London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
Top of the morning to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Saturday, August 23rd, 2025.
First, as per usual, a quick stop and a quaff at the London Calling Book Club Corner. It’s the last chance saloon before we light out for the territory. (Which, come to think of it, is an appropriate way of putting it, isn’t it? It’s the famous last line of the great classic American novel, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.) Ok, so let’s huckle down with Claire this morning. Claire says she’s got two on the go. A House in the Mountains by Caroline Moorehead. And A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown. Claire says the latter is of course a perfect fit for three of her walks: Royal London, Hello London, and Past the Palace.
My two cents’ worth. Thanks and full agreement, Claire. Craig Brown’s one of my favourite authors. I devour everything he reads. He’s got a lot of fascinating things to say and he says them very well.
Ok, main course now. A fact and figure for you. There are now an impressive 28 London towpath walks in the Canal Walks’ Guides repertory.
And tomorrow, Sunday, August 24th we’re running arguably the most exotic bloom of them all. It doesn’t come up very often. Just once or twice a year. So I thought today I’d do a little advancer for it. Whet your appetite as it were.
The walk is Four Hundred Years of the New River. Tomorrow’s outing goes at 2.30 pm from Manor House Tube, Finsbury Park exit 6. A perfect day for a stroll along the New River. The weatherman’s laying on a halcyon day for us. For tomorrow, August 24th, 2025 he’s serving up 22 Celsius with zero chance of the wet stuff.
Now what’s the New River all about? What are you treating yourself to if you go on that walk?
Wading pool first. And then we’ll dive into the deeper waters, into the history.
Ok, wading pool. Here we go. Here’s some of what’s on the menu for tomorrow’s New River Walk. And what an embarrassment of riches. What a feast. Starting with Finsbury Park. And then in no time at all, the headline act: The New River. And I hasten to add, The New River with water in it. There are places on the New River flow line where the New River has dried up or been piped, but not where we’re going. And then there’s the Woodberry Wetlands Nature Reserve. And the Stoke Newington West Reservoir (it rejoices in sailing and canoeing, not to mention a spectacular view that includes the Shard; and our feathered friends will be out in force, chances are we’ll see a mixture of herons, ducks, swans, coots, moorhens and various and sundry other birds. And, steady now, there’s the Scottish Castle. Yes, you heard right, the Scottish Castle. It’s the Castle Climbing Centre today – one of the leading rock climbing centres in Europe. It was built in 1865 as a pumping station. Built to look like a Scottish Castle. And there’s Clissold House and Clissold Park. And for a top up: Stoke Newington’s two churches. Special mention for St Mary’s – it’s 16th century, which makes it a very rare number indeed, for London at any rate.
The section we walk along is the furthest south where one still can see the New River flowing as it always did, between grassland on both banks. Where we’ll walk, it’s how the New River looked for centuries. Still looks.
Into the bargain, it’s easy to see here that the New River is halfway up a hillside – so it’s man-made, not a natural river. We’ll see water flowing over a weir. The which sight makes it clear that the New River is still delivering water to London, still doing what it was built to do more than 400 years ago. And how’s this grab you? At one point on the walk the New River of 400 years ago keeps close company with the bang-up-to-date, 21st-century New River. I’m talking about the spot where the New River flows in both directions at once. Go figure. Better yet, go on the walk and see that one, have it explained to you.
Ok, that’s enough wading pool action. Let’s get right into it. Dive deep into one of London’s great unsung wonders.
The New River. Which, and here’s the first laugh, isn’t new and isn’t a river. Perfect London, that. Contradictory from the off. It’s man-made, it’s over four hundred years old, and it’s not a river at all – it’s an aqueduct. A forty-mile-long watery pipeline, dug in the early 1600s to solve a problem that was threatening London’s very survival: the lack of clean drinking water.
Picture it. Elizabethan and early Stuart London: bursting at the seams, filthy, stinking, crammed with people, all chucking their muck straight into the Thames. And then drinking the Thames water. Mmm, tasty. Watermen joked you could chew it. Except it wasn’t very funny when plague came calling. Londoners desperately needed a reliable, fresh supply of water.
Enter one Hugh Myddelton.
Hugh Myddelton – Welshman, goldsmith, jeweller, entrepreneur, alderman. The sort of chap who today would be running three startups, two side hustles, and a hedge fund on the go.
Hugh Myddleton saw opportunity where others saw cholera. His big idea: bring sweet, clean water down from the Hertfordshire springs to London. Forty miles away. By ditch. Through open countryside, over valleys, under roads. A ditch that would gently, almost imperceptibly, slope downhill all the way to Islington.
Now, this wasn’t a weekend DIY job. Took them ten years. 1602 to 1613. At the height of it, six hundred men digging with nothing but spades, picks, and wheelbarrows. Think of it: forty miles of trench, dug by hand. And it had to be just so: fall about five inches every mile, no more, no less. Too steep and it’d gush and flood. Too flat and it’d sit there sulking. The surveyors – and remember, this is before the age of GPS or laser levels – they had to get it spot on by eye and by primitive instruments. Astonishing feat.
Needless to say, Hugh Myddleton nearly went bust. You’d expect nothing less. Dug himself into a hole, quite literally. Parliament sneered, Londoners grumbled, investors scarpered. And then – ta-da! – King James I stepped in. Put in royal cash, gave it royal backing. Without James, no New River. To this day there’s a statue of Myddelton on Islington Green, holding his trusty measuring rod.
And you know something, Hugh Myddleton deserves a pint from every Londoner who ever turned on a tap.
So, what was the New River like? Not some big, wide canal with horse-drawn barges. That’s the Regent’s Canal – a different beast altogether. The New River was strictly for water. About ten feet across, three or four feet deep, trickling along serenely. No barges, no commerce. Just the lifeblood of London drifting southward.
It entered the capital at New River Head, Islington – still a magical place today. The old circular engine house stands there, a reminder of the time when great pumping engines pushed the water round the city. From there, wooden pipes, later iron, carried the fresh Hertfordshire water into homes and businesses. Suddenly Londoners weren’t just gulping down Thames soup. Public health improved, fires could be fought more easily, the city could grow. The New River made London possible.
Fast-forward four centuries and here’s the treat: you can still follow much of it today. The New River Path winds all the way from Hertford to Islington, forty miles of surprisingly green corridor. Hertfordshire fields, Enfield parks, Muswell Hill allotments, back gardens in Hackney – it threads through them all. Kingfishers, dragonflies, herons. You’d swear you were miles from London. Walk a stretch and you’ll see dog-walkers, anglers, Sunday strollers – and the odd baffled Londoner asking, “Hang on, what’s this river called?”
Upkeep today? It’s still working! Thames Water now manages it. The New River still delivers millions of gallons a day into London’s reservoirs at Stoke Newington and Woodberry Wetlands. So when you fill your kettle in Islington, odds are you’re still drinking Hertfordshire spring water courtesy of Hugh Myddelton and his lads with spades.
Along the way there are gems. At Forty Hall near Enfield the New River glides through Capability Brown-style parkland. At Palmers Green there’s a magnificent stretch shaded by willows. Woodberry Wetlands in Stoke Newington is a haven of wildlife – kestrels wheeling overhead, cormorants drying their wings. And New River Head in Clerkenwell, once the beating heart of London’s water supply, is now a garden and flats, but still with that air of engineering grandeur.
There’s even folklore. Local lads used to swim in it – against all the rules, of course. Drownings were depressingly regular. Horses sometimes blundered in. And Myddelton? He had the last laugh. For all his bankruptcies and sleepless nights, he lived to see his water flowing into the capital and he was knighted for his troubles.
So next time you’re up in Islington and you stroll past a quiet stretch of water, remember: it’s not a pretty ornamental canal. It’s the artery that saved London. A ditch dug by hand, by hundreds of men, four centuries ago. And still doing its job today.
The New River: not new, not a river – but one of the most important bits of London you never knew about.
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from – www.walks.com – home of London Walks, London’s signature walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it, London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £20 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science: you get what you pay for.
And just as surely, you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question: Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world you do whatever you have to do
to attract and keep the best guides in London –
you want them guiding for you, not for somebody else.
Bears repeating: the way we’re structured – a guides’ cooperative – is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following, a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases distinguished professionals:
By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor
(and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated – Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa – both of them CBEs – are just a couple of our headline acts.
Or take our Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z, “internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star Team of Guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former London Museum archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors, a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)… well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament, every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar
and the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note… come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.