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billeting troops and in 1660, by then much dilapidated, it was demolished. Slum housing occupied the site
for the next 100 years until the construction of the Adams Brothers, Adelphi Buildings in 1769. The only reminder of the original building left today is Durham House Street.
Eel Pie House

    Highbury
    S TANDING JUST NORTH OF H IGHBURY S LUICE , WHICH controlled the flow of water from
the New River (a man-made channel), Eel Pie House was famous not only for its pies but its tea and hot rolls too.
    Although it was commonly believed that the eponymous eels were local, they were in fact imported from the Netherlands.
    The pub was a hot spot for the working class from at least 1804, ideally situated for leisure pursuits and fishing. With gardens next to the ‘Boarded River’ aqueduct, a walk fromthe pie house to Hornsey Woods became a Palm Sunday tradition. Although urban development rapidly encroached, guidebooks still listed it as a popular destination as late as
1844. But within twenty years the river and the surrounding countryside were built over. The approximate site of Eel Pie House is today covered by No. 57 Wilberforce Road.
Effra River

    South London
    A LTHOUGH NOT TRULY LOST – HIDDEN IS A MORE appropriate word – the Effra is one of several central London rivers of
which there is now almost no evidence above ground. Others include the Peck, the Fleet, the Tybourne, the Westbourne and the Walbrook.
    The Effra rose in Upper Norwood and flowed through Dulwich along Croxted Road to Herne Hill, along the side of Brockwell Park, then down Brixton Road to Kennington Church,
around the curve of the Oval, past what used to be Vauxhall Gardens, then into the Thames immediately above Vauxhall Bridge. History records that it was 12ft wide and 6ft deep around Brixton Road.
Although it served as a sewer in Brixton from the 17th century, its waters were still being used in Dulwich as late as 1860. It provided water to the Vauxhall Water Works Company until they moved
their source of supplies outside the capital. Still visible in Dulwich’s Belair Park, today the river supplies a couple of ponds before disappearing underground and linking into the sewer
system.

Egyptian Hall

    Piccadilly
    B UILT IN AN ORNATE E GYPTIAN STYLE BY G F Robinson in 1812 at a cost of £16,000, the Hall housed a natural history museum
based on the collection of William Bullock, who spent thirty years travelling in South and Central America.
    Even more popular was a collection of memorabilia it hosted celebrating Napoleon Bonaparte, including his bullet-proof carriage. It drew enormous crowds totalling 800,000 in
the course of a year, producing an income that could paythe building costs twice over. When the exhibits were eventually sold off, Madame Tussaud bought many of them.

    In 1820 the Hall was hired by the painter Benjamin Haydon to display his enormous canvas depicting Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. When it was later used to show artefacts from the tomb of
Seti I , it attracted 1800 visitors on the first day alone. As the century progressed, the Hall became ever less high-brow, coming to specialize in freak shows. Although
Turner showed his watercolours here in 1824, one was more likely to come across Claude Amboise Seurat, a Frenchman know as ‘the living skeleton’.
    Later it would showcase Cheng and Eng (Siamese Twins), and in 1844 the American showman, Phineas T Barnum, took an impressive £125 a day showing off General Tom Thumb. Other highlights
included a family of Laplanders complete with sledges and dogs, a three-mile-long canvas panorama of the Mississippi River and the skeleton of a mammoth. From 1852–58, Albert Richard Smith
used theHall for over 2000 re-enactments of his ascent of Mont Blanc. The building was demolished in 1904, with an office block at Nos 170–173 now standing on the
site.
Enon Chapel

    Near the Strand
    O PENED IN 1822, THIS B APTIST CHAPEL BECAME notorious for a scandal that erupted in 1844