please empty your brain below
But imagine the walbrook was once a large river flowing through the centre of London. The main outflow of the river Lea in fact, which does head direct towards the City, but diverts East at the last new miles.
Once the Romans built thier wall, what's the ideal defensive thing to do with a river? Divert it to make a moat outside your nice new walls...
So if you look to the East and West extremities of the old Roman wall, you find you get the River Fleet and what is now St Catherine's Docks.
If you block up and divert an existing river, eventually it just creates itself a new simpler course. Leading to the Lea now exiting further downriver.
Blocking it would also lead to flooding north of the city, where we had the largely uninhabited moorefields(Moor = A broad area of open land, often high but poorly drained, with patches of heath and peat bogs).
And if you look at the bow in the river Thames, that starts by Cannon Street, where the Walbrook exited, and bends all the way round Wapping reach, it seems it would have taken quite a powerful river to divert the course of the Thames.
Just to add my pinch of insight to the intriguing history of this River.
TridentScan | Privacy Policy