River Fleet with Paul Talling

This tour with Paul Talling, author of Derelict London and London's Lost Rivers, follows the route of the River Fleet from Blackfriars Bridge to St Pancras.

Learn about the London sewer system before visiting sites of prisons, bridges and wells that lined the banks of the Fleet. See Smithfields Market (including a quick look at the derelict parts covered in Paul’s Derelict London book), a street where Charles Dickens located Fagin’s Den, Hockley-in-the-Hole, an ancient haunt of thieves, and the site of bear baiting where you can hear the sound of the Fleet flowing beneath a drain. The walk will finish up at the St Pancras Old Church where people once bathed in the adjacent Fleet.