RIVERS AND FORDS
And dream of London, small and white and clean,
The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green.
_The Earthly Paradise._
The city of London, when the Roman garrison was withdrawn from its walls,
occupied two hills on the north river-bank, between which ran the
Walbrook. The river, which still retains its British or pre-British name
of Thames,[28] spread, as may be seen from a geological map, over wide
tracts of morass, which at an early time began to be protected by
embankments, which are "no less than 50 feet above low water, and,
counting side creeks, 300 miles long."
The Chronicle of Bermondsey records of a flood in 1294-95:--"Then was made
the great breach at Retherhith; and it overflowed the plain of
Bermundeseye and the precinct of Tothill." The French Chronicle, written
some two generations afterwards, shows that this was still remembered as
"Le Breche." Edward I. at once issued a mandate that the banks from
Lambeth to Greenwich should be viewed and repaired. Stow, under
Westminster, says that in 1236 the river "overflowing the banks made the
Woolwich marshes all on a sea" and flowed into Westminster Hall; and again
in 1242 "drowned houses and fields by the space of six miles" on the
Lambeth side. In 1448 "the water brake in out of Thames beside Lymeost and
in another place."[29] Howel (1657) writes: "The Thames often inounds the
bankes about London, which makes the grounds afterwards more fertile."
[Illustration: FIG. 16.--EARLIEST PRINTED VIEW OF LONDON FROM THE
CHRONYCLE OF ENGLONDE, PYNSON 1510.]
The embankments seem to have been called walls. The names of Bermondsey
Wall and Wapping Wall still survive opposite one another; and "wall"
enters into the names of several places bordering on the river, as
Millwall and Blackwall, and St. Peter's on the Wall, at Bradwell, Essex,
where the north bank ends. At Lambeth Pennant noted that the name Narrow
Walls occurred. The general opinion is that these banks are either Roman
or pre-Roman work. Wren thought Roman.[30]
Before the locks were made on the river the tide ran up past Richmond to
near the inlet of the Mole.[31] London held the jurisdiction over the
river from Yanlet to Staines from the twelfth century at least. The limit
at either end is marked by a "London Stone."
FitzStephen calls the river "the great fish-bearing Thames." Howel in his
_Londinopolis_ says: "The Thames water useth to be as clear and pellucid
as any such great river in the world, except after a land flood, when 'tis
usual to take up haddocks with one's hand beneath the Bridge." Harrison
(1586) writes: "What should I speak of the fat and sweet salmons daily
taken in this stream, and that in such plenty after the time of smelt be
past, as no river in Europe is able to exceed it." Even in the last
century stray whales and porpoises used to find their way up on the tide.
The Saxon foredwellers must have had their fill of fish. Even the Thames
swans can be traced back to the fourteenth century in a document relating
to the Tower.[32] William Dunbar in 1501 wrote:--
Above all ryvers thy Ryver hath renowne
Whose beryall stremys, pleasant and preclare
Under thy lusty wallys runneth down
Where many a Swanne doth swymme with winges fare.
Stow's account of the smaller streams "serving the city" is the most
unfortunate in the classic survey, and entirely untrustworthy.
In the hollow some distance west of Ludgate was a tidal inlet; a part of
its bed has (in 1900) just been exposed in New Bridge Street; the name
Fleet, indeed, must express a tidal creek. Early in the twelfth century
the district beyond it is called _ultra Fletam_.[33] The inlet gave its
name to the bridge and street passing over it from Ludgate. Rishanger
calls the latter Fleet-Bridge Street. Henry II. gave to the Templars a
site for a mill _super Fletam Juxta Castelum Bainard_, and all the course
of the water of Fleet and a messuage _juxta pontem de Flete_. A messuage
on the Fleet was also given to them by Gervase of Cornhill, _Teintarius_,
and this record is interesting as giving us the calling of the great
Londoner treated of so fully by Mr. Round.[34] Gervase was one of the most
important personalities in twelfth-century London, and it is not commonly
realised that members of the crafts so early held power.
Into the Fleet, down the still well-marked valley by Farringdon Road, ran
a stream sometimes called the Fleet River; it is plotted on some of the
earlier maps, and its course has been traced in detail by Mr. Waller.[35]
In an agreement as to the land of the nunnery at Clerkenwell, made at the
end of the twelfth century, this stream is unmistakably called the
Hole-burn; its valley ran north and south by Clerkenwell, and the river
and gardens of the Hospitallers of Jerusalem are said to have been upon
it.[36] It gave its name to Holborn Bridge and to some extra-mural
cottages near by, on the road which passed over it. The modern name should
mean Hole-burn-Bridge Street, just as Fleet Street meant Fleet-Bridge
Street. Holeburn Street is found in 1249.[37] Cottages at "Holeburne,"
which had existed in the time of the Confessor, are mentioned in Domesday,
and we may conclude that the Holeburn and Fleet had these names not only
in King Edward's day, but in Alfred's. The upper part of the stream was
also called Turnmill brook; it was the mill stream of London.
Stow also gives the name of the River of Wells to this western stream just
described, saying: "That it was of old called of the Wells may be proved
thus: William the Conqueror in his charter to the College of St. Martin le
Grand hath these words, 'I do give and grant ... all the land and the Moor
without Cripplegate, on either side of the postern, that is to say, from
the north corner of the wall as the river of the Wells, there near
running, departeth the same moor from the wall, unto the running water
which entereth the city.'"[38] He goes on to say that the stream
(Hole-burn) was still called Wells in the time of Edward I., citing the
Parliament and Patent Rolls of 1307; but on referring to the calendars of
these documents I find that this name of Wells appears in neither. The
first speaks of "the water-course of Fleet running under the bridge of
Holburn," and the second of them calls it "the Fleet River from Holburn
Bridge to the Thames." Moreover, the Hole-burn was far away from the north
corner of the city wall by Cripplegate, and the land granted cannot have
extended all the way to the present Farringdon Road (the bed of the old
stream) and have included Smithfield. The land of "Crepelesgate," taken by
William Rufus and restored to St. Martin's by Henry I., is probably the
same, and to-day it may be represented by the parish of St. Giles. Surely
the whole construction of the passage requires that the north-west angle
of the walls should be the western limit of the land granted.
The Conqueror's Latin charter is given in Dugdale, and in the passage used
by Stow the stream is spoken of as _rivulus foncium_. Mr. Stevenson, in
publishing a Saxon version of the same charter 1068 A.D.,[39] shows that
_rivulus foncium_ was a translation of the O.E. _Wylrithe_, meaning a
small stream (_rithe_) issuing from a spring (_wyl_). This
"Well-brook"[40] must surely have been intended, not for the western
stream at all, but for the upper part of the "broke" running into the
"burh" directly afterwards mentioned in the charter, the present Walbrook.
Outside the walls the stream possibly ran in a west-to-east direction, and
so formed the north boundary of the property against the moor.
Mr. Stevenson appears not to have been of this view himself, as he speaks
of the Walbrook as "probably nameless" when the charter was written; but
he points out that it was called Walebroc in a charter of Wulfnoth
(1114-33)--"probably the Wulfnoth whose name is recorded in St. Mary
Woolnoth." This is a Ramsey charter (in Rolls series), and the terms are
most precise by which Wulfnoth of Walebroc, London, sold a piece of land
in Walebroc, "whence he was called Wulfnoth of Walebroc," with a house of
stone and a shop, for ten pounds of pence.[41]
St. John "super Walebroc" is mentioned about the same time in the St.
Paul's documents, and that Walbrook was then a proper name of some
antiquity seems to be conclusively proved by Geoffrey of Monmouth's legend
that it was called after Gallus by the Britons, "and in the Saxon
Gallembourne." Altogether it can hardly be doubted that the Wyl- of the
charter represents the modern Wal- in Walbrook.[42]
Within the walls the Walbrook ran right through the midst of the city from
north to south, and divided the eastern wards from the western. It
remained an open stream well into the Middle Ages; in 1286 an order was
given to cleanse it "from the Moor of London to the Thames." Its course is
well defined by three churches, St. John's, St. Stephen's (formerly on a
different site to the west, Stow), and St. Mildred's, all "super
Walbrook." St. Margaret Lothbury also stood above it on vaults. Its
relation to the present street is made clear in a document of 1291
regarding a tenement "between the course of the Walbrook towards the west,
and Walbrook Street towards the east."[43] The arch under which it entered
the city through the wall seems to have been discovered. Roach Smith
describes this opening thus: "Opposite Finsbury Circus, at a depth of 19
feet, a well-turned Roman arch was discovered, at the entrance of which on
the Finsbury side were iron bars placed apparently to restrain the sedge
and weeds from choking the passage."[44]
The bed of the brook has frequently been found in city excavations, and
its course has been laid down by Mr. T. E. Price.[45] It was of course
crossed by many bridges; in 1291 there was an inquiry held as to the
repair of one of them near the "tenement of Bokerelesbery."[46] This
stream was probably the first water supply of London, and it must have
been a most important factor in the division of the wards and the laying
out of the streets.
The Langbourne described by Stow is entirely mythical. As he named Holborn
from a merely supposititious "Old-burn" running east and west, so also his
Lang-burn has its only origin, as will be shown, in the corruption of a
name (see p. 132). Here I need only say that its supposed bed occupies
high ground, and no evidence of it has been found in excavations. Mr.
Price points out that Stow himself allowed that the name was the only sign
of it, and adds that the levels demonstrate that no such stream can ever
have flowed there; indeed, excavations have shown that its supposed course
was one of the most populous parts of the early city.[47]
Stow connects with it still another equally mythical stream, the
Share-burne, on the site of Sherborne Lane, but I find this called
Shitteborwe in 1272, and the last syllable must be "bury," not "burn."
* * * * *
_Fords._--The best account of the Thames fords is given by Dr. Guest.[48]
Cæsar tells us that the river called Thames was passable on foot only in
one place, and this ford was defended against him by stakes. Bede says
that the remains of the stakes were to be seen there "to this very day."
Camden suggested that the site of this ford was Coway Stakes, near Walton;
King Alfred, however, in an addition he made to Orosius, says that Cæsar,
after defeating the "Bryttas in Cent-land," fought again "nigh the Temese
by the ford called Welinga-ford." Wallingford, where the Icknield Way
crossed the river, was certainly the chief ford below Oxford. Dr. Guest
showed that a place near Coway Stakes is called Halliford, and argued that
although a Roman army, that of Claudius, may have crossed at Wallingford,
Cæsar's passage of the river was at the stakes, and the two passages of
the river came to be confused in the tradition. The general argument is
too subtle to go into here, but it is less than convincing to make Bede's
account of a ford where stakes yet remained in the river apply to Cæsar
and the Coway Stakes, while Alfred's applied to Wallingford and the army
of Claudius, especially as we may suppose that a principal ford would be
fortified if a lesser one were. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
Sweyn's army passed the river at Wallingford; here William the Conqueror
also crossed; and here too it seems likely that the English invaders also
first crossed.[49]
Another place nearer to London which is named from a ford is Brentford,
but Dr. Guest thought that the ford so named was over the Brent instead of
the Thames. He allows that the English army here twice crossed over the
Thames in 1016, as recorded in the Chronicle, but argues that there was
only a "shallow" in the Thames at this point, and that the _ford_ was
over the Brent. William of Malmesbury, however, seems to have anticipated
all this by saying very distinctly "the ford called Brentford" and the
"ford at Brentford" when speaking of the crossings of the Thames in 1016.
Gough in his edition of Camden says that the Thames was easily passed here
at low water.
Of a ford at Westminster, which from a mere unsubstantial hypothesis has
swollen into quite a big myth in the pages of Sir W. Besant, there is not
a scrap of evidence. There was, however, throughout the Middle Age a ferry
here, and the name still survives in Horseferry Road. The Roman bridge at
Staines (_Pontes_) may be the one, the existence of which is implied in
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1013, and in 1009 we are told that the army
went over the river at Staines.[50] In the Middle Ages there was a bridge
between Staines and London on the river at Kingston, and Horsley thought
that Cæsar crossed by a ford here.