Confessions of a London River Hunter by John Rogers

My favourite videos by John Rogers, whose work features here regularly, are the ones where he goes in search of one of London's lost rivers. Not just well-recorded tributaries of the Thames like the Tyburn and Fleet, but little-known rivers out in the suburbs too.

So it's good news that John has a new book out: Confessions of a London River Hunter.

The blurb says:

London is a city of rivers: there are said to be over 350 rivers and streams in Greater London. Most have slipped from the consciousness of the city yet they trickle on through parks and open spaces, behind houses and under roads, winding their stories through the fabric of London and whispering their legends. 

From the western marshes of the Yeading Brook to the lost river of Leytonstone, the channels of the moon goddess, a haunted stream, long buried City tributaries and a brook rescued from the thickets, John Rogers walked some of London’s most storied watercourses that rarely get acknowledged, and attempts to find a way to hear their tales.

One thing I have learnt from his river videos is that people rarely built house over old watercourses. So if you are hunting a river and come across an electricity substation on one side of the road and garages on the other, there's a good chance that this is where that river crossed.

Market Harborough doesn't have a lost river, but it does have a diverted one. Before the railways arrived,  the River Jordan used to flow through the fields by Gores Lane and join the Welland somewhere there. I once came across an old newspaper story from between the wars that said you could still see the old course of the Jordan in the fields when heavy rain flooded them.

It's been partly filled by modern buildings now, but if you look at the North side of Rockingham Road after the railway bridge you can see that a large gap was left before the first house was built. That gap must surely be where the Jordan used to flow.