ROOKERIES, RAILWAYS & RADICALS – Architecture Down The Fleet River

Weaving a route from Highgate to the Thames, The River Fleet is one of London’s most celebrated yet notorious water courses. Buried in a network of sewers today, The Fleet has been both life-source and life-taker, carving out a landscape of urban hills, ditches, slums and warehouses that in the 19th century became the epicentre for commercial speculators, railway pioneers and the revolutionary political agitators of the 19th and early 20th century city. From hidden viaducts and railway monuments to model dwellings, grecian villas and constructivism, this walk treads the quaggy banks and oozy wells of the lower Fleet Valley to chart the architecture and landscape of London’s most radical of arteries.

A walking tour by The London Ambler - Mike Althorpe