Fleet Ditch

Fleet Ditch. The southern portion of the River Fleet going through the city, a sewer by the 17th century. Related entries: the River Fleet and Fleet Ditch (the street).

See also Fleet Ditch, by Pat Rogers.

the Canal ...

In antient Times (as you may read in the Chapter of the antient Brooks, Rivers, &c. of Fresh Water serving this City) there was a Brook called Turmil Brook, which ran under Holbourn and Fleet Bridges, into the Thames. But this Brook did continually cost much Money in the keeping it clean, and all to little purpose; for what by Peoples making incroachments upon the Banks, and their casting of the Soil into the Stream, it was almost filled up. And of late Years, instead of a Brook or River, it was known only by the Names of Bridewel Ditch, and Fleet Ditch; near unto which two Places were two Wooden Bridges over it, for Foot Passengers. And in this Condition it continued, until all the small Tenements, Sheds, and Lay-stalls on the Banks of it, were burnt down in the general Fire of London. After which, Anno vicessimo secundo Car. II. in the Act for Rebuilding of the City, it was Enacted:	Turmil Brook.
"The Channel of Bridewel Dock: From the Channel of the River of Thames to Holbourn Bridge, shall be sunk to a sufficient Level, whereby to make it Navigable; and that the Ground be set out for the Breadth of the said Channel and of the Wharfs on ech side thereof, shall not be less in Breadth than One Hundred Foot; nor shall exceed One hundred and Twenty Foot. And that all the Wharf Ground on each side of the said River, shall lie open and at large (Crains and Stairs only excepted) without any Division or Separation; and each Person's Propriety therein, to be distinguished only by Denter-Stones in the Pavement thereof. And that all Buildings that shall hereafter immediately border upon each side of the said Wharfs, shall front and be placed in the Line that shall be set out for the Bounds of the Wharfs from the Channel. And that the said Buildings shall be of the Second Rate of Buildings, mentioned in the Act for Rebuilding of the City. And that no Lighter, Boat, or Vessel, shall lie before any of the said Wharfs or Keys, longer than shall be necessary for the Lading or Unlading of Goods, without the Consent or Permission of the Wharfingers or Proprietors thereof. And that it shall and may be lawful for any Person or Persons to land any Goods and Merchandizes at any of the said Wharfs or Keys, within this new Channel or River. For Wharfage or Cranage whereof, every Proprietor, Wharffinger, or other Person concerned, shall demand and receive such Rates (and no other) for the same, as shall from time to time be set and appointed by his Majesty, with the Advice of his Privy Council. And that certain reasonable Rates for Tolls, and other Profits arising by the Navigation of the said Channel, shall be set and appointed by the Lord Maior and Court of Aldermen, (with approbation of two of the Barons of the Exchequer.) And the same Tolls and Profits, vested in the Maior, Communalty, and Citizens of the City of London, for preservation of the said Navigation-Sluices, and other accidental Charges thereof."	The Act to make Fleet Ditch Navigable. Leiborn.
"And for the carrying on of this Work, it was enacted and declared, That the sinking and making the said Channel of Bridewel Dock and Fleet Ditch, from the Thames to Holbourn Bridge, and the Sluices for the better Navigation thereof, and the Raising and Sinking other Wharfs or Keys, on each side of the said Bridewel Dock and Fleet Ditch, (whereby to bring the same to a Level) shall be born and first defrayed, by the Maior, and Communalty, and Citizens of London, out of the Fourth Part of the Imposition to be raised on Coals, by Vertue of this Act. And in the next Place, after the Charge before mentioned shall be born out of the said Fourth Part, Satisfaction shall be made out of the said Fourth Part, to the Proprietors whose Ground shall be laid open, or from whom any Ground hath been, or shall be taken, for the said Publick Use."
By Virtue of this Act of Parliament, the Work of making this Channel Navigable, began in the Year 1668. and was finished in November, 1673. It contains in length, from South at the Thames, to North at Holbourn Bridge, Two Thousand and One Hundred Feet. It is in breadth Forty Feet; so that two Lighters may meet, and pass each other in any part of it. It is Wharfed on both sides with Stone and Brick, laid with Tarras. It hath a strong Campshot all along on both sides, over the Brick Wharfing, with Land Ties in several Places. It hath Rails of Oak, Breast high, above the Campshot, to prevent Dangers that might happen in the Night Season. It hath five Foot Water at the Head thereof, at Holbourn Bridge; and that at a Five a Clock Tide, (which is the slackest of all high Tides;) but at Spring, and other Nepe Tides, it hath much more Water. The Wharfs on each side of this Channel, are Thirty Foot broad, with fair Buildings.
The whole Charge of Sinking, Clearing, and Levelling; Wharfing, Planking, and Piling; Paving, Posting, and Railing; amounted in all to Twenty seven Thousand, Seven Hundred, and Seventy seven Pounds; besides what was paid to the several Proprietors whose Grounds were taken, or may be, for the Inlargement of the Wharfs and Keys, in either side of the Channel.
Over this Canal there are four Bridges, all of solid Portland Stone; two of them, viz. Fleet and Holbourn Bridges, were of Stone before the Fire of London; but now much inlarged and beautified with Iron Grates, and carved Works in Stone. The other two, viz. one against Bridewel, and the other against Fleet lane, were, before the Fire, only of Timber. (For the Channel in these Places was then very narrow) but now they are two fair Bridges, standing upon two Stone Arches, over the River; having Steps to ascend and descend on either side; and a half Pace over the Arches, all of Purbeck and Portland Stone. The making of which were very chargeable; and the Charge paid out of the Money raised by the Imposition laid upon Coals, by Vertue of the said Act of Parliament.	Bridges over the Canal.

Fleet Ditch. In the 13th century the river [Fleet] was "of such breadth and depth that ten or twelve ships at once, with merchandise, were wont to come to the Bridge of Fleet, and some of them to Holborn Bridge."—Strype. But as the population increased about Clerkenwell and Holborn the waters of the wells were diverted from their former channel, the stream itself was encroached on by wharfs, its waters were employed to turn the mills along it, and it became a receptacle for every description of tanners' refuse, house sewage, and all kinds of offal. Stow enumerates several attempts that were made by Parliament in the 35th Edward I. (1307) and in subsequent reigns to clean it and to keep it clean, so that boats and barges might pass and unload their cargoes at Fleet Bridge and Holborn Bridge as before; and the City authorities issued many ordinances to the same purpose.² All, however, would appear to have been ineffectual. "It creepeth slow enough," says Fuller, "not so much for age as the injection of city excrements wherewith it is obstructed."³ There were other obstructions than Fuller thought proper to refer to; and Ben Jonson tells us what they were in The Famous Voyage describing the hair-brained adventure of Sir Ralph Shelton and Sir Christopher Heyden, who undertook to row from Bridewell to Holborn, and, more extraordinary still, performed their voyage:—

All was to them the same; they were to pass,
And so they did, from Styx to Acheron
The ever-boiling flood; whose banks upon,
Your Fleet Lane Furies and hot Cooks do dwell,
That with still-scalding steams make the place Hell;
The sinks ran grease, and hair of meazled hogs,
The heads, houghs, entrails, and the hides of dogs:
For, to say truth, what scullion is so nasty
To put the skins and offals in a pasty?
Cats there lay divers. ...

"The encroachments upon the banks and the casting of the soil into the stream "went on until it became little better than an open sewer, and, as Strype observes, "it was only known by the names of Bridewell Ditch and Fleet Ditch, ... and so it continued until all the small tenements, sheds, and lay-stalls on the banks of it were burnt down in the general Fire of London."¹ But the mischief being made matter of complaint to the commissioners of sewers in the time of Cromwell, an order was issued in 1652 for the cleansing of the sewer and the removal of "the houses of office "which overhung its waters, and made it what the commissioners call "very stinking and noisome." The ditch is described as quite impassable with boats, "by reason of the many encroachments thereupon made by keeping of hogs and swine therein and elsewhere near to it, the throwing in of offals and other garbage by butchers, soucemen, and others, and by reason of the many houses of office standing over and upon it." In consequence of this order (of which there is a printed copy of the time in the British Museum) the ditch was cleansed, and "the houses of office" removed from about it. But the nuisance continued, though in a lesser degree, till the period of the Great Fire, when the citizens turned their attention to the state of the ditch, and having obtained parliamentary powers (22 Charles II., 1670), had it deepened between Holborn and the Thames, so that barges might ascend with the tide as far as Holborn as before. At the same time the sides were built of stone and brick, wooden railings placed about the ditch and wharfs and landing-places made. This "New Canal," as it was now called, was 40 feet in breadth, with a depth of water at the upper end, "at middling tides," of 5 feet, and a width on each side for wharfs of 35 feet. Four stone bridges were built across the canal, at Bridewell, Fleet Street, Fleet Lane, and Holborn. The canal cost the sum of £27,777, besides what was paid to the proprietors whose grounds were taken for wharfs and quays. In digging the channel and forming the quays between Fleet Bridge and Holborn—the line in its length and breadth still shown by Farringdon Street—a large number of Roman remains—coins, pottery, and a few bronze penates were discovered. The work proved an unprofitable speculation. The toll was heavy, the traffic inconsiderable, and in spite of its new name and the money that had been spent upon it, the ditch was doomed to continue a common sewer, and, as a new canal, is now chiefly remembered by a smart reply. When the polite Lord Chesterfield was asked by some enthusiastic Parisian whether, in London, we could show a river like the Seine, "Yes," he replied, "and we call it Fleet Ditch." Gay has introduced "the black canal of mud" into his Trivia:—

If where Fleet Ditch with muddy current flows,
You chance to roam; where oyster-tubs in rows
Are ranged beside the posts; there stay thy haste,
And with the savoury dish indulge thy taste:
The damsel's knife the gaping shell commands,
While the salt liquor streams between her hands.—Gay, Trivia.

Nor has Swift overlooked it in his City Shower, but it is hardly worth while to cite the unsavoury passage in which he has done so. Pope, it will be remembered, has laid the famous diving-scene in The Dunciad in the ditch by Bridewell:—

This labour past, by Bridewell all descend
(As morning prayer and flagellation end)
To where Fleet Ditch with disemboguing streams
Rolls its large tribute of dead dogs to Thames.
Pope, The Dunciad, B. ii. p. 270.¹

The nuisance, however, was too great to continue longer, and the mayor and corporation, when the present Mansion House was about to be built and it became necessary to remove Stocks Market to a new site, wisely determined to arch over the ditch between Holborn Bridge and Fleet Street, and remove the market, 1737, to the site thus obtained. [See Fleet Market.] A portion of the ditch between Fleet Street and the Thames still remained open; an opportunity, however, was found, when Blackfriars Bridge was built, to arch it over, and from 1765 famous Fleet Ditch carried its dead dogs and discharging streams to the Thames underground.

By the construction of the main drainage system of the Metropolitan Board of Works the Thames is now happily relieved from that hideous mass of filth. The outlet of the Fleet is, in fact, a somewhat complex but very ingenious piece of underground engineering. There is still a direct channel of communication with the Thames, but it is held in reserve for extraordinary occasions; ordinarily the contents of the Fleet pass into the great Low Level Sewer. As the river channel has to be carried under the Metropolitan District Railway and over the Low Level Sewer, it was found necessary greatly to diminish its depth. It was therefore divided into four separate passages, each widening gradually to its mouth, and furnished with a penstock and tidal flap. North of these passages a broader channel was formed, with penstock arrangement at its mouth, communicating directly with the main Low Level Sewer. The effect of this is that, in the usual course of things, the contents of the Fleet pass into the main sewer, but they can at any time be diverted into the Thames should any great storm, failure in the main-drainage pumping apparatus, or other accident occur, which would try too severely the capacity of the great sewer; while at any time storm waters and accidental overflows can be diverted to the Thames.

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² Riley, Memorials; Liber Albus.
³ Worthies, London.

¹ Strype, B. iii. p. 280.