The Fleet River and Fleet Ditch

By
Shea Flannery

Londoners used the Fleet River, located just west of the city wall, for exporting goods. Saussure describes the Fleet Ditch as “sort of a canal, where barges come up with the help of the tide.” He explains that the houses on either side of this “canal” possesses two singular privileges, “one of them being that no one can be taken up for debt when in that part of London”. The other one “Allowing anyone to get married without any license or publication to confirm the marriage. The couples would most commonly get married in a tavern or “pot house”, the priest being paid with half a crown and a bottle of wine.

Leaving Fleet Ditch, walking towards the heart of the city, you arrive at Ludgate Hill. This is not a mile long street such as the Pall Mall or The Stretch, but “ a wide and handsome stretch”. Saussure describes Ludgate Hill as “a place entirely occupied by merchants’ wares, silken tissues of beautiful and costly kinds being sold here.”  Ludgate Hill is the site of St. Paul's Cathedral, traditionally said to have been the site of a Roman Temple of the goddess Diana. It is one of the three ancient hills of London, the others being Tower Hill and Cornhill. The highest point is just north of St. Paul's, at 17.6 metres (58 ft) above sea level.

Bibliography

De Saussure, Cesar (1902). A foreign view of England in the reigns of George I and George II.  London: J. Murray.

Entrance to the Fleet River as it emerges into the Thames, by Samuel Scott, c. 1750

Media Credit

51.512707467755, -0.10412241239674