An underground and not very idyllic tour along the millenary Tyburn River, London

@ElentirENG ES 8·20·2024 · 23:29 0

It's summer and many people take advantage of this time to take pleasant walks along the banks of a river, enjoying the smell of the grass.

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The city of London is known for the river that runs through it, the Thames, but what is much less known to the general public is that this waterway had many tributaries that today run underground, converted into sewers, a phenomenon that is common in large cities. One of these tributaries, located north of the Thames, was the Tyburn River, documented since the 10th century, in the High Middle Ages.

The River Tyburn was once about 11 kilometres long, rising in South Hampstead (now a very elegant part of the borough of Camden). The river emptied into the Thames in the Pimlico area, next to Vauxhall Bridge (built in 1813). Today the river, if it can still be called that, flows through a culvert and passes under Buckingham Palace, the official residence of the King of England in the British capital.

A few days ago, the YouTube channel Valdigger published the first video of a walk along this ancient river, entering from near Vauxhall Bridge. A less than idyllic walk, which must not have smelled of Chanel No. 5 and in which you see small rodents that are not exactly squirrels, but on your summer walks along a river, don't you pass under a royal palace?

You can see some screenshots from the video here. The route begins with a relatively new section of sewer:

Further ahead we see another older section, with brick walls. On the left there are some kind of anchors that indicate that they have been inspected in January 2023. I don't know what it is, but it looks like the entrance to an old sewer that has been sealed.

A cute rodent taking a walk along the river. If this scares you, I'll tell you that recently in my city I saw a bigger rat taking a walk in the middle of the street...

Another rat showing off its climbing skills, climbing a ladder in one of the access ducts to this sewer.