City of Westminster Gaslights Short Walk

12.5 km (7.8 mi) with 39/54m ascent/descent and 3 hours walking time.

In 1807, London was the first city in the world to light its streets by gas, which was much cheaper and produced brighter lights than the previously used candles or oil lamps. More than 200 years later, there are still about 1,300 gas-fuelled street lights left, bathing their surroundings in a markedly warmer, yellower glow than electric lights. About 270 of those are in the City of Westminster, preserved after a campaign to stop the Council from replacing them all on cost grounds.

This meandering route through the Royal Parks of the West End, St. James’s, Westminster, Whitehall, Covent Garden, St. Giles and the Embankment passes a fair few of those gaslights, while leading through parks, squares and courtyards and along alleyways, secret passages, lanes, paths and (mainly) residential streets, while also passing numerous well-known and not so well-known sites of historical, architectural or political interest, many of which will be new even to born Londoners.

The route is rewarding in light as well as in darkness, as some of the parks and alleyways are closed at night, while some of the gaslights in those areas are on even during the day.

Dropout points are aplenty along the route at tube or mainline stations or at bus stops.
The route can conveniently be split into two around the halfway stage at St. James’s Park Underground, which is just off-route and has several pubs to choose from:
· Lancaster Gate to St. James’s Park measures 6.2 km/3.9 mi;
· St. James’s Park to Embankment measures 6.8 km/4.3 mi.
For a start from St. James’s Park: leave through the Broadway exit (also signed ‘Park and Broadway’) and turn left out of the building to a road (Petty France) and cross it a little to the left at a pedestrian crossing. Turn right past The Old Star pub and continue along Broadway. In 90 continue along Tothill Street. In 40m turn left up Dartmouth Street and in 100m, by the Two Chairmen pub, turn right along the pedestrianised Lewisham Street. Pick up the directions at the asterisk *).

Evening Closures – some of the parks, courtyards and alleyways get locked at night. Diversions are described.

There is no shortage of pubs, cafés, restaurants, takeouts and bistros on the route and at the end of it.

Lancaster Gate is a stop on the Central Line and close to Paddington Mainline Station. Embankment is a stop on the District and Circle Lines as well as the Northern (Charing Cross Branch) and Bakerloo Lines and very close to Charing Cross Mainline Station. St. James’s Park is a stop on the District and Circle Lines. All stations as well as the whole route are within Zone 1.

Gaslights in London

The first gas lamp was created in 1792 by Scotsman William Murdoch for his house in Redruth, Cornwall. The first recorded street lighting fuelled by gas was installed in 1806 on parts of a street in Salford near Manchester for a mill owner. In London, German-born F.A. Winzer (anglified to Winsor) demonstrated it in Pall Mall, on 28 January 1807. On June 4th 1807, a line of gaslights was illuminated to celebrate the birthday of King George III, each fed with pipes made from the up-cycled barrels of obsolete muskets. In 1812, the Gas Light and Coke Company of Horseferry Road, Westminster became the world's first gas company, supplying the Cities of London and Westminster and the Borough of Southwark. On 31 December 1813, Westminster Bridge was lit by gas-fuelled street lamps.
Gaslight was up to 75% cheaper than oil lamps or candles, so that by 1859 gas lighting was found all over Britain and close to a thousand gasworks had sprung up to meet demand. Indoors, the brighter light enabled people to read more easily and for longer, which helped to stimulate literacy and learning.
Electric lamps had been invented as early as 1806, but it took to 1878 for the first electric street lights to appear (along the Embankment and near Holborn Viaduct). It quickly became more popular though and replaced most gaslights. In 1880, Electric Avenue in Brixton, became the first street fully lit by electricity.
There are around 1,300 gas-fuelled street lamps left in London, maintained by the London Lamplighters, from Richmond Bridge to Bromley-by-Bow, of which about 270 are in the City of Westminster. Most of the old lamps are marked with the crest of the monarch in the year it was erected.
Historically, each light was lit at night and extinguished in the morning with the help of a long brass pole. Now, the lamps are visited every 2 weeks to adjust their timers, polish the glass and service the mantles. Gas lanterns vary in type, size, shape and materials, number of mantles, clock timers, pilot light or electric ignition. Mantles are teardrop-shaped elements looking like small electric light bulbs. In reality they are bell-shaped, silk mesh casings coated in lime-oxide, that give the lamps their charming warm glow. Lamps usually have two, four or six mantles – but can have as many as 10 or 12. Different mantle types produce different light. Each lamp is fitted with a regulator to control the gas pressure: if the pressure is too high, the efficacy and life of the mantle is reduced and if the pressure is too low, they give less light. https://thelondongasketeers.com/a-brief-history https://www.thehistoryoflondon.co.uk/gas-lamps/

River Westbourne and Tyburn Brook

The River Westbourne (or Kilburn, its original name – after ‘Cye Bourne’ – royal stream) rises on the Hampstead hills (as well as the Tyburn and the Fleet) and in Brondesbury Park and flows southwards through Kilburn, Bayswater, Kensington Gardens/Hyde Park and Chelsea before discharging into Inner London's combined sewer system, with only exceptional discharges joining the Thames. It runs as a culvert for most of its route to the Thames, but uses the natural valley created by the Westbourne. In the 15th century, conduits were laid to carry water from the Westbourne into the City of London for drinking, and in 1730 the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park was formed by damming the river, although strictly speaking, the lake is called the Long Water west of the Serpentine Bridge (i.e. in Kensington Gardens) and Serpentine east of it (i.e. in Hyde Park). As early as 1834 though, the river became too polluted and since then the lake relies on water sourced from cleaner sources: initially from the Thames, now from three boreholes drilled into the Upper Chalk. The river meanwhile is diverted in a culvert to the east of the lake.

The Tyburn Brook (not to be confused with the River Tyburn which ran further east) joins it in Hyde Park. The weir sluice at the eastern end of the Serpentine feeds an artificial waterfall, with some of the water then pumped back into the lake, the rest following the original course of the Westbourne and then joining the sewer that carries the Westbourne. From there it turns south, where it was crossed by the ‘Knight’s Bridge’, which carried one of the old roads to the west across the river. It continues east of modern day Sloane Street and forms the boundary between the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
At Sloane Square tube station, the storm drain pipe of the river can be seen running above the platforms near the escalators. The storm outfall into The Thames can be seen at medium to low tide, about 270m west of Chelsea Bridge.

River Tyburn

The River Tyburn was 11 km long and rose on the Hampstead hills (as well as the Westbourne and the Fleet), flowing southwards through modern day Regent’s Park, Marylebone (i.e. St.-Mary-le-Bourne), Mayfair, St James's and Green Park, then under Buckingham Palace before splitting into distributaries through the marshland that met the Thames at four sites in two pairs either side of Thorney Island, on which Westminster Abbey was built: one near modern day Whitehall Stairs, the other by Thorney Street, between Millbank Tower and Thames House.
In the 13^th century, conduits were laid to carry water from the Tyburn into the City of London for drinking, but no later than the 17^th century, the watercourse south of Buckingham Palace had probably dried up due to too much abstraction and the remaining flow had been diverted to run south through Pimlico as an (initially open) sewer. The river is now fully culverted and its successor sewers emulate its main courses.

Related trivia:
· Oxford Street and Park Lane used to be called Tyburn Road and Lane respectively;
· At Baker Street Station, the pipe carrying the Tyburn can be seen from the westerly end of the Circle and Hammersmith & City Line platforms, in the tunnel towards Edgware Road station.

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National Rail: 03457 48 49 50 • Traveline (bus times): 0871 200 22 33 (12p/min) • TFL (London) : 0343 222 1234

Mar-25 Thomas G