Led by The Legend That Continues - Bermondsey Bill:
The Fleet is probably the best known of London’s Lost rivers, it’s’ influence apparent in street names throughout Holborn, Blackfriars and Farringdon.
The Fleet shifts identities as it moves south, The Hampstead brook, the Highgate brook, the Turnmill Brook, and then finally the Fleet, from the Anglo Saxon term for creek or inlet.
The Walbrook formed the eastern boundary of Roman London, the Fleet the Western, and it was finally covered only in 1769.
Today the Fleet is woven tightly in the physical, physic and literary geography of London. It leads from the wild uplands of Hampstead, through Victorian Kentish town, the mills and brothels of Farringdon, the spas and pleasure gardens of Kings Cross, the Dickensian London of Oliver Twist in Saffron Hill and Holborn, and Holborn’s vanished Venetian Waterway.
Given that is Dickens 200 we will take time to look deeper at the world in which Oliver Twist lived, the jurisdiction on Mr Fang the Magistrate. We may take refreshment at The Three cripples with Sikes and Fagin, pay a visit to Bleeding Heart yard, and I should add, as I write on Valentines day, that this refers to a dead deer.
We will pay a visit to Smithfield, where cattle were herded to in Dickens time, and look at the changing methods of meat transport, and origins, over the years; we visit Newgate, Furnivall’s Inn, and guzzle gin in the street.
As we always say, The River can both be seen and heard, but only if you know where to look…………….
Meet 10a.m. Bermondsey Square
We had around 20 on the Lost Dickens Ride and as Bill said he just kept finding more and more Dickensian references in this area to fit more than one ride.
