The Winchester

The River Fleet is the best known of  the ‘lost’ London rivers, being the one that was most central to the City of London. We’d dipped our feet in the waters of the Tyburn, Counters Creek and the Westbourne, but hadn’t really given much effort to The Fleet. I couldn’t say why. Danny had identified a set of lids which may have yielded, and the first we tried set us into the River. We headed downstream.

Being subject to the tides of the Thames, we were aware that the lower sections near the outfall would not be accessible at the time we entered the system, and as such, stayed in the upper sections until the tide would be at it’s lowest.

Advice that we’ve recieved varies from “The whole river is tidal”, to “It’s only the bit by the outfalls that’s tidal”, and as such, we decided to play it safe by finding out for ourselves. Lots of advice gets handed out with regards to drains, usually “Don’t do it, it’s not safe!”, but these environments are places where you can quite happily go with the knowledge of how they work and when the tides are down.

The brick stairs above were an interesting feature; a dead rat bounced down them while we walked. a £10, five million candlepower searchblaster came with us, and lit the place admirably. Shame it only lasted for about half an hour!

The river inexplicably split somewhat further from this point, after passing through a modern RCP. Workers lights hung on the walls and most likely, works had been occurring that day. There was no mist on the bulbs or power lines, and none of the usual drain grot you find hanging on the walls and rails.

The split ran for about 100 metres and dropped us close to the outfall. The relief was flowing heavily and having felt we’d had a successful time in the river, we decided to call it quits for this night. We intend to return to visit the outfall and lower section, and of course the upper. We may have hit just 10% of the river.

On a side note, earlier in the evening we checked out potential access to the Acton Storm relief, a relatively recent sewer pipe designed to take the strain from Counters Creek. A split square had a broken bolt and when we lifted it, the two parts disconnected and fell down the shaft. Each piece weighs 24 Kilos and to carry them up the ladder is hard work, but we did it!!!