What, Fulham & Battersea are islands?
In the distance the 15th century tower of All Saints Fulham.
In the above fantastic photograph from around 1876, you can see the east/southern section of Fulham Palace's moat. You will be familiar with the recently excavated northern section of the moat, with its original Tudor bridge, which serves as the main entrance to the palace. The moat's earliest record dates from 1392 and encompassed an area of 14.5 hectares, reputedly the largest domestic such water work. It is likely to be much older as remnants of a timber bridge from the 13th century were found.
The moat was finally infilled in the 1920s. By then it was a sanitary concern, as it never fully drained, at low tide. Besides being fe by a local stream, the Thames would top it up at high tide. This was managed by a sluice found in recent excavations. The moat was also dangerous. In 1883 a pair of children drowned.
What's most interesting though, is that two sides of the moat seemed to have been natural features. Effectively this was an island, or eyot. The Thames is full of them, notably Chiswick Eyot, Brentford Eyot. Due to the proximity of an important fording point over the Thames (next to where the bridge stands), a small Roman settlement occupied the site. This has been confirmed by archeological digs.
Centuries ago, the Thames was not the neat streamlined river of today, embanked along most of inner London. It would have been far wider and its tidal reach would have varied, covering a wide area between London Bridge up to Staines. A bit further downstream, Battersea was also an island throughout most of its history, created by a channel which entered inland on the edge of Nine Elms and Vauxhall. This ran parallel to the medieval highway which now we know as Wandsworth Road/Lavender Hill. Known later as the Heathwall Sewer, by the medieval period it had been heavily engineered with sluices controlling its level and functioned as a drainage system for the Battersea Fields.
The map shows its confluence with the Falcon Brook, on the northern side of Clapham Junction station. The sluice at their confluence could be raised when the Falcon Brook threatened to flood the area. Not surprisingly both the Fulham Palace area and north Battersea have historically been prone to flooding, and it's infrastructure like the Heathwall Pumping Station, as seen in the photo, that keep our feet dry.
