London Clay: Journeys in the Deep City

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This book arrived at a perfect moment for me; I was listening to Laura Maiklem’s excellent ‘Mudlarking’ and in the zone for thinking about the layers of history sitting under London. I am a huge fan of London and fascinated by its long history, so launched myself into this book with enthusiasm. London is my city, the one I was born in and where I grew up. So as a geologist, I was thrilled at the opportunity to read and review London Clay.

Chivers is not gloomy - in fact, he rarely wears his non-family feelings on his sleeve and the general air is one of nostalgia and love for his city - but you sense his own awareness that things are not quite right without his ever actually putting his finger openly on what is wrong. Tom Chiversis a writer, publisher and arts producer. He was born in 1983 in south London. He has released two pamphlets and two collections of poetry, the latest being Dark Islands (Test Centre, 2015). His poems have been anthologized in Dear World & Everything In It and London: A History in Verse. He was shortlisted for the Michael Marks and Edwin Morgan Poetry Awards and received an Eric Gregory Award in 2011. However, I soon cheered up. I was in the company of an unpretentious and easy-going personality. Yes, he is a typical liberal Londoner - that type who can often drive us 'country' folk up the wall - but he is likeable and decent. Yes, dear reader, I liked him and he writes well. He's since spent years tracing London's hidden landscape armed only with his home-made geology map, a pair of well-worn shoes, and a heightened sense of curiosity. His new book, London Clay, presents his discoveries in a delicious tome of topology.Given how personal your book sometimes is, what can London’s lost rivers and the book itself tell its readers? Perhaps even about themselves? London re-enchanted. From the heart of the old city to the distant edgelands, London Clay is a wonderfully multi-layered meander through a landscape at once familiar and strange. A portrait of a haunted, mysterious city and a moving work of personal memoir.” I’m not an academic. I’m not trained in any sort of research. But I did a certain amount of desk research. Reading and looking at maps – that was always important. And I would look very closely and work out any interesting stories that might emerge from that geological map. And then I would get out and walk the landscape again and again. In that chapter, liquidity is used as a pun on financial liquidity. Following that particular river [the Walbrook] was exciting, because you were following this submerged stream. This hidden history for an area, which is generating huge amounts of capital now. So, there’s this strange dissonance created by that particular experience.

In recent months, we’ve seen huge flooding. In a way, that is a warning that we need to be more mindful of how we treat water. Not just the water that comes out of our tap, but also how we build on places where water is indigenous to that landscape. In London Clay, Tom Chivers follows hidden pathways, explores lost islands and uncovers the geological mysteries that burst up through the pavement and bubble to the surface of our streets. From Roman ruins to a submerged playhouse, from an abandoned Tube station to underground rivers, Chivers leads us on a journey into the depths of the city he loves. One person who knows is Tom Chivers. Years ago, Chivers spread a street map over his bedroom floor and started colouring in the different strata — the silts, clays and gravels that underly our city.The Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Saviour and St Mary Overie (meaning over the river) which has witnessed over 1000 years of London history,stands at the oldest crossing-point of the River Thames, at what was for many centuries the only entrance to the City of London. More than a century and a half after the stream disappeared, most Londoners are unlikely to have heard of it, or to know that, where it joined the Thames, the Fleet was once almost 100 metres wide. Residents might also be surprised to learn that Westminster Abbey, where monarchs and other worthies are interred, was built on what in the 13th century was an island. The city is littered with such transformations and unexpected tales. At the very start of the book, Tom leads us on one of his walking tours through London, and that’s what the whole book has the feel of – that you’re heading off on a walk with a guide who knows what they’re talking about and whose love of the city shines through. It makes is a very comfortable read, with a real sense of familiarity, after all, we probably know the surface of a lot of these places, even if it’s just from TV, and delving deeper into the ground and the history is really fascinating. The genesis of this book is hard to pin down. Born in South London in 1983, Chivers has been fascinated since childhood with exploring the city. Throughout his twenties, he continued to chronicle London through barely-read poems, pamphlets, and books. Just as this creative impulse was petering out, arts charity Cape Farewell approached him to be their first poet-in-residence, in turn leading Chivers to produce a series of audio walking adventures along London's lost rivers. This, if anything, provided the impetus for the writing of London Clay.

Tom Chivers brings a poet's sensibility to this book about the hidden parts of the capital, mixing the past with the present, the known with the unknown and his personal story with social history and geology.' Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other I seem to have a fascination for the abandoned parts of our towns and cities – just this week I’ve been watching Secrets of the London Underground on Yesterday – so London Clay is right in my wheelhouse. Tom Chivers reflects on his own life as he traverses London looking for the source of some of these lost rivers, looking at the geology that forced them into being and the human developments that were shaped by them and, in turn, how the rivers have been shaped by humans. From pre-Roman civilisation, to the demolition and rebuilding of London, each chapter is a fascinating look at a city that is in a constant state of renewal. It may, of course, be a bit cheeky of a thirty-something to offer us a memoir of a rather ordinary life but that is where the charm of the book lies. The ordinary life, the humanity of Chivers, being a Londoner, a sense of place and a sense of the past combine to give a feel for London today.Photographs are not necessary because the art of the book lies in the description but better maps would have helped considerably. On the other hand, the typography and illustrations are excellent. The book is a pleasure to read from that perspective. London at the beginning of the 2020s is as different from, say, London in the 1990s (my last residence decade) as the latter was from the London of the 1970s (when I first arrived). Its multiculturalism is now embedded, its 'different ideology' established and its detritus piling up. London has a long history, for the past 2000 thousand years, it has grown to the financial and cultural global city of today whilst surviving several invasions, one major fire, a plague or two. Bronze Age bridges have been found but the people that made it their own were the Romans. They settled there and made their city at the point where it was possible to cross. The river meant they could control the local area and still have access to the resources and might of their empire. The relationship between underlying geology, the shreds of the natural to be found at the margins of the city's structures and the human community and its detritus are core to the book even if that relationship is never formally laid out for analysis. You often mention banks and the influence of finance in London. Would you say that the book is partly a commentary on the role of money in London’s history?