August is Local History Month on diamond geezer, or has been on 14 previous occasions. Themes have included my immediate neighbourhood, Metro-land, the Lea Valley, the New River, the perimeter of Tower Hamlets, London borough tops and the 51½°N line of latitude. But perhaps the best known of these is the time I decided to follow the River Fleet from source to mouth and blogged about it in considerable depth, which was my Local History Month theme in August 2005. I called it Reviewing The Fleet. Reviewing the Fleet THE RIVER FLEET London is famous for one river and one river alone - the Thames. But there were once several other rivers crossing the clay basin of the lower Thames valley, all long since covered over by the capital's suburban sprawl, and the greatest of these was the Fleet. I've been busy tracking down the visible remains of this long-lost river and I'll be telling you all about my travels over the next month. It's a fascinating journey from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day and, even better, it's all downhill. The Lost Rivers of London and a few online maps, so it felt like I was breaking fresh ground. Since then it seemsmost London websites and video channels have covered the Fleet at some point, inevitably with better camerawork, as lost rivers have shifted from niche content to quirky stalwarts. book deal, which was nice, but it soon proved too onerous and ultimately Paul Talling delivered the new classic Lost Rivers volume instead. I researched them all anyway and blogged another dozen rivers the following year. But I've always had a soft spot for the Fleet, the only Thames tributary to carve a valley across very-central London, and long thought it would be good to go back and walk it again. So let's do just that, precisely 20 years later. 170 photos to Flickr and you don't need to see all that again, even if the backdrops have changed. So I've decided to leave my 2005 posts as the definitive end-to-end record and instead to sample the river at certain points on the way down. In particular I looked at the map of the Fleet I knocked up twenty years ago and thought "that'll do nicely". FLEETING, and I'll start tomorrow with a wander round the upper course of the river on Hampstead Heath. these two blog pages from August 2005, plus five Flickr albums that between them have had over 40,000 views. My apologies that most of the links don't work any more, but it turns out the internet is pretty fleeting too.

45 45 Squared 27) POND SQUARE, N6 Borough of Camden, 90m×90m×90m The thing about Pond Square is it doesn't have a pond and it's more of a triangle. We're on the northern edge of Camden off Highgate High Street, shielded behind Oxfam and the pink-fronted cake shop if you choose to filter through and look. In medieval times sand and gravel were extracted here to maintain the Great North Road, the pits converted to two ornamental ponds in 1845, but these became full of dumped litter and increasingly a health hazard so in 1864 were filled in for good. Today we find two ring-fenced enclosures amid a sea of tarmac, overhung by voluminous plane trees the council leaves unpruned, so potentially a nice place to hang out if your needs don't include grass and summer sunlight. Pond Square also boasts a chalet-like public convenience, properly tended, which is good news if you intend to rest awhile with hot drinks from the Village Deli or a beer out the back of the Prince of Wales. Do not under any circumstances take a wee in either of the two phone kiosks because they're both K2s and fewer than 250 remain in use. » Please note that Pond Square is officially a Village Green, also officially Common Land and is also listed in the London Squares Preservation Act 1931. » Please note that Pond Square's tarmac only gets properly full during the annual carol-singing gathering (next scheduled for Saturday 13th December 2025) and the stall-packed Fair in the Square (next scheduled for Saturday 13th June 2026). characterful houses round the perimeter, many of them Georgian, including Rock House with its twin oriel windows and Moreton House with its redbrick dressings and string course. Burlington House is merely Edwardian but its doorway is set off with splendid sunburst brickwork. If you live round here you're doing well and also in terribly good company because the square's had some very famous residents. Samuel Coleridge came to stay at Moreton House in April 1816 in the hope that lodging with his doctor might help stave off his opium habit... and never went back home. Church House was the childhood home of Harry Beck, fabled creator of the diagrammatic tube map, although English Heritage chose to slap their blue plaque on his birthplace in Leyton instead. There is however a pink plaque on a lamppost celebrating Dame Stella Rimington, the first female director of MI5, who I'm guessing has had her precise local address successfully redacted. » Please note that the eastern side of Pond Square is officially on a street called South Grove, but I've ignored this technicality else most of the previous paragraph would have been out of scope. » Please note that I have not mentioned Francis Bacon's ghost chicken because spectral poultry is plainly fictional, also the 400th anniversary is next April and I might want to run a special feature then. Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution, an early Victorian friendly society founded for self-betterment, and still reeling in middle class membership for a programme of discussions, education and all things cultural. Chris Lintott, Nick Higham and Vernon Bogdanor are booked in to deliver lectures soon, while afternoon classes include contract bridge with Victor, intermediate Spanish with Esperanza and tree identification with Bettina. All are welcome to view art in the Highgate Gallery, although the next free exhibition isn't until September. Meanwhile the building nextdoor at 10a is leased to the Highgate Society, a more outward-looking institution seeking to improve the locality with events including guerilla gardening and monthly litter picks, and I wonder if cultured Highgate residents pick one or the other or align with both. » Please note that number 10a was previously a school for Jewish boys, a handbag factory and a workshop supplying stonework to Highgate Cemetery. » Please note that I have copied a lot of this information off a board at the southern end of the square installed by The Highgate Society, I'm not just intrinsically knowledgeable. » Please note that The Highgate Society also publish a splendid Visit Highgate leaflet, grabbable from their lobby, the astonishing thing being that the fold-out map is marked with 114 points of interest and every single one of them has a proper description in the key. Most London suburbs couldn't run to 20, let alone so eruditely. » Please note that Highgate is proper lovely, as well as way out of your reach.

Put it in your diary!

I've long loved Footpath 47 at Barking Riverside for its estuarine bleakness, a half mile of undeveloped Thames foreshore with open access to the river. I've also long urged you to visit before a wall of flats encroaches and the river's edge is tidied up to incorporate a promenade and coastal garden. Well, you need to hurry up because the men with strimmers have arrived and the environmental tipping point approaches. landfill. But it is exceptionally rare to be able to walk along a broad grassy path beside unprotected estuary, and before long it won't be possible at all. Works have just started on what's known as Foreshore Package 0-1, the western half of Footpath 47's shoreline stroll, kicking off with vegetation clearance and the relocation of existing wildlife. They're also in the process of installing 'ecology fencing', notionally for safety reasons rather than to deter the passage of reptiles, but the net effect is to prevent the public from straying down to the tidal edge, perhaps forever. The long-term plan is to create Foreshore Park, an 18 acre green stripe connecting fresh city blocks to vegetated banks and coastal grasslands. This'll have a raised promenade suitable for cycling overlooking a terraced landscaped area, creating 'waterfront public realm' for tens of thousands of new residents. It'll kick off near the pier with a meeting spot called The Terrace, merge into a small recreational area near the existing Project Office and skirt a more natural basin including a lower walkway and a short perpendicular spur called The Lookout. Importantly it'll also raise flood protection from the existing crest level of 7.1m to the 8.2m needed to satisfy the Thames Estuary 2100 Plan. Standing here near an open bank I did wonder if that could possibly be sufficient, but apparently even the appalling inundation of January 1953 only reached 5.1m hereabouts. pavement-bashing arc through the new estate and along the unforgiving slog of Choats Lane, thus technically providing a link to the eastern half by the Goresbrook. The new earthworks to create Foreshore Package 0-1 should take about twelve months, with Footpath 47 reconnected via a temporary link path as soon as appropriate. The eastern half will then be terraced and promenaded in a similar manner, with the new retaining wall complete by the summer of 2030 according to one document I've seen. I've also seen one document saying the two metal navigation beacons here will be retained and relocated, and another saying they've been deemed of insufficient heritage interest so will simply be removed. Ultimately Footpath 47 will be the forgotten name for a riverside promenade a tad further back than the existing path, all fully accessible, and a key interface that finally provides Barking Riverside residents with easy access to the river. At present no new flats have been built anywhere near the Thames, indeed less than a quarter of the proposed 20,000 homes have yet been completed, all much further up the landfill mound. It could be 2046 before developers finally pack up and go, but these preliminary works need to begin now to allow further phases to continue. You can read more about the immediate evolution of the foreshore here, and see greater detail in the consultation boards pack here, but mainly I urge you to come and see how Footpath 47 looks now before the Closed/Diversion signs appear, which could be soon. This untamed unpaved path has been gradually encroached upon for the best part of a decade, but what happens next will kickstart an inexorable step change to terraced residential waterfront, by no means anodyne but alas no longer unique.