness, but it’s a beautiful map.

Another resource is the London Tree Map “This map is an initial attempt to visually present London tree data. The majority of the data is for street trees but also includes some park trees. The map shows the locations and species information for over 700,000 trees. The recent London iTree report estimated that there are over eight million trees in London, so the map is only a partial illustration of trees in London.”

An interesting bit of history, in terms of practical mapping, and a precursor to our handheld maps we use today, a post from The National Archives, a  “…leather glove painted with a map of London landmarks and was designed to help fashionable ladies find their way to and from the Great Exhibition held in London’s Hyde Park in 1851.”

 

HEADER:  The Agas Map of Early Modern London 

 

 

London: Art, History, Exploration

Jason Kingaquifers, archaeology, art, city, creeks, cultural, explorations, film, general, history, infrastructure, landscape, literature, london, maps, photography, places, precedents, rivers, streamsLeave a Comment on London: Art, History, Exploration

As January is quick turning into London month, we’re wrapped up on the summaries of available books on the subject, including works by Barton, Myers, Bolton, Talling, and Fathers, running a gamut of approaches to walking, studying, and mapping Lost Rivers.  I’d also be remiss if I failed to call back a 2016 post on another take on the subject, Iain Sinclair’s 2013 book ‘Swimming to Heaven: London’s Lost Rivers‘ which rounds out my collection on the subject.  The amazing amount of hidden hydrology literature provides a solid foundation, however, it is merely the tip of a massive iceberg visible layer of a vast and sprawling underground complex of content, and a starting point for discussing many of the other resources and discussion around the subject, including art, history, exploration, and maps.

A quick search of London and Lost Rivers or something along those lines yields plenty of material, including additional resource from the sources as diverse as London Geezer, which contains an extensive amount of information, to city specific hidden hydrology projects such as the Lost Rivers Project in Camden. A lot of ink (at least digitally) has been spent on this topic, with articles from BT like “8 of London’s lost rivers you probably didn’t know about” to BBC “The lost rivers that lie beneath London?“, the Telegraph (authored by none other than Tom Bolton, “The fascinating history of London’s lost rivers“, and perhaps the most prolific, the Londonist which covers this topic often, with titles like “The Secrets of London’s Lost Rivers” and info on specific rivers like “Counter’s Creek: In Search of London’s Unknown River” (authored by David Fathers) to a multi-part “Lost Rivers from Above: The Tyburn“.

Without going into extravagant detail and barrage you with too many links (there are over 100 I have at this point), it’s safe to say that London is by far the city with the most coverage, and it continues to emerge (such as this interactive virtual reality tour on the Guardian of London Sewers), showing that it’s a topic that continues to intrigue people.  For now, we’ll focus on some projects that work directly in the realm of these lost rivers, interpreting them directly through exploration and indirectly through art.

ART/EXPLORATIONS

Much of the interpretive work around hidden hydrology comes from art, in it’s various forms, and much of the art includes exploration, so I’m combining these two ideas in one here. We’ve previously featured artist Cristina Iglesias and her new installation Forgotten Streams in London as more of a site specific example, interpreting the Walbrook in water features outside of the new Bloomberg London HQ.

A spatial approach comes from Sandra Crisp, and her video project from 2010-2012 “Mapping London’s Subterranean Rivers”.  This work was “originally made as a site-specific installation for a group exhibition 2010 held in the semi derelict basement under Shoreditch Town Hall, London”  A soundtrack was added later and you can check out the full video at the link above.

A short blurb (with my one small edit) from the site: “The film allows the viewer to fly through a 3D map of London, revealing the sites of ancient and subterranean rivers based on research using old maps and books such as Nigel Nicholas Barton’s ‘The Lost rivers of London’. Evoking existing and long disappeared waterways that bubble unseen beneath our feet. Including; The Fleet, Tyburn, Westbourne, Quaggy, Counters Creek, Neckinger and more…..”

A detail shows the intricacy of the layering, in this case highlighting the River Wandle – but the stills don’t do it justice – check out the video for full effect.

Crisp also breaks down the research on the piece, where she shows a hybrid version of Barton’s map that was the basis for the piece, along with some of the ‘making-of’ info that’s pretty interesting.

Amy Sharrocks, a London based artist, sculptor and film-maker, created “London is A River City” from 2009.  As she mentions in her bio “For the last four years I have been making work about Londoners and our relationship to water, inviting people to swim across the city with me, floating boats to drift on swimming pools, lake and rivers, tying people together to trace lost rivers and re-create a memory of water.” 

The project included walks of lost rivers, which involved using dowsing as a methodology for walks of the Westbourne, Tyburn, Effra, Fleet, Walbrook, and Neckinger rivers.  Each of these are beautifully documented (with PDFs as well for download), and worth exploring in more detail.  Per her statement “Why I’m Doing it?“, she mentions:

“Tracing these rivers has been a process of layering: new stories over old, our footsteps over others, roads and railways over rivers. Uncovering a past of London I knew nothing about. Connecting to things submerged beneath our streets has uncovered a currency of the city, and enabled a kind of palm reading of London. 

The idea of walking is vital to this endeavor, coupled with the dowsing gives it a pyschogeographic slant. From her site:  “These rivers lost their claim to space in this city, long ago paved over, with their inconvenient tides and smells, to make way for faster roads and railways. These river walks have championed a human speed, that stumbles, stops to look at things, slows down when it is tired. There is a connection to the speed of water, a meandering dérive to battle the rising pace of modern life. We took the measure of London by our own strides, pacing out the city at our own speed.”   Flash-enabled website headaches aside, it’s a good project worth some time to dive in.  Read some coverage from the Independent on the Walbrook walk.  You can see more about some other work as well at SWIM .

Another project, this time with a poetic bent, comes from via ADRIFT, a project by poet Tom Chivers envisioned as a “…personal interrogation of climate through poetry.”, where he “sets out to explore climate as culture, mapping out the territory of climate science within urban space.”  The site has the full list of writings, and a nice archive of some related materials are also on the site.  It’s a project of Cape Farewell, which has a great mission of “bringing creatives, scientists and informers together to stimulate a cultural narrative that will engage and inspire a sustainable and vibrant future society”, namely climate change.  An image from the ADRIFT site as part of a photoset “Walking the Neckinger: Waterloo to Bermondsey”

A graphic design work Hidden Rivers of London by Geertje Debets takes a different, more visual approach, as “A research on the letterpress technique, while developing the concept and design for the visualisation of the underground rivers of London.  London’s terrifying under half… Sometimes you can catch a glimpse of this underground life, but when you look better, you find the underground world everywhere, especially the underground rivers. The names of the underground rivers are used in street names, places, houses, companies, schools and orchestras. The locations of these places show you how the river floats.”

The work of Stephen Walter got a bunch of press a few years back, with this map of London that “…traces the lesser known streams, sewers, springs and culverts of the capital in intense, hand-drawn detail.”   Some enlargements of these maps, via the Guardian:

Another of Walter’s work that is worth seeing is the 2012  “London Subterranea“, which “…aims to shine a light on this clandestine infrastructure and it presents perhaps the first comprehensive map, open to the public, which places so many of its features alongside each other. It geographically tracks the routes of London’s Lost Rivers, its main sewers, the tube network and it’s ‘ghost’ stations including the Crossrail project. It also pinpoints archeological finds, ruins, known plague pits, secret governmental tunnels, the Mail Rail and the Water Ring Main tunnels. Epithets to the ‘underworld’ of crime, and the scenes of notable killings such as the acid-bath murders get a look in. So too does the site of the infamous Tyburn Tree and its many buried corpses that still lie in its wake undiscovered.”  

On the topic of the subterranean, photography as well plays a part, with many of the London area rivers featured in a National Geographic photo-essay, “11 Rivers Forced Underground“.  A book on the subject I’d like to pick up, Subterranean London: Cracking the Capitol (2014), is described via a blurb from Amazon:  “Bradley L. Garrett has worked with explorers of subterranean London to collect an astonishing array of images documenting forbidden infiltrations into the secret bowels of the city. This book takes readers through progressively deeper levels of historical London architecture below the streets. Beautifully designed to allow for detailed viewing and featuring bespoke map illustrations by artist Stephen Walter, this unique book takes readers to locations few dare to go, and even fewer succeed in accessing.”

The publication had some acclaim, with one of the images winning an architectural photography award, along with some controversy as noted in the CityLab article “The Photography Book London Officials Never Wanted You to See” which outlines some of the sticky issues of urban exploration, access, liability, and such. Content addresses more than just hidden waters, but does include some amazing photographs as seen below.

This resource on London sewers from 2011 that looks to no longer be actively maintained, is ‘Sub-Urban: Main Drainage of the Metropolis‘ which looks at the drainage via sewer exploration and photography: “Alongside more traditional study and research practices, such as access to archival materials and the use of other historic and literary resources, we apportion equal importance to the hands on scrutiny of our subject matter. Taking time to explore, investigate and photograph London’s sewers affords us a greater understanding of the often complex architecture and gives practical insight and knowledge that cannot be gained from any amount of time spent thumbing through books and documents.”  There’s a number of links on the site to other endeavors, as well as some great imagery, both current of their explorations, and some historical work, along with the timeless phrasing of the section “Close Encounters of the Turd Kind“.

And when you’re done exploring, you can always grab a pint at Lost Rivers Brewing Company and drink the range of available beers inspired by the rivers themselves, and perhaps peruse Ben Aaronovitch’s 2011 book “Rivers of London“, where he created a story around various water deities and river spirits on the Thames and areas of London.

HISTORY

The concept of hidden hydrology is intertwined with history, so threads weave through all of these art installations and explorations.  The history of the development of London is fascinating and overwhelming, but there are some great resources like British History Online, which has resources on the topic like the six volume “Old and New London” written in the late 19th century, to sites like Connected Histories, which provide timeline based search tools, or links from the London Historians’ Blog.

On the topic of Lost Rivers, the history of the Big Stink is pretty key historical moment, which was a vital impetus behind what became the modern sewage system and led to the demise of many urban rivers.  The idea of this also led to “a piece of Victorian science fiction considered to be the first modern tale of urban apocalypse”, William Delisle Hay’s 1880 novel “The Doom of the Great City”, which is covered in depth via this article in the Public Domain Review.

You can also access primary sources, such as  following along with Sir Richard Phillips as he explored the edges of London in 1817, in “A Morning’s Walk from London to Kew“.

Some visual history comes via ArchPaper “What a difference 400 years makes: Modern and medieval London contrasted in hand-drawn cityscapes” which takes historic drawing viewpoints and redraws them showing the current urban configuration.

A fascinating thread that came from some of the books was the legacy of Spas, Springs, and Wells that have been a long part of the history of London.  There are some good sites to engage with this history, such as London’s Holy Wells, or the resource Holy and Healing Wells, highlighting around around the globe, including London.  There’s some great documentation such as the book mentioned by Barton, Foord’s “Springs, streams and spas of London: history and associations” from 1910, and one mentioned to me by David Fathers, Sunderland’s “Old London’s spas, baths, and wells” from 1915, both great resources for hidden hydrology.  An illustration from Foord, showing a 1733 engraving of one of these places, Tunbridge Wells:

The history of the Thames River Postman is a bit more random but worth a read, outlining H.L. Evans who delivered mail along the Thames. “The Thames Postmen played an important role connecting people who lived on the river with the rest of the world. They also became something of a local celebrity being a constant in the fast changing landscape of the river. Considering that the job was not without its dangers, it was remarkable that the Evans dynasty managed to continue for over a century.”

A visual resource COLLAGE, is an image database of over 250,000 images from The London Metropolitan Archives and the Guildhall Art Gallery, and also includes a picture map so you can locate them spatially in London.  A quick perusal found me in the Serpentine in Hyde Park, which showed this 1795 “View of Cheesecake House, Hyde Park.”

The concept of the larger regional picture is the website Vision of Britain over time, which is full of great information, and specific to the landscape is the book ‘Hidden Histories: A Spotter’s Guide to the British Landscape‘ by Mary-Ann Ochota which helps decipher the immensity of history through interpreting landforms and other traces.  From a review in Geographical:

“There is so much history to the British landscape. What with its stone circles, hill forts, mines and umpteenth century cottages, the land is marked with centuries of use. This can make it hard to read, like a blackboard written on hundreds of times and never erased”

As you can see, plenty of great work has happened and is still happening in London.  This is not an attempt to be comprehensive, and there’s tons more out there on specific rivers and locations, so consider this a teaser of sorts and google away for more.  I’m trying to find a simple way to share the mass of my resources and links online for further reading and reference, so stay tuned there, and future posts will likely expand on this rich history around hidden hydrology.  As a last reference to London, the last post in the series for now, following the lead of New York City, will be on maps.

 

HEADER:  Hand drawn map of the Rivers of London by Stephen Walter.

London: Walking on Water with Myers

Jason Kingaquifers, city, creeks, geology, history, infrastructure, lakes, london, maps, places, rivers, streamsLeave a Comment on London: Walking on Water with Myers

The final installment of books looking at London hidden hydrology is Walking on Water: London’s Hidden Rivers Revealed, by Stephen Myers.  As part of the parade of books on the topic published in 2011, this takes a very different approach than the tour/photo guides of Talling and Bolton, reflecting Myers’ background as an engineer.  If you’ve checked out the previous post on the Barton book, you’ll recognize some of this similar analysis, as the 2016 3rd Edition of ‘The Lost Rivers of London’ includes Myers as a co-author, and seems a hybrid of this book and Barton’s earlier versions.

On that note, Myers approaches the project from that engineering perspective, and its loaded with info.  A blurb from Amazon:  “London’s hidden – or lost – rivers are a source of fascination. This book concentrates on seven North London rivers – the Fleet, the Walbrook, the Tyburn, the Westbourne, Counter’s Creek, Stamford Brook and the Black Ditch. The author, a professional water engineer, describes their sources and traces their individual histories, setting out their influence on the development of London and their use and abuse by society, eventually leading to their disappearance. The original watercourses of each of the seven rivers are shown on London street maps to a detail never previously attempted. Research to enable this included extensive on-site analysis of their river catchment topographies and desk-top studies of numerous old maps and literary references. Walking on Water ends on an optimistic note. Drawing on his professional experience, the author proposes a practical, affordable and exciting approach to recreating riverside parks and walks in the London boroughs through which the hidden rivers passed, which uses their source waters to refresh the lakes of the Royal Parks.”

Myers breaks down the history of hidden rivers, discusses a good amount on geology and the form of the rivers, and discusses their ‘uses and abuses’, all info covered in other places, but again with a unique focus here.  The second half of the book includes specific rivers, an overall map shows some of the North Bank Rivers (click to enlarge) covered, including all the usual suspects from other books.

Also of interest is a comparative profile, showing the central London Rivers.  The relationship of the rivers in terms of altitude from headwaters to outfall is a complement to plan relationships, and particularly in the context of London where all the rivers flow into the same source, the Thames, it allow for some good comparison.

The development of the City of London is of great interest, named the chapter ‘A City Grows, Its Rivers Beggared’ and how this rapid urbanization impacted the rivers both in demand for fresh water and degradation due to pollution.  The diagram below (which would have aided with some color and texture) shows the expansion of the city, notably the sprawling growth between 1800 and 1900 (marked by the gray inner zone and outer black line).

And while the chapter on ‘Mapping London’s Hidden Rivers’ is helpful in outlining the methodology, the results that come from this work are less than stellar.  All the diagrams and maps here are black and white, using a base map derived from the Geographers A-Z Map Co (similar to Barton & Myers) which again offers legibility and usability issues that leave a lot to be desired.  While the maps in the 2016 book were in color, they seemed overly detailed and took away from the routes of the rivers. In this case, black and white flattens it all out and their small size makes the cramped and difficult to use.  A good hybrid would be a black and white base with the paths drawn in color, perhaps?

As Myers makes a point multiple times, “it was a considerable surprise to learn that there were no large-scale maps, readily accessible to the general public, which showed their routes through the metropolis.” (14)  Perhaps Barton’s original 1962 book insert doesn’t totally qualify as ‘accessible’, but it does, and much more successfully, provide a large scale map of the routes that Myers was missing. He does mention obviously using Barton, and also references a book I had not heard about previously, London Under London by a very appropriately named duo for the task, Trench & Hillman.  Another reference was to a future volume, “Walking on Water – the Hidden Water Walks” to follow this one, but I’ve not found any mention that that project came to fruition.  So perhaps that was going to be the vehicle for better, user friendly maps, that never materialized.

For each river chapter, he does include the sections of the routes, again in very small size, which I think are very helpful for visualizing the routes of streams.

The final chapter does offer a strategy for a project entitled the Hamstead Water Conduit, where he speculates on a proposal that could “recreate short, clean stretches of the Central London rivers – more particularly the Fleet, the Tyburn, the Westbourne, and possibly, the Walbrook, the City of London’s own river.” (200).  He goes on to mention that “the source waters for the Fleet, the Tyburn and the Westbourne rivers are the springs and surface water which drain naturally from Hampstead Health.  These are the only source water of the hidden rivers that have been protected from pollution and which remain eminently accessible today.” (201)

A diagram shows a proposed route, which connects existing daylit portions with new or reconfigured surface channels in places, fed by the springs mentioned above.  While not a continuous river, the result is a linear water course that works with the boundaries of the existing city fabric while taking advantage of opportunities to create surface waters.  A “…‘feel-good’ project” but one with environmental benefits, flood mitigation, recreation, tourism, and infrastructure reduction. As noted by Myers, the social benefits as well, allowing us to “lift spirits in depressing times, but also contribute a small stimulus towards better economic times.” (208)

A more technical diagram shows some of the interconnections between the old and new systems, as well as the make-up water using existing groundwater stores (a metaphorical routing) and creating a water balance that kept water uses constant while using excess flows to ‘restore’ river segments.

 

The strength of this book, as indicated in the above analysis, is a solid, technical background in both the formation of rivers, the geological and hydrological framework in which these waterways emerged, the development implications that drove them underground, and some realistic considerations on why it would be difficult to daylight them, as they have been so fully consumed into the existing sewer systems. But also, some defensible and plausible daylighting strategies that take these multitude of factors into play.

The glossary ‘Watery Definitions’ on page 20 is a good touch, and discussion of what is a creek, stream, river, etc. is one that few tend to delve into in any detail.  As he mentions, due to size and typology, “it might seem more approrpriate to make reference to London’s ‘Hidden Streams’ rather than to London’s hidden rivers, as the flows in them could not really be described as ‘copious’ and their water surface widths generally lay in the narrow band of between 2 and 6 metres.  However, these watercourses have been referred to historically and collectively as ‘rivers’, and so this book will perpetuate that possibly inaccurate usage.” (22)

The Disclaimer at the beginning was interesting as well, as it seemed appropriate for anyone with a background in design and engineering to include the cover-your-ass language about accuracy, liability and not using the information for specific purposes.  This shows up also in the later Barton & Myers version of Lost Rivers, but does bring up a point about representation and what it could mean.  The accuracy of old maps .  He also warns about sewer exploration, I guess as well a necessary caveat for disseminating this type of information.

Each book I’ve covered offers something unique to the conversation, and this provides a great resource for those interested in London, but also a wider context of the emergence of urban creeks and rivers which seem applicable to all places.  A level of technical rigor also makes this a valuable companion to other resources that focus on places, history, landmarks and culture.