The Neckinger [Query]

[edhistory]

Can anyone provide me with an authentic date for the cutting of the drainage ditch that later became known as the River Neckingker?

Thanks.

John K

[computedshorty]

River Neckinger. ( Quote )

The area where the Neckinger meets the Thames at St Saviour's Dock was historically known as Jacob's Island (now the wealthy area known as Shad Thames). The area was once notoriously squalid and described as "The very capital of cholera" and "The Venice of drains" by the Morning Chronicle of 1849.

In the 17th century convicted pirates were hanged at the mouth of the river (the corpses were placed on display as a deterrent further downstream at Blackwall Point)[citation needed]. The name of the river is believed to derive from the term "devil's neckcloth" (i.e. hangman's noose).

[Townleygreen]

What makes you think it was/isn't a proper river?

Everything I've read about it describes it as a river.

Unusually, it has its source near the Thames close to what is now Bernie Spains Gardens and the Oxo Tower Wharf. It follows a U shaped course, marking the original boundary between Lambeth and Southwark, south towards Elephant & Castle, before twisting back towards the Thames, through Bermondsey's back streets to emerge at the Thames close to St Saviour?s Wharf and the Design Museum.

[Huguenot]

What's the difference between a drainage ditch and a river? Human intervention?

If a natural river is diverted, does it then become ditch?

Could the Neckinger be both ditch and river?

[mikeb]

John

Depends which bit you're looking at but June 1770 not a bad guess for the NW section. Looking at the Roque map 1749

http://www.motco.com/map/003/imageone-a.asp?Picno=80002003

the NW sections are fairly clear and look more like a stream from the ponds at Dog & Duck along Brook Drive than a drainage ditch, though as Hugenot says, in an area as marshy as Lambeth the difference is moot. The central section looks a little vague. The NE sections look enclosed as the area developed.

I would propose that the NW sections were formalised when St George's fields were developed by 4 June 1770. See

(a) map immediately before development, showing the same streams as in 1749

http://www.ideal-homes.org.uk/__data/assets/image/0020/304436/01292-1994.jpg

(b) description of the building works

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=65443

Some of the primary sources cited may be able to help. I note the owner of the Dog & Duck seemed to have a well.

Mike

[edhistory]

townleygreen:

Mainly because I've not seen any evidence to support the allegation that the "River Neckinger" was in any sense a river.

I've attached an extract of Seller's map of Surrey. This shows an unamed watercourse with a source at the northern of the two alleged sources of the "River Neckinger". This shows this watercourse as a tributary of the River Wandle. I have another Surrey map of the same vintage which I can't locate at the moment that shows the same watercourse is a tributary of the River Effra (which is more plausible!).

The point is that this watercourse flows from east to west.

Most of the internet references and recent books covering the "River Neckinger" are derived (copied without credit) from Barton's "Lost Rivers of London". Even the revised edition is now seriously out of date because of the subterranean mapping of northern Lambeth and northern Southwark as a result of archaeological excavations over the last 30 years.

The topography of the reclaimed tidal marshes does not support a "U-shaped river".

Huguenot:

In this case my definition would exclude canalisation, straightening, or reveting existing watercourses.

This area of tidal salt marsh used to extend northwards from the mouth of the East Dulwich and Nunhead valley to the present course of the River Thames. There were many non-persistent eyots and channels.

Reclamation started c60AD and contiuned intermittently for about 1600 years.

This is probably the reason the growth of settlement at Peckham was constrained to the north for so long and why the Peckham Domesday return is surprisingly small.

If a watercourse follows a straight(ish) line over this terrain for more than about 100 yards it is almost certain to cut through an eyot.

In this area the natural flow of the braided River Thames was west to east.

Land reclaimation is normally by cutting drainage ditches.

mikeb:

They look like drainage ditches to me. There's too many straight lines and right angles for them to be anything else.

It's interesting to note the discontinuity across the Lambeth Road. South of the road is probably Seller's watercourse.

It looks like the southern section of the "River Neckinger" including the alleged East Dulwich tributaries was an entirely different drainage system.

John K

[mikeb]

John

This map shows the discontinuity more clearly.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~genmaps/genfiles/COU_files/ENG/SRY/genmag_thames-sryside_1766.html

But this one by Roque suggests that the streams do link up - plate 53 (but also check out Ref 273)

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=65449

I do think the stream running SE from the Dog and Duck does look like a stream, not a ditch. It hits Newington Butts by the almshouses so perhaps there is something relevant in their records, e.g. of construction. This would also fit with the roadname Brook Drive.

Interesting reference here to boats sailing down to Newington Butts but not clear from which direction!

http://www.archive.org/stream/curiositiesoflon00timbrich/curiositiesoflon00timbrich_djvu.txt

(p 187)

St. Mary's, Newington-butts, was built in 1791-^3 by Hurlbatt, in place of a smaller church. It contains a monument with statues to Sir Hugh Brawne, buried in the old church, 1614, and who " for the space of twenty-two years was the whole ornament of the parish." Here, too, is a tablet to Dr. Fothergillj and to Captain M. Waghorn, one of the few persons who escaped from the sinking of the Royal George, in 1782. The parsonage-house was originally built of wood, and surrounded by a moat, now filled up. In this parish was a small water-course called the river Tigris, part of Cnut's trench ; and a parishioner who died at the age of 109 years, early in the present century, remembered when boats came up as far as the church at Newington.

Mike

[edited to confirm that the profanity filter has issues with the name of a great norse king famous for demonstrating his inability to hold back the tide]

[mikeb]

Some more

http://www23.us.archive.org/stream/sketchesofsouthw00bowe/sketchesofsouthw00bowe_djvu.txt

([p69)

Set in the base of the wall separating the ladder makers from Bethlem Hospital in the Lambeth Road is another stone. At this spot Lord George Gordon, in 1780, marshalled his " No Popery " legions, prior to his presenting his Anti-Catholic petition to the House of Commons. The St. George's Fields' boundary from this stone is along the rear of the houses in Kennington Road, by way of Brook Street along the line of the filled-in parish brook to a pillar in Miss Sharman's Home in Austral Street, whereon are boundary plates of St. George's Parish dated 181 8 and 1844 respectively, and a stone of Lambeth Parish of 1850.

This brook flowed on from here and emptied itself into the river Tigris, said to be a part of Knut's canal, and which

ran at the back of the Newington National Schools.

When Knut found that he could not get his boats past London Bridge he caused a canal to be cut through the south marshes so that he might invest the City on all sides, and by preventing the entry of supplies, facilitate its reduc-

tion. This w r ater-course commenced where the Commercial Docks now are, to the east of the Parish of Rotherhithe, continuing its course westward through Rotherhithe, passing St. Thomas-a- Watering, proceeding a little to the south-east of the Lock Hospital at the end of Kent Street, thence to Newington Butts, where it intersected the road by the schools, whence, continuing its course by the Black Prince at Kennington, it ran west-by-south through Vauxhall to its influx into the Thames at Chelsea Reach. About ten or fifteen years ago the framework of a ship was discovered when digging some foundations near the old St. Helena Gardens, Rotherhithe. I should think it probable, writes Mr. Coles, in an interesting letter to me, that the whole swamp or marsh was intersected with ditches and minor waterways, just as the Isle of Thanet was when the ships could come into the Thames between Thanet and Sheppey. Brayley, in his History of Surrey, states that early in the nineteenth century a parishioner of Newington named Farns remembered when boats came up as far as the church. Midway between the Elephant and Castle and the church was a small one- arched bridge, the repairs to which in 1691 were recorded on the above stone let into the wall of the Fishmongers' Almshouses. The turnpike was here crossed by a ford. It is thought by my friend Mr. Coles and others that the Tigris only went a short distance past this bridge.

[jimmah]

I love the idea that there was once someone of 109 who could just about remember boats reaching as far as St Marys Church whereas now you would have to be about 109 to even remember St Marys Church itself!

BTW there is a really good description of St George's Fields in Barnaby Rudge. I think it talks about the Circus being in the middle of acres of open land.

[edhistory]

Perhaps if we go back in time and work forwards?

This map comes from the London Archaeologist journal.

This shows that the Neckinger was originally a River Thames channel between eyots.

John K

[edhistory]

mikeb:

Following your suggestion I came across this: http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/arch-379-1/dissemination/pdf/vol_28/surreyac028_111-163_codrington.pdf

The Neckinger reference is on page 127.

There is also a plausible explantion of "Canute's Trench" there.

John K

[mikeb]

Really interesting but unsourced for the most part? I couldn't find some of the maps cited - ever seen a large scale copy of Morgan's map?

Brook Drive half finished here, in Snow's map of around 1818. Looks a little like part of the stream remains above ground. This also shows just how marshy Bermondsey was between Old Kent Road and the docks.

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/1818map/3_5c.htm#upperleft

[Annette Curtain]

mike

pm me your e-mail

I know the Archeologist who oversees the finds in The City of London and else where

That period is her special interest

(though there's other specialists on her team)

I'll pass your question on by e-mail if you like

Nette

[edhistory]

Mike,

The Snow site has this: http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/watermap1856/watermap_1856c4-6.html

Useful, but beware of the contours - they are not based on the Ordnance Survey datum.

I have previously tried geo-referencing the East Dulwich tile in GIS but the result was very ugly. But at least you can see from the contours where the three streams in our valley exited.

The other Neckinger references will have to wait until the weekend.

John K

[Moos]

You really can't say Cnut on the forum?

[Moos]

Goodness, you can't. How about the old spelling: Canute?