It is a little known fact that a conduit – a stone channel for an underground stream – carries the darkest of waters underneath the illustrious chambers of Buckingham Palace, flowing darkly in the depths as Kate and William waved to crowds, high above on a fairy-tale balcony.
London is riddled with tantalising underground rivers, The Fleet, which joins the Thames below Blackfriars,was once a proud estuary where Roman ships docked, with a mill harnessing the power of the tides. But by Mediaeval times it was relegated to the status of a polluted ditch. And around it grew up a menace of housing fit for paupers and brigands.
Alexander Pope knew it well enough. He wrote a searing epic poem around 1728, about the rack and ruin to which England was consigning itself called the ‘Dunciad’; and there was the old Fleet in all its vainglory:
“To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams
Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames
The king of dykes! than whom no sluice of mud
with deeper sable blots the silver flood”.
The waters could not be allowed to witness the dawn of the nineteenth century in daylight. By 1769 the majority of the Fleet was covered, and all that remains these days, for eager tourists of the gothic, is to find the Coach and Horse pub in Clerkenwell, where a well-known grating in the pavement affords the sound of the rushing waters below.
But it is not the Fleet which runs beneath the Palace. No: it is the Tyburn.
Now there’s a name from the past to conjure nightmares.
The Tyburn starts in Hampstead and runs through St James’s Park, meeting the River Thames at Pimlico. Phil walks past it every day as he makes his way to work: these days it is marked by a pipe which gushes water just below a block of flats.
The waterway gave its name to a village, but that settlement is long gone. Tyburn village is in the Domesday Book; it has long been swallowed up by Oxford Street.
The river gave its name to something else which has disappeared without trace, obliterated as a piece of London history we’d all rather forget.
These days when you come off the central line at Marble Arch there is a great white Romanesque arch to greet you, designed by John Nash to dazzle with its white marble pomp.
But very close by, for four hundred years, a very different monument served to cow and fascinate humble Londoners in equal measure.
Tyburn Tree, they called it; but it was no living thing.
The first victim of the gallows at Tyburn was a champion of the poor. William Fitz Osbern spoke out and encouraged an uprising. It was not met well, and he was tied to a horse and dragged to the tree for his final moments.
Henry VII used the site extensively for execution; but the tree which haunts the great city’s folklore was not erected until 1571. Not for Tyburn the traditional right-angled structure: the Triple Tree was instantly recognisable and distinctive. It was a triangle of three nine-foot cross beams, supported by three 18-foot-high legs, enabling large numbers of executions at the same time. It is reported that in 1649 24 prisoners were brought in eight carts and hanged en masse.
Prisoners would be taken from Newgate Prison on a three-mile progress, stopping at St Sepulchure’s Church to be given a nosegay of flowers, and Bow Tavern for a pint of ale. The hangman was entitled to the clothes of the deceased: some wore their best clothes as a veiled bribe to ensure a merciful sendoff; others wore rags so he would not benefit.
To us in this day and age, with our sensitivities honed by good living and conditions at which the Londoners of centuries ago would have marvelled, the whole business is as nightmarish as it was once a harsh reality.
The sense of humour of the London Poor was acerbic and often merciless, as evidenced by that rapier-sharp unpalatable illustrator, William Hogarth. A hanging – always held on a Monday – could draw up to 100,000 to watch: the crowd loved anyone who showed no signs of weakness and cheered “a good dying”.
The macabre attitude to such extreme human suffering could not be allowed to survive into the 19th century. The tree was so public: rescue attempts, and people trying to hasten a merciful death, could not be prevented. The crowds, thirsty for so much more than ale, were unruly and loud, and pickpockets and thieves ran amuck at Tyburn on a hanging day. In 1783 the executions were moved within the walls of Newgate Prison.
If you go to the junction between Edgware Road and Bayswater Road, you will find a road island with three small brass triangles . It is almost all that is left of a place which, for centuries, engendered the fear and fascination of the city on the banks of the Thames.
But beneath the ground , the waters that gave it its name flow on, relentlessly timeless, on their journey through the city, under a palace, to a greater river and thence to the sea.
Kate Shrewsday 
so many cities have secrets beneath them. some marked like Tyburn, others leaving just the ghosts of the past to haunt those who can feel them
I discovered in Europe that I find the ‘history’ in the old cities seems to crowd in on me and I long for the open freedom of African graslands where the secrets are allowed to turn back into grass over time.
There has not been a spare minute in two thousand years in some of them, Sidey, you are so right. I find it amazing that the river and your grasslands share the same ability to outpace human events – indeed, to eclipse them totally.
Grt post. Prt comments. I am wowed by the lyrical n deep way u demonstrated the connection btw us n the ages.
Thanks Doc 🙂 The river does it better than any of us!
Sewage – I suppose this is why Romans built aqueducts for they knew not to drink river water. At least where there were urban areas with the right topography.
I often wonder: how could we forget so much here in Britain, after the Romans had come and passed on all their knowledge? Society can go backwards as well as forwards, I guess. Unsettling thought.
A wonderful revelation, Kate. Isn’t it interesting how things intersect, often underneath us (physically and spiritually), that we are only vaguely aware of, if at all.
They are off the radar, aren’t they, Paula? Unless we seek them out, or listen very hard indeed, we would not know the underground rivers are there.
Fascinating stuff, Kate. As always 🙂
Bit macabre today, Tilly. But part of our past, nonetheless.
Thank goodness we don’t live in those terrible days. It seems that few people had any of the finer feelings like sympathy or empathy. Imagine applauding, and cheering at the hangings. Or is it just that we pretend those things no longer happen in our ‘civilised’ society.
Denise, I often think: what a miracle that I was born in this country at this time. Any other time in England could have been very grim, and there are many other nationalities which would have dealt me a very different life to this one. It sometimes seems such a lottery, in the sea of time and humanity.
So interesting to read, Kate, though I cannot imagine witnessing such events. Our own wild west and the atrocities in our south certainly held their own hangings. I cringe at the thought and then cringe again at the mob mentality of those who come to watch with the air of a carnival.
Penny, I was going to reply that it is good that we live in a time when these things are just a social memory, in our part of the world at least. Adeeyoyo’s comment is telling, because for me, that’s all it was: a story about a time long ago when things were bad. But for you, and Adee, and interestingly Phil, stories which reveal the terrible side of human nature are ever-present because they reveal what humans are capable of. Similar cruelty on an epic scale is not unheard of today.
Beautiful flow to a haunting post, Kate.
You’ve elevated the tri-post at Tiburn and the dark waters beneath . . . for a moment, at least.
When the post, and the road island, and the city are gone, the river will still be flowing, Nancy.
Beautifully written, Kate. Thank you for this really fascinating piece. I knew about the rivers but you brought a new light to them.
Thanks Earlybird….hope the packing is going well…
Fascinating. I did not know that such a river existed, much less that it ran beneath the Palace. Of course, thanks to Mr Stanley Holloway whose Sweeney Todd used to delight my bloodthirsty boyish mind, I knew about the Tyburn Gallows, where Sweeney was ‘switched off’.
ah, yes, Sweeny Todd. A perfect example of that London fascination with the macabre..
Lynchings occurred in the American South into the 20th century, and were not prosecuted. Now the legal version has disappeared behind prison walls. Some people gather outside to protest, others to celebrate. Your country has progressed; mine lags behind. Maybe we’ll get there someday.
I would like to tour London with a copy of the Shrewsday Guide tucked under my arm. You peel back layer upon layer, each fascinating.
While I can’t offer a Shrewsday guide, I can offer a Shrewsday if you’re ever here, Kathy 🙂
Fascinating story, Kate ….
‘Tis, Pseu, if a bit dark….
Fascinating what lies beneath the surface in so many ways
It is 🙂