London Rivers

sufi

lala
This is splendid
http://www.soundsurvey.org.uk/index.php/survey/waterways/

waterways1.gif
 
I like it - but where's the Fleet? And the Walbrook? Westbourne? :-/

Yes, someone should record the Fleet outfall at the Thames, maybe it's too inaccessible along its course these days? Underground at Farringdon, I don't know about the rest of it. Are the ponds on Hampstead Heath involved somehow?

Glad the Quaggy is in there.

This is such a great map even before the field recordings.
 

jenks

thread death
RISING DAMP, U. A. Fanthorpe

'A river can sometimes be diverted but is a very hard thing to lose altogether.'
(Paper to the Auctioneers' Institute, 1907)

At our feet they lie low,
The little fervent underground
Rivers of London

Effra, Graveney, Flacon, Quaggy,
Wandle, Walbrook, Tyburn, Fleet

Whose names are disfigured,
Frayed, effaced.

There are the Magogs that chewed the clay
To the basin that London nestles in.
These are the currents that chiselled the city,
That washed the clothes and turned the mills,
Where children drank and salmon swam
And wells were holy.

They have gone under.
Boxed, like the magician's assistant.
Buried alive in earth.
Forgotten, like the dead.

They return spectrally after heavy rain,
Confounding suburban gardens. They inflitrate
Chronic bronchitis statistics. A silken
Slur haunts dwellings by shrouded
Watercourses, and is taken
For the footing of the dead.

Being of our world, they will return
(Westbourne, caged at Sloane Square,
Will jack from his box),
Will deluge cellars, detonate manholes,
Plant effluent on our faces,
Sink the city.

Effra, Graveney, Falcon, Quaggy,
Wandle, Walbrook, Tyburn, Fleet

It is the other rivers that lie
Lower, that touch us only in dreams
That never surface. We feel their tug
As a dowser's rod bends to the surface below

Phlegethon, Acheron, Lethe, Styx.
 

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
The Caterham Bourne is missing (woud have been a stippled line to the Wandle at Waddon Ponds).
No wonder as it rises from the deep only when the conditions are right, but buoy are they right now.

http://www.surreymirror.co.uk/Widespread-flooding-follow/story-20566809-detail/story.html
http://insidecroydon.com/2014/02/05/kenley-and-purley-on-flood-alert-as-bourne-continues-to-rise/

A (winter)bourne is "a stream or river that is dry through the summer months" (I didn't know).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winterbourne_(stream)
 
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