Walking the River Brent

“And so it was that we returned to the valley of the River Brent”

Patrick Keiller, London (1994)


Brent Cross tube station is a place that holds a deep sense of nostalgia for me. It links me back to walks with Nick Papadimitriou. I could almost see him waiting for me on the wooden bench in the ticket hall in 2007. On the way there, it’d only just struck me how apt that I’d chosen a walk along the River Brent to be filmed by an MA student and their friend for her Visual Anthropology project.

A Focus on the River Brent

Being filmed walking a territory I’d filmed someone else walking added an intriguing layer to the excursion. But the real highlight was walking a section of the River Brent I’d only glimpsed while crossing its course. Surprisingly, in all my previous walks through this terrain, I never set out with the sole intention of following the course of the Brent, from its starting point here at Brent Cross to its convergence with the A40 Western Avenue.

While the Brent often made cameo appearances in our previous explorations between Brent Cross and Perivale, it never received the attention it deserves. Today, the river itself took centre stage.

River Brent at Brent Cross
John Rogers being filmed walking the River Brent near Neasden

A Brief Detour to Brent Cross Shopping Centre

Before we embarked on our journey along the Brent, we made a brief detour to Brent Cross Shopping Centre. The confluence of arterial roads in this area creates its own power, with the Hendon Way and the North Circular intersecting. On the far side of these roads lies Brent Cross and, with the River Brent meandering through the concrete kingdom.

Brent Cross was the UK’s first out-of-town shopping mall, opening in 1976. The grandeur of this place left a lasting impression on me when I visited as a kid in the early 80s. In Patrick Keiller’s seminal film London, the central character Robinson chooses Brent Cross as a location to write poetry, in the spirit of Parisian flâneurs haunting the 19th century arcades. The scene in Keiller’s film also subtly invokes Walter Benjamin’s epic Arcades Project.

We caught sight of a small intense man sitting near the fountain reading from a book by Walter Benjamin. Robinson embraced this man and they talked for a long time. But when he tried to call him later he found that the number was a public telephone in a street in Cricklewood and we never saw the man again.

London, Patrick Keiller, 1994

Robinson and his friend later return to the Brent Valley to walk along the River Brent.

River Brent
Liv and Milo

The River Brent’s Juxtaposition

Returning to the banks of the River Brent, a stark contrast unfolds. On one side lies the discarded refuse and the presence of rats scurrying through the undergrowth. On the other side of the road stands the towering cathedral of consumerism.

Such a stark juxtaposition makes me think of the river deities personified in the Rivers of London series of novels by Ben Aaronovitch. The abuse of this living body of water is intrinsically linked to the grand shopping centre beckoning with its enticing offerings.

A lost London village

After surviving a detour through the bowels of IKEA and it’s enormous car park, the river led us to the lost village of Monks Park. I’d first visited the area with Nick Papadimitriou for a recording of our radio show in 2009. This is an old Middlesex village absorbed into the West London industrial belt that followed the Brent, the name now largely erased beyond the recreation ground. I discovered Monks Park from the same source as Nick, in fact it played a pivotal role in how we first bonded. It’s the subject of a chapter in Gordon S. Maxwell’s The Fringe of London published in 1925 (which I never stop mentioning) ‘Rural England. Four miles from the Marble Arch.’ When I first found Maxwell’s book I became convinced that Patrick Keiller must have encountered it when making his first short film Stonebridge Park shot nearby in 1981. A subsequent email to Keiller many years ago revealed that it was merely a coincidence.

Monks Park
Monks Park walk, 2009 – photo by Peter Knapp

The End

At the A40 our walk conjoined with my northbound strolls along the Brent from Brentford through Perivale, and so I wandered with Liv and Milo along the Western Avenue to Hanger Lane tube. It’s a walk that even 3 months later sits in my mind calling me back.

Exploring the History of Shoreditch and Hoxton:

A couple of weekends ago I was joined by my wife Heidi on a fantastic stroll through the History of Shoreditch and Hoxton.

Elizabethan Theatres around Curtain Road
Our journey begins at Curtain Road, where the Curtain Theatre once stood which played a crucial role in London’s theatrical history. It is believed that Shakespeare and his contemporaries staged early works which were later staged at the Globe Theatre. Ben Jonson also had work performed at the Curtain. Burbage’s The Theatre had opened a year previously not far away, before it was taken down and moved to the south bank of the Thames to become the famous Globe Theatre. These two theatres helped establish Shoreditch as a place of entertainment in Elizabethan London, just outside the boundary of the City. A tradition that continues to this day.

Exploring Shoreditch and Hoxton
As we continue our walk we catch glimpses of remnants from the past, such as the Holywell Priory, the River Walbrook, and the Roman road which helped shape the development of the area.

Notorious Slums and Social Housing:
Our tour leads us to Boundary Passage, which through to the notorious slum known as Old Nichol. By the 19th Century this area was synonymous with poverty and poor living conditions, as chronicled by Engels and Mayhew. However, the dire situation prompted the London County Council to construct the Boundary Estate, one of the first social housing projects in the city.

Curtain Road, Shoreditch
Curtain Road
Great Eastern Street
Holywell Lane, Shoreditch
Holywell Lane

Cherry Tree Mound and Leon Kossoff in Arnold Circus:
We encounter the picturesque Cherry Tree Mound, a serene spot in the heart of the bustling city. This beautiful location inspired renowned British painter Leon Kossoff, who grew up in the area. Leon’s paintings often depicted the charm of North West London, but his early years around Arnold Circus left a lasting impact on his artistic journey and he returned in later life to make a series of sketches of the Circus and the Mound. A Cherry tree has been planted here in his honour.

St Leonard’s Church

We pass through the churchyard of St Leonard’s, now associated with the Oranges and Lemons nursery rhyme but in reality it replaced a demolished church in the original version of the story. The church sits at the junction of two Roman Roads – Ermine Street and Old Street. One of the sources of the Walbrook rises beneath ground nearby.

Leon Kossoff Cherry, Arnold Circus London
bandstand in Arnold Circus
Arnold Circus
Hoxton

Tranquil Hoxton Square:
Our penultimate stop is Hoxton Square, another historically significant location in the area. This vibrant square has witnessed numerous stories unfold over the centuries, and its atmosphere offers a welcome contrast to the hustle and bustle of nearby Shoreditch High Street. It was in the fields here before it was developed in the later 17th Century that poet and playwright Ben Jonson killed the actor Gabriel Spencer in a duel. Spencer was buried in St Leonard’s Church. In the 1990’s Hoxton Square become a great generator of culture with the Blue Note and other clubs on the same site, the White Cube gallery and the nascent digital creators who worked in the area.

Hoxton Well:

Hoxton possessed a ‘balsamic’ well discovered in the late seventeenth century, during the digging of a cellar for a house in Charles Square and enjoyed popularity for a few years. The water probably contained a small quantity of magnesium sulphate and iron according to Septimus Sunderland. A Dr. Macpherson reported that the water from Hoxton Well had a ‘bituminous scum on it, but, strange to say, yielded a pleasant aromatic flavour’.

Exploring the streets of Shoreditch and Hoxton is like stepping into a time machine that reveals the elements of the history of London as these areas evolved through centuries of change. It was a beautiful walk in the company of Heidi.

Walking the Beverley Brook for London Rivers Week

The Beverley Brook has been on my list of walks for a number of years now. I’d passed its confluence with the Thames near Putney on at least two occasions. Then I looked across its valley when seeking out Ceasar’s Camp on Wimbledon Common. The clincher should have been the crucial role played by the deity of the Beverley Brook, Bev, in Ben Aaronovitch’s excellent Rivers of London novels. But in the end it was London Rivers Week that gave me the final push to walk the Beverley Brook, or the Bev as I ended up calling it.

I found a Merton Council map and guide online and decided to use this as my definitive text. This route starts at New Malden, however multiple YouTube commenters pointed out the Beverley Brook rises in Worcester Park. Nevermind. The guide was excellent nonetheless. I picked up the river beside the A3 and pretty much the whole course out to the Thames was a bucolic amble across Wimbledon Common, Richmond Park, Palewell Common, and Barnes Common. All rivers deserve a deity, but it’s easy to see why Ben Aaronovitch chose Bev to play such a pivotal role in his books.

The Beverley Brook on Wimbledon Common
The Beverley Brook sign
The Beverley Brook in a culvert near Barnes

Walking the Churches of the City of London


The City of London once had 108 churches – today only 39 of them remain. In 2021, I embarked on a YouTube series to walk between these remaining churches and pick up traces of the numerous lost churches of the City of London, and the few that exist as partial ruins or churchyards. It’s been a magical experience.

Some of the churches date back to the Middle Ages, others contain much older secrets in their foundations and crypts. They link us back into the deep history of London. They link us from the earliest Christian communities in the City through the Anglo-Saxon period, the Norman Conquest to the Great Fire of London when a number of Churches were destroyed. However from the ashes arose the majestic architecture of Sir Christopher Wren who wrote his name across the City.

the spire of St Botolph Bishopsgate - City of London Churches walk
Tower of St Dunstan in the East - City of London Churches walk

My most recent episode in the series picked up the trail at St Margaret Pattens (first documented in 1067) with its magnificent Wren spire. Close by we encounter St Mary at Hill ‘London’s best kept secret’ before walking a cobbled lane to the serene garden in the shell of St Dunstan in the East, destroyed in the 1941 during the Blitz. Our walk then takes us past the Monument to the Great Fire which points the way to our final church, St Magnus the Martyr which once occupied one of the most prominent positions in medieval London, aligned with the old London Bridge, linking Southwark to the City.

St Dunstan in the East - City of London Churches walk

I’ve now walked 37 of the 39 churches of the City but my church crawling won’t end here. I’ll continue haunting the sites of those lost churches and the indelible mark they’ve left on the streets of the Square Mile.

You can watch the whole series here

Watch my walk along the City of London’s lost river Walbrook.

Stumbling across a Lost River in the Lea Valley London

A sunny Bank Holiday walk from Blackhorse Lane Walthamstow beside the Banbury Reservoir then onto the Lea Navigation at the North Circular. We then follow the Lea through Enfield until we pick up the Mossops Creek near Brimsdown and cross Mossops Creek footbridge. The Mossops Creek was dug by gravel extraction company Mosses and Co in the 1890s, presumably to link their works with the Lea Navigation.

East London Walk in Search of a Mystery

A few years ago I was sent an incredible email that contained correspondence between two allotment holders concerning the causes of flooding in Leyton. Previously I was completely fixated on the more elaborate stories contained in this exchange. But recently, revisiting the email for research into the fringe of the Olympic Park for my new book, I released that I’d overlooked the mentions of multiple buried watercourses that are claimed to have historically run through Leyton. So I set out on Easter Monday to hunt for these mysterious buried rivers that are said to flow beneath the streets of Leyton, in addition to our much loved (and celebrated on this blog) Philley Brook (Fillebrook / Philly Brook).

Map of buried rivers in Leyton East London.
Open Street Map “© OpenStreetMap contributors” using data available under the Open Database Licence
Map showing the possible course of buried rivers in Leyton that could cause flooding in the area
Open Street Map “© OpenStreetMap contributors” using data available under the Open Database Licence
‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland’  https://maps.nls.uk/index.html

I continued my walk north, passing Etloe House which seems to have had its own stream or ditch. And then progressed along Markhouse Road where I started to shadow the Dagenham Brook until I encountered an accessible open stretch in the new development off Blackhorse Lane around Vanguard Way. It was a fascinating walk that opened up so many new avenues of intrigue in the topography and folklore of Leyton and Walthamstow.