Mark Hawkins-Dady from Better Streets for Enfield describes a guided walk that the group organised earlier this month, exploring both ancient and (comparatively) modern stretches of the New River - the centuries-old aqueduct that still supplies fresh water to London.
Exploring the New River Loop: once part of the water supply to London, now a picturesque part of Enfield Town
On Sunday 18 January, a large group of Enfield residents gathered outside Enfield Town station for the latest Community Walk organised by Better Streets for Enfield (BSfE). For this event, the route followed a 6km (nearly 4-mile) stretch along the course of the New River, embracing both the visible manifestations of this historic waterway and its hidden features.
The free event proved popular. The Enfield Society and the Londonist website happily agreed to include it in their listings, and all tickets were snapped up quickly. The organisers had initially wondered whether many people would want to venture out in the depths of winter – they need not have worried. Enfielders, it seems, like to walk in all seasons.
The walkers straddle the New River Loop near the Crown and Horseshoe
Paul Findlow, a long-time member of both BSfE and the Enfield Cycling Campaign, led the walk and had designed the route. His combination of expertise, humour and novelty traffic-cone hat – no one could lose sight of him! – proved a hit.
From Paul, we learned that the so-called "New" River, wrought by human hands when Shakespeare was alive, is pretty much the oldest construction in the once-rural landscape, pre-dating most other signs of urban development. Its goal was to bring fresh water into London – a purpose it still serves. This was nearly 200 years before the canal-building boom of the late 18th century. Without the technology to move water in straight lines, uphill and downhill, the New River’s wiggly 39-mile course was determined by the landscape and natural gradients, as it flowed downhill at a modest drop of five inches per mile. One consequence is that we have beautiful legacy stretches, such as the Enfield Loop; another is that the New River Brewery can boast a ‘triple-hopped IPA’ called Five-Inch Drop.
Later, functional sections of the New River were rerouted, when it became possible to enclose the water in pipes and send it along more direct routes. Paul careful explained intersections between old and new, between what we could see and what was now hidden, beneath our feet.
Tracing the history of the New River in Enfield Town Park
Although this was a walk with a theme, it carried all the usual incidental pleasures of walking in a group: good conversation; catching up with friends and meeting new people; gentle exercise, to enhance mood and blow away the January blues; and the ability to observe and appreciate the environment, as one moves through it, in a way that is inaccessible in a car, when one must stay focused on navigating traffic and hazards.
Lunch (and a loo stop) was near the Library in Enfield Town, where participants consumed their packed lunches or visited the popular Sophie’s Café. The walk finished at the end of Green Dragon Lane with a well-earned round of applause for Paul. Had the owner of the nearby watering-hole, the Little Green Dragon, not closed his premises for a week’s break, we might even have got to sample Five-Inch Drop ourselves!
By then the sun was shining: the weather had been kind. We dispersed onto buses for our homeward journeys, contented in the knowledge of a day well spent.
