The London Walker

At Bloomberg’s new award-winning European Head Quarters, which opened back in 2017, there lies an intriguing juxtaposition where our modern world meets the ancient. In this area of the city, buried deep underneath, flows one of London’s lost rivers, the Walbrook. Since Roman times this area has been regarded as a significant place for commerce and for worship.

During the Roman occupation the Walbrook served not only as a subsidiary river for importing and unloading goods, it also took on for many residents, a deeper spiritual meaning. The marshy river had become a representation of the boundary between their present existance and the underworld. To help solidify this concept, ancient curses scribbled on wax tablets have been found here and more significantly a Roman temple to the god Mithras was discovered during building work in the 1950’s. 

Unbelievably, a sign of the times, the whole ruin was moved 100 metres away, installed somewhat crudely by the side of a busy road, to make room for a 14-storey office block. Understandably this was a deeply unpopular and badly managed decision, now finally with the opening of the new Bloomberg building the temple has been returned and carefully reconstructed where it was originally discovered. The opening of the new building has also reinstated the long-lost course of Watling Street, a Roman road running from Dover to Chester, aligned now as a pedestrian walkway.

Along the front of the building and down Cannon Street, the old river Walbrook has been resurected through a piece of unique public art called “Forgotten Streams”, created by the artist Cristina Iglesias.

The work shows a cast bronze recreation of riverbeds and marshy banks. A reminder of what was once here, the roots and matted layers of an ancient river bank, a thriving habitat, through which small courses of water tumble and thread in their passage to the greater river beyond.

Over the centuries the Walbrook was buried beneath the growing city, and now, although it still runs deep below us through the sewers, it’s lost from sight. 

So this is an evocation, a visceral recalling of this place’s wild organic past. London before London. The work allows us the opportunity to gaze down through the steel and glass, the bricks and timber, the flag stones and tesserae, and be reminded of the city’s pre-human: natural condition. It’s not just a conduit for water, it is also a conduit for time.

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