Freeing The River Tyburn

Freeing The River Tyburn

Published on 08-07-2008 by Skyscrapernews.com
It's a little known fact that below the bustling traffic of London a series of hidden rivers burble, but if one property developer gets his way, one of them could soon be running through the streets of London again.

James Bowdidge has commissioned an architect to dream up a view of what London could be like if the River Tyburn were freed from the culverts it current runs down and instead headed through the middle of Mayfair with Berekely Square being partially a pond.

Not one to worry about the effects of freeing the Tyburn, Bowdidge's plans include the destruction of billions of pounds worth of property in the heart of Mayfair plus the likely demolition of the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace not to mention thousands of people made homeless. It's very unlikely to receive planning permission as a result.

That freeing rivers is being discussed now, seriously, does show how far London has come in the past decade. On June the 19th, 1999, Reclaim the Streets Carnival Against Capitalism included the setting off of fire hydrants in the City of London as symbolism of freeing another trapped river, the Walbrook.

These days London's Mayor, Boris Johnson, has been encouraging this line of thought by pondering at how the rivers can be released although a few fancy ideas are a long way from any official policy. The catch is how to do it whilst minimising the harm it would do from the loss of road space to the potential damages that could be paid to shopkeepers whose busineses faced onto the rivers and could suffer a resulting loss of trade from appearing.

It just goes to show that barely ten years later, people are looking seriously at ways that these hidden streams can be brought to the surface again and beautify the streets of London, which if given a chance could come to rival Venice. No longer is it a topic that only interested a bunch of anti-capitalist demonstrators on their way to trash LIFFE.

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