Five... videos about the history of London's rivers
Some weekend viewing
Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter…
This edition’s a handful of videos diving into London’s history from our YouTube archives, looking at how the city’s been shaped by its rivers — by the might of the Thames, the bridges that made trade and transport possible between its shores, and the many once-potent rivers now buried beneath the city.
You might also like:
Five… historic things found in the river Thames
The (remarkably grim) history of Southwark Bridge
The lost rivers of Southwark, and the 1746 map that shows them
Walking London’s hidden rivers
A few years ago
took to the streets to trace the route of the buried and forgotten River Walbrook — from Shoreditch down through the City of London to the Thames.(If you’re as enchanted by the hidden rivers crisscrossing London underneath our feet as we are, there’s a series on London’s Lost Rivers for you.)
The floating village of west London
Back in early 2020 we went to meet some of the residents of what might be London’s most unusual village — Swan Island, in Twickenham, is a community of floating houses, with around 40 families living on the houseboats, yachts, barges and floating homes skirting the island (until 2016, someone was living on a Dunkirk small ship, though it sadly sunk), along with a number of businesses. Together they form a half solid, half bobbing village in the Thames.