Few visitors know that London has 640km of waterways and there's a serious movement taking place to restore these "blue corridors" to their former glory.
Though most visitors to London think only of the River Thames, the city is a myriad of waterways. Old maps show a skein of rivers and brooks that provided "blue corridors" traversing the city for centuries, providing both sources of food and recreation. But as London boomed, these waterways faded from consciousness – encased by walls, turned into polluted backwaters or simply covered over to run unseen beneath busy streets.
But these "secret" rivers are imprinted on London's geography. Marylebone started life as St Mary by the bourne (an old name for a watercourse, in this case the Tyburn); while Bayswater, Knightsbridge, Westbourne and Holborn are all named by waterways that ran through them. Deptford was the site of a deep ford over the Ravensbourne, while Wandsworth is named after the River Wandle. East Ham and West Ham get their names from an old word for an area between rivers (hamm) – in their case, the Lea and the Roding. And while Britain's leading newspapers have left Fleet Street, the River Fleet still runs beneath.
"London should really be one massive wetland – a salt marsh on an estuary," said Will Oliver, a development manager at Thames21, a charity helping guide 40-plus river restorations. Thanks to the organisation's efforts alongside other groups, buried rivers have returned to the light, while others are being rewilded in ways that will improve the lives and environment of millions of people, as well as provide a key boost for nature.
Take the Wildlife Gardeners of Haggerston, who are revitalising the Old Lea river at Hackney Marshes in east London. I arrived here through traffic-swirled streets, then walked across a vast expanse of park whose principal signs of life were dozens of football pitches. But along one edge, a line of trees concealed an ancient river that felt like a piece of rural England secreted into grim London vistas. Within minutes of arriving, I was startled to have seen egrets and kingfishers swooping past.
Esther Adelman, co-founder of the Haggerston volunteer group, explained some of the key work they are doing here. "We change the river flow and get rid of invasive habitats," she said, pointing to fallen trees that have been used to create partial river barriers – called berms – that add beneficial complexity to the water flow. "This creates a variety of habitats, such as areas of gravel where fish spawn," said Adelman. "We are imitating natural processes – like human beavers."
Gideon Corby, another Old Lea volunteer and habitat manager at the nearby Kingsland Basin Nature Reserve in Hackney, explained how planting reeds cleans the river by drawing pollutants like phosphates and heavy metals into their roots.
Adelman added, her voice filled with a mix of hope and quiet confidence: "We hope eventually the Lea will become home to otters."
Between 2020 and 2022, meanwhile, the South East Rivers Trust (SERT) trained around 100 citizen science volunteers to survey eels during the Thames Catchment Community Eels Project. As well as counting eels on a clutch of London's secluded backwater rivers known only really to those who live close by – like the Mole, Kennet, Pang Ravensbourne and Brent – the project worked with 22 schools to deliver workshops, plus guided riverbank walks and wades. It even created an eel-based online game for children.
As part of surveying an impressive 107km of river, the SERT volunteers recorded 119 barriers hindering eel movement – 66 previously undocumented. This has helped create strategies to support this iconic but endangered species. Similarly, the River Hogsmill Connectivity Project spurred the removal of 17 out of 18 obstacles on this west London waterway, making it a far easier commuter route for fish.
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Source: BBC, Norman Miller
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