These trickles on Hampstead Heath are a long way from what the Fleet becomes, but they remind us that London was a city defined by its rivers.
4/4

Further down, there are just hints that the Fleet used flowed here. Street names or bends in the road.
The once pastoral scene at St Pancras Old Church now has asphalt instead of water.
3/4

At Kenwood House you do get the sense that you are looking down a wide river valley.
The dips and hollows give the headwaters somewhere to gather.
2/4

The only glimpses of the River Fleet are at Hampstead Heath before it disappears into the sewer system.
Its wiggly journey to the Thames at Blackfriars is best shown on the old London County Council Main Drainage map at Abbey Mills Pumping Station.
1/4

Brent Lodge Park sewer overflow was featured in the C4 doc as we knew it spilled but didn't appear in the records.
C4 also revealed that Northumbrian Water had 61 unconsented sewers. Severn Trent 420. Are they on the WaterUK map? Local groups could ask their water company
4. End

We discovered that in London there were almost double the number of sewer overflows that the regulator & public hadn't been told about. Unmonitored & no permits.
We pressed Thames Water & they appeared on the map in Dec 2023.
www.londonwaterkeeper.org.uk/newsletter-d...
3

English water companies are now showing real-time sewer overflows. As the Environment Act 2021 requires.
This is good of course. But are all the unconsented sewers on this new map?
Channel4 Dispatches found 100s of sewer pipes "off the books"
youtu.be/ilhC5Ekp3eo?si… (5m48s)
1

Whether we call it making London a Sponge City, it boils down to reversing the paving over of so many small green spaces.
BBC News - London flooding: Should the capital become a 'sponge city'? - BBC News
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

We need to boost street-level flood protection in London.
Where we have a combined system rain goes down drainpipes & into sewers.
Instead the green spaces in front of many properties could have small basins created to take the rain off roofs & slowly release it.
Currently they're underused.

The last Government didn't fully activate its own law, the Environment Act 2021.
The clause to make water companies "secure a progressive reduction in the adverse impacts of discharges from storm overflows" isn't in force.
We asked the new Government to do it, they haven't yet.