The River Fleet

As you stand on the north end of Blackfriars Bridge and look away from the river up towards Farringdon, it’s hard to imagine that at one time you would have been standing bang in the middle of the New Canal, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, built in the late 17th century, and forming part of the River Fleet which was at that time one of London’s main waterways. Now it is totally submerged into London’s intricate network of underground tunnels.

One of the first sections to be covered over was Wren’s revamping of the lower stretch. It was built, as was St Paul’s Cathedral, in the aftermath of the Great Fire Of London in 1666 and was said to be inspired by The Grand Canal in Venice. It had four decorative bridges, including one at Fleet Street and another which now forms the Holborn Viaduct, and was architecturally a magnificent spectacle. However, Wren had not counted on the torrent of waste and offal that came downstream from from the meat market at Smithfield – it was basically an open sewer, and this impinged drastically on potential gondola activity. The New Canal was in place for less than 100 years before being covered over.

Further upstream the river formed what is now Farringdon Road, but this section was converted into a sewer when work commenced on the Metropolitan Line between Kings Cross and Farringdon. Again there are very few signs that a river ever existed in this area – just one tiny hint, a road called Fleet Square just next door to the Eastman Dental Hospital on Grays Inn Road.

Our next clue is behind Kings Cross Station. Battle Bridge Road is named after a bridge which originally crossed the Fleet. As Camden Town expanded an anchor was discovered buried in this area, suggesting that it was possible to reach at least this far by boat. Further north, Royal College Street is now built on top of another section, and around Kentish Town Road it ran along a similar course to the Regent’s Canal, which was excavated in 1812 and again relegated the river to the status of a sewer.

North of Camden there are two tributaries. One of these originates on the Bathing Pond on the south east corner of Hampstead Heath, flowing under Dartmouth Park, and through Kentish Town. The other starts in the pond at the south of Hampstead Heath, under the train station, down Fleet Road and Malden Road before meeting up with the other at Castlehaven Road, just north of Camden Lock. Both stretches would have no doubt been very pleasant babbling brooks at one time, but they both disappeared under suburban sprawl at the end of the 19th century, as Hampstead became more than just an village for the upper classes.

The Millenium Dome

The story of the Millenium Dome on the North Greenwich peninsula has been characterised by intense disagreement, blame and counter-blame, bitterness and apathy. Constructed on the River Thames’s largest derelict site, it came in at a cool £758 million and was open for exactly one year. It now stands as a monument to a “once-in-a-liftetime experience”, while it awaits news of its fate.

Part of the raison d’etre of the Jubilee Line extension from Charing Cross to Stratford was to connect the Dome with Central London, and local residents are clearly still immensely grateful for this, but it does expose the site around the Dome as a glorified bus depot. The beautiful station at North Greenwich still has posters informing tourists of how they might reach other London attractions, but 90% of people passing through it are merely using it as a gateway to homes in Thamesmead and Bexleyheath. The map of local information ominously excludes the Dome site as an area out-of-bounds, in the same way West Berlin used to be excluded from East Berliners street maps.

The area is eerie in the extreme. The Dome looks as magnificent and imposing as it ever did, but now utterly deserted and surrounded by kilometres of padlocked blue fencing and acres of red tarmac, patrolled within by a Group 4-marked security vehicle manned by a bored individual who is clearly desperate to try some wheelspins, and without by a solitary skateboarder or inline skater, practising their moves in a space bigger than they’d ever get at their local park.

Skirting around the fencing to the south of the Dome, you reach the Thames Cycle Route which hugs the river bend and allows you to walk right around the complex. You’re reminded of London’s past status as a busy port as you sit on the deserted benches: the wharves of Silvertown on the bank opposite, innumerable small boats moored to buoys, and above all the smell of the sea. Along the riverbank is the Millenium Jetty, also closed but containing an enormous sculpture by Antony Gormley, and just around the corner at Blackwall Point there’s another, by Richard Wilson. At dusk you can stand here and have your breath taken away by the lights of three enormous buildings opposite: Canary Wharf and the HSBC and Citigroup towers.

Drawdock Road takes you on to the station, past the Tunnel Avenue Industrial Estates and back to the couple of dozen people still waiting for their bus connections. Maybe when the construction of the environmentally-friendly Millenium Village is completed, the area will feel more vibrant and deserving of the immense amount of money spent on regenerating it; but right now, sadly, the Dome does feel like the most enormous of white elephants.

County Hall

As you’re waiting in the queue to begin your ascent above the Thames on the magnificent London Eye, be sure to cast a glance to your left at the former seat of London government, County Hall. The London County Council was based there fom 1922 until 1965, followed by the Greater London Council until 1986 when it was abolished by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government after a series of rows involving the high taxes of London’s wealthy suburban population being used to subsidise what were then seen as “loony left” schemes to benefit those on lower incomes in more deprived areas.

The building still seems proud of its history, with large golden letters displaying the above dates on the side facing the Houses Of Parliament, but since the GLC vacated it has undergone something of a personality crisis. For the first seven years it lay empty, then in 1993 it was bought by Japanese company Shiriyama Shokisan. Since then portions of the building have been sold off piecemeal, creating a not entirely pleasant melting pot.

The finest rooms and the river views are now owned by the upmarket Marriott Hotel, offering rooms from £150 to £800 a night. Round the back on Belvedere Road, you can stay in the considerably more austere Travel Inn, offering views of very little for a more reasonable £80. The 750ft walkway between the hall and the river features plaques advising that “the selling of merchandise is strictly prohibited”, although they are obscured by a multitude of hot dog stands and souvenir stalls flogging their wares. This side of the building has a parade of the most bizarre mish-mash of attractions. The London Aquarium with its tanks of gently gawping marine life is flanked by the truly hideous Namco Station, promising “3 floors of fun” and delivering 3 floors of bumper cars, bowling and burgers. Above it is the “Flex’n'Fly”, a bungee-cum-trampoline contraption around which bored parents gaze up at their screaming, bouncing youngsters, secretly hoping that the ropes will snap and sent them sailing over County Hall with a surprised look on their faces. There’s a chinese restaurant, a fitness centre, an empty room where the Football Hall Of Fame stood for a short time, the incongruous Dali Universe celebrating the work of the the Spanish surrealist, the offices of the Diana Princess Of Wales Memorial Fund, and so on.

The GLC was said to have failed because it couldn’t be all things to all Londoners. The owners of County Hall could be said to be trying to accomplish this very thing, except of course it’s primarily driven by profit, and so we’re left with a magnificent, historic building that no longer has a clue what it’s doing.