Walking the New River

One of the features of Covid life is the importance of walks. Whether we bump into our friends by accident or have made an advanced weekend plan of it, a walk date is high social currency. Clerkenwell boasts the best selection of pubs, bars, restaurants and cafés of any parish in England, but we are not so well provided with long-distance footpaths. Or so I thought. Step forward the New River. It took us five days to follow it upstream (from Sadlers Wells) to its source. We walked around nine miles a day, so there was plenty of time to chat to anyone we met on the path, stop for a picnic and coffee breaks. It felt a considerable achievement, walking from the heart of London into Hertfordshire.

The New River begins at a pair of springs in Hertfordshire (at Chadwell and Amwell) and runs downhill all the way into the heart of London. It is neither ‘new” nor indeed a ‘river but an aqueduct built in the reign of Good King James. It followed no seasonal stream or winterbourne, but was designed by a pair of surveyor-engineers (Edmund Coulthurst later assisted by Edward Wright). And over the last 300 years it has been constantly amended, adapted, piped, covered-over and filter-bedded. Hugh Myddleton, a City goldsmith, was charged with sorting out the finance which was only finally achieved by encouraging King James to come strongly on board. The first sods were cut in 1609 and the river was opened in the reign in 1613. Sparkling fresh spring water flowed into a great reservoir that stood in Clerkenwell which was tapped to provide the whole City of London with clean water. Subscribers received their water through elm-wood trunks (which last well when sodden) which had been cored to make pipes.

The New River was always a very flexible thing. Corners were cut, sections were piped and so route maps need to be marked up with the variable historical courses, just as we found out that they need to be colour coded: “accessible for walkers”, “visible but totally inaccessible” and completely invisible. Various London boroughs and planners have been patiently at work over the last twenty years, trying to tease the different sections of the New River into a 28-mile path, a single narrow urban lung. It is a lovely ambition but it has not yet been achieved, and will never be remotely as popular as the Regent’s Canal, which positively pulses with urban life. Nor will the New River Pathway ever join those iconic British walks - such as the South Downs Way, Hadrians Wall, the Ridgeway or Offa’s Dyke - which we all would like to have a crack at, some day. It is simply not pretty or romantic enough. At its very best, the New River sometimes achieves the dignity of a canal, but with no boats or locks. The contrast between this pragmatic instance of English water engineering, and what the Romans achieved with their triumphant aqueducts, which still stand at Pont du Gard or outside Cherchell and Carthage, is comically in favour of the ancients. An English engineer can do many things but tends to fail when it comes to a showy public fountain. Even in its Jacobean heyday there was no gurgling cascade to announce the arrival of the New River, let alone a small sister to the Trevi Fountain - which was how the Italians put a punctuation mark on the end point of an aqueduct.

The New River way will never have any appeal to a foreign tourist, by which I mean anyone who is not proud to be a Londoner. Like any section of our great metropolis, you are as likely to find mud, casual drug deals, dog shit, ancient and modern litter, submerged traffic cones and graffiti as enchantment. BUT I have found it strangely addictive and satisfying, and have now walked it half a dozen times, testing out different hours and days of the week. As ever, early morning midweek, is prime time, when I have encountered a sunbathing fox (watching a council sweeper have a well-earned strong smoke on a bench) and had regular meetings with geese, swans, coots and moorhens. For those of us who live in Clerkenwell, its best feature (by far) is that the New River path, provides you with a bus and tube-free walk that takes you to two great green spaces in North East London.

Most of the route maps start at the pair of springs in Hertfordshire, so I have mapped out a Clerkenwell variant, which goes against the flow.

Start at a war memorial in Spa Fields Green. This coincidentally stands near the end of the old New River, which in its heyday poured itself into a round reservoir on the northside of Roseberry Avenue, now remembered by that small fountain in a round pond. The New River flowed down the centre of Roseberry Avenue, giving a lovely watery southern frontier to Sadlers Wells theatre. We have to imagine all this, as we cut across St Johns Road, then pass through Owens Fields - that little oval park that can sometimes feel ‘overshadowed’. It may be haunted by an incident of the Blizt (October 15 1940) when the bombing blew apart the New River whose waters flooded an underground bomb shelter and drowned a hundred school children.

Then we pop over Goswell/City roads to enter the long tree-lined park at the centre of Colebrooke Row. This is one of the most satisfying sections, overlooked by handsome terraces of 18th-century houses which in their heyday would have reflected the waters of the New River. The names: Duncan Terrace, and Vincent Terrace (like Exmouth Market) made use of popular naval heroes in an attempt to shift real-estate. Halfway along Colebrooke Row, the New River would have flowed over Regents Canal, which here dives underground into the Islington tunnel. Look out for Lambs Cottage (64, Duncan Terrace) home of that young London poet (in 1823) who sheltered his sister (after she had killed their mother with a knife) and who made a small name for himself with Lambs Tales from Shakespeare. Walk right to the end of Colebrooke Row and join the pavement of Essex Road. Even in its heyday the New River went underground for this busy London street.

We find the pathway again just after the Cross Street (Get Stuffed) crossing. Turn left (up the steps) immediately after the Library building, to join the little park that has been created in the middle of Halton road, labelled Asteys Row rock garden. The Victorians covered up the river and a rockery was added in the 1950s, so this has been used for many years, but still feels like a personal discovery when you first find the iron gate. After the Canonbury Road crossing we find our first water, on the site of the New River. It is not a real flow, but a welcome enough urban pond ornamented with barley-straw bales (looking like super-large slices of soggy Weetabix) have been sunk to naturally tame the summer algae. Thronged in the weekend, it is a happy, rather secretive stroll in midweek. There is another very handsome terrace of old London houses along Canonbury Grove after Northampton Street. The New River path continues as a little sliver of green beside Douglas Road before emerging at St Pauls Road. Crossing the tarmac, we head north, along Wallace Road, passing some tempting cafes and a pub near the roundabout after Canonbury railway station. The route of the New River seems temporarily lost, but a wide pathway, shaded by old trees is where it once wandered, bang in the centre of the wide Petherton Road. This, for a Londoner, frames a long and pleasant potter, leading almost due north to join the corner of Clissold Park. This easy, virtually traffic-free route from Clerkenwell to the beating heart of Hackney, makes the New River path a winner. Clissold Park also frames by far the most picturesque extent of the New River, bending beneath Clissold House, a splendid Regency mansion made from mellow yellow London brick which is now furnished with cafés. This is the perfect end destination for this first section of the New River walk, surrounded by places to picnic, a deer-compound and a backdrop of church spires.

The first time we tried to follow this walk, we were exhausted by exploring too many side streets and took a bus back (there are lots of stops on Green Lane). The second time we walked it (we did not got at all lost) and had enough energy to walk home via Newington Green which has a row of terrace houses that date from the rule of Cromwell. The third time we walked it, it grew even shorter and less tiring, and we had time to buy a picnic in one of the dozens of equally appetising cafés that throng the length of Stoke Newington Church street, and eat it in the overgrown Abney Park cemetery – a real treat for those of us who love a gothic necropolis turning into a wilderness.

This is easily the most charming and fascinating section of the New River pathway, especially suitable for a Covid Clerkenwell. Further north is not so decorative and has a different mood.

So our second day’s walk kicked off from Clissold Park, which is bisected by a pretty stretch of the New River. This is an ornamental remnant, long since disconnected from the working route of the aqueduct, which has been continuously improved upon and shortened by Victorian engineers. In Clissold Park you can clearly see two tall brick towers and a spire clustered together to your north. Make your way across the Park towards these, for they are an old pumping station, beside which you will find the first section of the working New River. It is a bit stagnant, but the water course still clearly links up with the two great pools beside it, East and West reservoir. Their future was long in doubt but fortunately they have been turned into an open-air swimming pool and a nature reserve (with its own circular walkway). It has become a popular pathway, which snakes below some handsome newbuilt flats with reservoir views. At the end of this walk-way you can pop out into the edge of Stamford Hill, London’s famously Orthodox Jewish suburb, which we witnessed at its festival best, with the streets swarming with families in fancy dress celebrating Purim. But if you are keeping to the New River you avoid this suburb and follow a gently curving river bed, held back by a banked up contour above the East End. Then a road crossing in order to enter the northern corner of Finsbury Park, which the New River cuts through. This is the prettiest part of the days walk completed. The rest of the day was committed to tarmac pavements, with now and then partial views of the New River as it slides between a toast rack of eight residential streets between Wightman and Green Lane. There is a better stretch of path north of Hornsey High Street-Turnpike Lane and a welcoming park has been laid out beside a restored pumping station. Then a fenced in urban trackway takes you pass the old filter beds that lie below the glass walls of Alexandra Palace conspicuous on its hill with a useful station below.

Day Three began at Alexandra Palace railway station, just to the east of which the New River runs underground. A broad grass track turns into the wooded Finsbury Gardens (laid out back in 1904) before you reach the brick and flint Baptist Church on Braemar Avenue, beside a Temperance obelisk and the more welcoming Prince Pub on Trinity Road. Once north of Myddleton road you find the river and its path. This was the most neglected section, and the path twists here and there, showing you bits of the river, the back of Palmers Green Library, a mosque or two, before passing beside Hazelwood playing fields. None of this is remotely pretty, but oddly rewarding, keeping to the route, as you make your way north. Ridge Avenue marks a social frontier, after which you find yourself passing Cricket pitches, and then desirable riverside houses shadowed by old trees. Then you lose sight of the New River and get sent up a normal footpath, passing through a golf course, before descending into the river park at the centre of Enfield with old branches of the New River turned into pretty lakes.

This bias towards Enfield (hitherto only associated with a British army rifle) was confirmed at the morning start of Day Four. The blossom was out, foxes played in the morning light on deserted playing fields, the houses along Gentleman’s Row appeared like a stage-set of Olde England, and all the locals seemed happy to chat about how the swans were quite right to block the footpath to protect their young signets. Then we found a street marker outside Enfield church, after which the walk got drabber, marching along Southbury then Ladysmith Road. We found the New River north of Carterhatch Lane and the path turned almost rural as the green metal casing of ‘Docrwa aqueduct” passed over Maiden’s brook, after which there were fine long, open stretches of the New River. Crossing the M25 was much easier than I feared, on a broad pavement almost wide and long enough to land a plane, which encased the New River. Then for the first time we were in the country, welcomed by geese and the woodland of Theobalds Park grown over the old Roman Ermine Street. Then dipped under the A 121 to emerge in the centre of Cheshunt, with the Cedar trees of old Bishops College to picnic under. A building project on the edge of Broxbourne sent us off route, but this was a happy diversion, taking us up a Holloway through the old beach woods of Topfield and Cozens Grove. We ended the day finding the course of the New River at its prettiest, walking past picnicking families to fin the river flowing past the graveyard and flint church of St Augustine at Broxbourne. With a useful taxi rank at the railway station just beyond it.

On our last day of walking (starting off at Broxbourne station) we realised that the bed of the New River was now very close to the river Lee, whose serpentine coils embrace nature reserves and feed dozens of ponds. The highlight of the day was unexpectedly discovering the handsome late medieval gatehouse of Rye House. A brick-built castle wrapped up in a plot to abduct King Charles II, whilst on his way to the Newmarket races. There is a pub just beside it, where we tried to remember if it hadn’t been all cooked up by ‘intelligencers”. Then followed a meadow like stroll beside the slow-moving water (broken by weaving around and under the A414) before we reached the village of Amwell. This was one of our missions, with an ornamental pond (decorated with an urn on an island) which fed the first 17th century aqueduct. Just above it stood a locked church and a very busy, but welcoming pub. Then two more meadow like stretches before we reached the old Hertfordshire malting town of Ware. Then the last stretch, marked out by the high tower of a pumping station, to reach the 18th century stone sluice which marked where the Chadwell spring (now a chain of bird-filled ponds) once entered the New River, which was also supplied by a weir stealing some of the headwater from the river Lee.

A barbed wire fence stopped me crossing the railway line, the other side of which was the banks of the Lee. We had reached the end.

Covid lockdown had provided the inspiration to follow this trail, but it turns out to have been well timed in another way. For it has just been announced that after three hundred years of use, the New River is to be switched off as a working aqueduct.

A consistent feature of the New River is the succession of weirs, mechanical filters, handsome old pump houses, as well as mysterious old in-take and out-take pipes. The pragmatic mechanism of the Water Board dominates the whole route, alongside notices telling you not to swim, fish, laugh or paddle. We estimated that we were kept away from its banks for at least a third of the walkway.

Now a new future opens for the New River. It might stagnate into a moat filled with reeds and rubbish, or it could be fully opened up to make another lung, a blue-water green space for London. The success of the Regents Canal towpath surely shows us what to do.

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