
Tributary of the Tyburn with goldfish
Gentle readers, when looking up information about the reference Jane Austen made to Gray’s Jewellery store in Sense and Sensibility, I ran across this interesting site about Grays Antique Dealers. Situated in a famous building constructed by Bolding and Son, Plumbers, a water closet manufacturer whose name did not become as famous as Crapper’s, the building features a most wondrous sight – the remains of a tributary of the River Tyburn which runs through its mews.
The river rises at Shepherds Well in Hampstead and flows through Regents Park and the West End to the Thames via The Mews. As the area became built up the river was culverted, but there is one place the clean and running water of the Tyburn can still be seen and that is beneath the basement of Grays Mews, where it has become a popular tourist attraction full of golden fish.
- Learn more about London’s hidden rivers at my post: London’s Lost Rivers
- Lost Rivers From Above: The Tyburn, Part 1– Follow the Tyburn virtually to Regent’s Park
- Lost Rivers From Above: The Tyburn, Part 2 – Follow Oxford St and ending with Grays Antique Dealers
- Lost Rivers From Above: The Tyburn, Part 3-Follow the Tyburn to the Thames
- Underground: The Tyburn River
- London’s Lost Waterways
- London: Reviewing the Fleet – Take a virtual journey to trace the Fleet today
- Rivers From Above: The Peck
- West End’s Secret River

This is how Mayfair might look had the Tyburn been allowed to flow above ground.
That is so cool!!! Pretty fish!
Tyburn strikes fear into us Sheppards… My ancestor Jack Sheppard (the highwayman and jailbreaker) was hanged at the Tyburn Tree!
best
Phil