Event: Free guided walk in Pimlico, Saturday 16 October - The ancient Tyburn - a "Lost River of London"

Published: 15 October 2010
by JOHN FINN

HIDDEN below the streets of Pimlico is a long-forgotten stream, one of the “lost rivers of London”. 

But if you look, you can find its course from clues in the streets and houses around Victoria and down to the Thames. 

The ancient Tyburn is now completely covered over, but on Saturday, October 16, Westminster’s own local tour guides will be on hand to help you uncover this secret in guided tours of the area. 

The free hour-long walks begin at 10am from the Willow Walk pub in Wilton Road, just along from the Apollo Theatre in Victoria, and carry on through the day, on the hour until the last walk at 4pm.

The tours aim to promote Local London Guides like the City of Westminster Guides, and there are three others offered throughout London this Saturday. 

Besides the Tyburn tour, there are walks in the City of London, Clerkenwell and Greenwich, all on the theme of Waterfront London. Saturday’s tours will reveal Pimlico’s hidden history. As we walk along stucco terraces and through housing estates, we will tell stories of “Mr Cubitt’s District” as Pimlico was once known, as well as tracing the course of the “lost” Tyburn river. 

Stops along the walks might feature the extraordinary tale of the site of Westminster Cathedral, the factory where American gunsmith Samuel Colt manufactured arms for the Crimean War, the Pimlico church described as a “lily among the weeds” when built in 1861, and a statue to the first man to be killed on the railway. 

Along the way, walkers will find out how Pimlico got its name and discover the exact spot where the Tyburn joins the Thames.

The Tyburn is still there under our feet, though today it’s more of a storm-drain than a river. It rises on the west side of Hampstead Heath, flows into the lakes of Regent’s Park, crosses under Oxford Street and through Mayfair to pass under Buckingham Palace on its way to Victoria and Pimlico to empty out into the Thames near Vauxhall Bridge. 

Over the centuries, the riverside through which the stream flowed changed from wild, desolate marsh into the market gardens that fed London, and then in the 19th century became what has been described by historian Nicholas Pevsner as, architecturally, the “most consistent area of London”.

Members of the City of Westminster Guide Lecturers Association wear a distinctive badge which is awarded to them after successfully completing a course at Westminster University. Find out more about them and Saturday’s walks on their website, www.westminsterguides.org.uk

• Walks tomorrow (Saturday, October 16) begin at the Willow Walk pub,
and are scheduled to leave every hour on the hour between 10am and 4pm.

• John Finn is an accredited City of Westminster Guide.