The Lost River Fleet
Press your ear to a street grate in Clerkenwell and hear London's largest buried river still rushing beneath your feet.
FREE
The lowdown
London is laced with lost rivers, buried in tunnels as the city grew, and the greatest of them is the Fleet, which once flowed broad enough for ships up to what is now Farringdon. Today it runs unseen beneath the streets, but on Ray Street in Clerkenwell you can stand over a metal grate in the road and actually hear it rushing along in the darkness below.
It is free, and faintly magical, to press close and listen to a real river hidden under the tarmac, especially after heavy rain when it roars. A reminder that beneath the modern city an older, watery London is still very much alive.
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