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I did my second hidden River walk today, following the course of the Hackney Brook from its source just off Holloway Road all the way to where it empties into the River Lea at Old Ford Lock. Here's where it starts, on Mercers Road near Tufnell Park. https://www.londonslostrivers.com/hackney-brook.html
By the 1850s, much of the brook was covered, and Joseph Bazalgette finished this process in the 1860s. But it used to flow down this section of Holloway Road, past the majestic Odeon cinema. I saw my first film here, Duck Tales the movie (almost exactly 30 years ago this week).
It turned East somewhere near the Coronet, which is now a Wetherspoons, and then flowed around the north side of where the Emirates Stadium now stands.
Then down Gillespie Road, past Arsenal tube station and the old Highbury stadium. This is Gillespie Park, one of my favourite spots in North London.
Across Blackstock Road, near where the crumbling Arsenal Tavern stands (not for much longer), and then on to Clissold Park. The street name here is Riversdale Road, a clear sign of the river's path.
The brook flows under the ponds on the north side of Clissold Park, although doesn't feed them. Some more clues to its route on the other side of the park, before it flows around the northern edge of Abney Park cemetery.
After the cemetery, you can spot the drop at the bottom of Stoke Newington High Street where the brook once flowed. Then across the northern part of Stoke Newington common, where I spotted this still working drinking fountain (from the 1960s).
You can really see the valley where the brook ran on the edge of Hackney Downs, then down Amhurst Road to where there was once a ford at Hackney Central.
Then down Morning Lane, past the stupid Hackney fashion village or whatever it was supposed to be. This natural valley sits at the bottom of the hill with Homerton at the top, with the river flowing roughly where the railway arches are now.
Another clue here. This is the bottom of Well Street as it joins Morning Lane. I grew up here and never once questioned where the well it was named after was. After this, the brook flows eastward down Wick Lane. This is where it crosses Brookfield Road, with Victoria Park beyond.
After this point it gets quite hard to follow the course of the Hackney Brook. Much of the area around Hackney Wick is a building site, with lots of roads closed off. Luckily, I had this map of the river's route.
You never actually see the Hackney Brook, although apparently it seeps up into old basements in Stoke Newington often. But it comes out into the Lea here, in these semi-submerged openings next to Bazalgette's Northern Outfall Sewer (the pipes on the right).
So that's the Hackney Brook, a subterranean river that runs through the part of London I've spent most of my life in without really knowing it existed.
One thing that's easy to forget on these walks is that most of what you see around you wasn't there when the river flowed above ground. Hackney has a lot of 1850s architecture, parts of Stoke Newington date back to 18th century (not to mention St. Augustine's and Sutton House).
But most of the built environment I walked through today was 20th century, built well after the Hackney Brook was enclosed underground.
So you have to be careful with guesstimating where the river used to flow. Some of it seems clear in curves, rises, and falls in the roads, but lots of roads have those features unrelated to any rivers that once flowed nearby.
