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River Fleet

AC with 0 elementsGeography of the City of LondonGeography of the London Borough of CamdenSubterranean rivers of LondonThames drainage basin
Samuel Scott 001
Samuel Scott 001

The River Fleet is the largest of London's subterranean rivers, all of which today contain foul water for treatment. Its headwaters are two streams on Hampstead Heath, each of which was dammed into a series of ponds—the Hampstead Ponds and the Highgate Ponds—in the 18th century. At the southern edge of Hampstead Heath these descend underground as sewers and join in Camden Town. The waters flow 4 mi (6 km) from the ponds, having as combined sewers taken on foul water, in the Victorian economic but grandiose scheme designed by Joseph Bazalgette to be conveyed by very large sewers to be treated at Beckton Sewage Treatment Works. The river gives its name to Fleet Street, the eastern end of which is at what was the crossing over the river known as Fleet Bridge, and is now the site of Ludgate Circus.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article River Fleet (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

River Fleet
Paul's Walk, City of London

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 51.510833333333 ° E -0.10444444444444 °
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Blackfriars Bridge

Paul's Walk
EC4V 4DY City of London
England, United Kingdom
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De Keyser's Royal Hotel
De Keyser's Royal Hotel

De Keyser's Royal Hotel was a large hotel on the Victoria Embankment, at its junction with New Bridge Street (now the A201), Blackfriars, London. The location was formerly the site of Bridewell Palace. The Royal Hotel was founded before 1845 by Constant de Keyser, an immigrant to England from Belgium. It was a high-end hotel, catering mainly to visitors from continental Europe. His son Polydore de Keyser ran the hotel from around 1856. A new hotel building with five storeys and two basements was opened at the same site on 5 September 1874, designed by the Scottish architect Edward Augustus Gruning. The foundation stone was laid by the daughter of the Belgian Vice-Counsul. The new building had a long curved façade facing the River Thames, close to Sion College and near the site of the new City of London School building that opened in 1883. The exterior was in an Anglicised form of the Second Empire Style, faced by white Suffolk bricks and Portland stone, with a Mansard roof covered with green slates and hips, ridges and dormers in zinc. An archway to through to an internal courtyard, at the centre of which was a glass dome covering a billiard room below, later used as a lounge. The interior was decorated in opulent French style, with 230 guest rooms and many function rooms, including a dining hall 110 by 40 feet (34 m × 12 m) with space for 400 people. Furniture was imported from Paris. A second wing opened in 1882, when the hotel became the largest in London, accommodating up to 480 guests, with a second dining room for another 250 people, and rooms for 150 staff. Sir Polydore de Keyser had no children. His hotel was sold to a limited company in 1897, and a nephew Polydor Welchand de Keyser took over the management. The hotel suffered a serious decline of business after the outbreak of the First World War, and it was taken over by a receiver. With a shortage of office space in London for the wartime ministries, the hotel was requisitioned in May 1916 by the Office of Works for the wartime use of the Royal Flying Corps. Renamed "Adastral House", the first building to bear that name, it was the London headquarters of the Royal Flying Corps until it moved to Hotel Cecil on the formation of the new Air Ministry and the Royal Air Force in 1918. For a short period it was occupied by the Royal Army Medical Corps, until 1919. The owner of the hotel claimed compensation, leading to a legal case on the power of the royal prerogative, Attorney-General v De Keyser's Royal Hotel Limited. The case reached the House of Lords, which held that the Defence of the Realm Act 1914 replaced the royal prerogative, and that compensation was due under the Defence Act 1842. The hotel never reopened. The building was sold to Lever Brothers in 1921, and it became their London headquarters. The hotel building was demolished in 1931 to make way for the construction of Unilever House.

Blackfriars station
Blackfriars station

Blackfriars, also known as London Blackfriars, is a central London railway station and connected London Underground station in the City of London. It provides Thameslink services: local (from North to South London), and regional (Bedford and Cambridge to Brighton) and limited Southeastern commuter services to South East London and Kent. Its platforms span the River Thames, the only one in London to do so, along the length of Blackfriars Railway Bridge, a short distance downstream from Blackfriars Bridge. There are two station entrances either side of the Thames, along with a connection to the London Underground District and Circle lines. The main line station was opened by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway with the name St. Paul's in 1886, as a replacement for the earlier Blackfriars Bridge station (now the present station's southern entrance) and the earlier Blackfriars railway bridge. This increased capacity of rail traffic through the Snow Hill tunnel to the rest of the rail network. The Underground station opened in 1870 with the arrival of the Metropolitan District Railway. The station was renamed Blackfriars in 1937 to avoid confusion with St Paul's tube station. It was rebuilt in the 1970s, which included the addition of office space above the station and the closure of the original railway bridge, which was demolished in 1985. In 2009, the station underwent major refurbishments to improve capacity, which included the extension of the platforms across the railway bridge and a new station entrance on the South Bank. The underground station was rebuilt at the same time, and work was completed in 2012.

Ludgate Hill railway station
Ludgate Hill railway station

Ludgate Hill was a railway station in the City of London that was opened on 1 June 1865 by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LC&DR) as its City terminus. It was on Ludgate Viaduct (a railway viaduct) between Queen Victoria Street and Ludgate Hill, slightly north of St. Paul's station (now called Blackfriars station) on the site of the former Fleet Prison. North of Ludgate Hill station, Ludgate Viaduct continued to the Snow Hill tunnel to connect with the then recently opened Metropolitan Railway south of Farringdon station to enable main-line trains to run between north and south London. Passenger services through the tunnel ended in 1916, after which services ran only the few hundred yards (metres) to Holborn Viaduct station which had opened in 1874. Ludgate Hill became little used because of its proximity to the Holborn Viaduct and St. Paul's stations, and on 3 March 1929 Ludgate Hill was closed. The platform buildings remained derelict until they were demolished in the 1960s but the island platform remained until 1974. Remains of the street-level buildings and traces of the platform and staircase lasted until the whole station area and viaduct were demolished in 1990. In the 1970s, in the Fleet line proposal, preparatory work began for Ludgate Circus Underground station very near the site of the former Ludgate Hill station, but it was abandoned when a different alignment was chosen for the Jubilee line, as it later became known. An office building now stands at the site, above a new tunnel which connects the revived Snow Hill tunnel and Blackfriars station for Thameslink services. City Thameslink station, the platforms of which are in tunnel, has its southern exit building on Ludgate Hill, 90 metres north of the centre of the old station.