Lost London: Walking the Falcon Brook Part 1: The Hydeburn
Note: this walk was completed in early December 2020, before London entered Tier 4 restrictions, and the start of national lockdown in January 2021.
The Falcon Brook is a river of many names; even its most common moniker is varyingly given as Falcon Brook, Falconbrook, or just the Falcon. It is thought to have gained this title from the rising falcon crest of the 16th Century St John family, the lords of Battersea Manor. Prior to this, it bore the names of Hidaburna (or variations thereof) and York Brook. To add to the confusion, there are multiple sources for the river; one rises in Streatham Hill and nowadays takes the name Hydeburn, whilst other principle sources rise around Tootting Bec Common and take the (seemingly interchangeable) names of Streathbourne and Woodbourne. The whole set of streams – now flowing entirely underground – is often just known as the Falcon Brook to simplify matters…
I chose to walk the length of the Falcon Brook from its Hydeburn source, starting up in Streatham Hill in the Leigham Court Estate, an interesting collection of houses, maisonettes and flats, many of which are built with Arts and Crafts design and decoration. The start of the Hydeburn is unclear, though a good guess is a set of ponds which once existed in the grounds of the manor house Leigham Court (which gave the current estate its name); these ponds were just to the south of the estate’s St Margaret the Queen church, which makes for a convenient starting point.
The route of the river then winds through a series of residential streets, with the rush of waters being occasionally heard under drain covers in the centre of mini-roundabouts. The Arts and Crafts residences quickly give way to the more typical “Metroland” type semi-detached house of the early 20th Century; this in turn is superseded by modernist blocks of flats as the river approaches the Streatham Hill road.
Crossing this main road, the river is soon amongst the early 20th Century suburbs again; this is a strong theme for much of the early part of this walk. Some greenery is briefly present when the walk runs along the northern edge of Tooting Bec common, but this is soon replaced by more housing.
Another break comes with the Zennor Road Trade Park, a rather grey industrial estate, soon followed by the slightly more visually appealing La Retraite, a Roman Catholic Girls’ School set up in the 1880s by an order of Nuns from Brittany; the school occupies former housing, once home to painter Philip Alexius de László and music hall comedian Dan Leno. It is more of the same suburbia after this though, with a quick look at Balham High Road as the river’s course cuts across.
It is amongst the houses that the Hydeburn part of this walk reaches its conclusion; around the unremarkable junction of Calbourne Road (a river-related name, though not one used elsewhere on the Falcon Brook’s course) and Mayford Road this length of the subterranean river meets with the Streathbourne/Woodbourne branch. The combined streams now begin a more direct path towards the Thames…