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 ep.8


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.

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.

Iain Sinclair on Walking

This clip was taken from my walk with Iain Sinclair and Stephen McNeilly tracing the footsteps of the Swedish visionary Emanuel Swedenborg through London. Iain beautifully nails what the act of walking does to you:
“What John does with his walks is that essentially he’s adding new layers to himself by adsorbing these pieces of London. You go into them free-flowingly and the camera is the magical instrument of the moment that can help you to do this but as you do it there are things coming at you that you can’t predict, that you don’t know, the journey becomes something else, you become richer and richer each time you do it.”

The Other Side of Soho – Carnaby Street, Broadwick Street, Golden Sq

This video picks up the trail that I started in my previous Soho walking tour in Berwick Street. We walk down Broadwick Street where Dr John Snow made his breakthrough discovery linking infected water to cholera infections. We also visit the site of the birthplace of William Blake before continuing our stroll along Carnaby Street. In Kingly Street we admire the pubs and then turn into Beak Street where the Italian painter Canaletto lived for a period of time. Our walking tour takes us then into Golden Square, first laid out in the 1670’s with ‘such houses as might accommodate Gentry’, and we admire the fine architecture. We stop by the Piccadilly Theatre and then follow Brewer Street into Great Windmill Street with its famous Theatre.

The mysteries of Crouch End

A walk round one of my favourite locations in London – Crouch End. A place with uncanny links to tales of the undead and general weird stuff from the middle ages to Shaun of the Dead.

We start with the Parkland Walk, a former railway line where the King of Horror himself, Stephen King, had a mystical experience that inspired him to write a short story. Next, we explore the fascinating story of Bob Dylan’s infamous visit to Crouch End that has become a vital piece of London folklore.

But the mysteries of the Northern Heights don’t stop there. The area is said to be the site of two powerful ley lines that cross beneath the Victorian clocktower. This tower was originally the site of a wooden cross that gave the area its name.

Crouch End - view of Alexandra Palace
Tottenham Lane Crouch End in North London from a video by John Rogers
Tottenham Lane

Some of the key scenes of Shaun of the Dead were filmed in Crouch End, but that features in a previous video and only gets a passing mention here as I list the references to the undead in this eldritch zone from Sir Roger Bolingbroke through the Highgate Vampire to that brilliant Zom Com. We also visit the legendary Kings Head pub, the Harringay Arms, the Queens, Tottenham Lane, Hornsey Town Hall, Hornsey Library, Church Studios, Crouch End Hippodrome, and much more.

Crystal Palace to Streatham Common on the Capital Ring

I often overlook the Capital Ring. Partly because I’m always encountering those little waymarkers on my walks. I collected a full set of free fold-out maps from Thornhill Square Library about 20 years ago, detailing the 72-mile route broken down into 15 sections. However, I’ve only intentionally set out to walk the Capital Ring on one occasion, in March 2020 when I walked from Richmond to Horsenden Hill.

Capital Ring Walk 4
Capital Ring Walk 4
Capital Ring Walk 4 - Upper Norwood Recreation Ground
Upper Norwood Recreation Ground

So last week, with a false Spring breaking over London, I set off from Crystal Palace Station to walk Section 4 to Streatham Common, and wow what a glorious walk it was. There were spectacular views throughout – looking south towards to the North Downs, and across the Thames Basin to the north with the shimmering towers of the City below. From Biggin Wood we looked across the high-rises of Croydon to distant hills. And at the end of the walk we gazed west over the Wandle Valley. Between we strolled across beautiful open spaces at Westow Park, Upper Norwood Recreation Ground, Norwood Grove and finally Streatham Common. We passed beneath the boughs of one of the remnants of the Great North Wood in Biggin Wood and explored the secret garden at The Rookery on the site of Streatham Wells.

Capital Ring Walk 4
view from Biggin Hill
The Rookery - Streatham
The Rookery

I now can’t wait to get back and continue the Capital Ring to Wimbledon and Richmond.