River Neckinger

The watercourse drained first the seasonally wet (and occasionally flooded) ground at St George's Fields, where the former building of the Bethlem Royal Hospital, now the Imperial War Museum, stands. Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, in western Southwark. Its course was east as follows: it took the line of Brook Drive then passed by the Elephant and Castle, then passed the site of Lock Hospital, Kent Street. This upper section was also known before that hospital's closure in the early 19th century as the Lock Stream. The channel is today resembled by Abbey Street. The Neckinger's northern mouth (now a surface water point of discharge into a deep, excavated inlet) divides the much-built up former marshland at the east end of Horsleydown island, known as Shad Thames and the low part of Bermondsey historically known as Jacob's Island to the east, which has also been built-up. ==History==

Etymology In the 17th century convicted pirates were hanged at the wharf where the Neckinger entered the Thames. Writing in The Inns of Old Southwark And Their Associations, in 1888, authors William Rendle and Philip Norman note that a place called ''Devol's Neckenger'' appears on a map in 1740 and, in the same location, in 1813, the Dead Tree inn. from A History of London (1884) by W. J. Loftie. The early section of the Neckinger, where it crossed the Kent Road, was known by this name. Canute's Trench Historian Walter Besant says the Neckinger's early section, where it crosses what is now the New Kent Road, at Lock Bridge, was also known as ''Canute's Trench''. In May, 1016, Danish Cnut the Great, who had invaded England, dug a trench through Southwark to allow his boats to avoid the heavily defended London Bridge. In 1173, a channel following a similar course was used to drain the Thames to allowing building work on London Bridge. Middle Ages During the Middle Ages, the local religious house, Bermondsey Abbey, made use of the water of the Neckinger to power a Tide mill. also an early name for the present neighbouring district of Rotherhithe, On 31 June 1536, the Abbey leased the mill to John Curlew, but the Dissolution of the Monasteries saw it privately acquired. In the 16th century, herbalist and botanist John Gerard wrote of the wild willow herb that 'It is found ... on a Thames bank near to the Devil's Neckerchief on the way to Redriffe.' Private homes and businesses began to be built on the former Abbey grounds and the water of the Neckinger attracted tanners to its banks. and by the Morning Chronicle in 1849 as "The very capital of cholera" and "The Venice of drains". In Dickens' novel, Oliver Twist a branch of the Neckinger is given the name Folly Ditch and is the place where the book's Bill Sikes meets his death. In the 1790s Neckinger Mill was established to produce paper, which continued until 1805 when the site was sold to the leather manufacturers Bevingtons. In 1838, the construction of a new line for the London and Greenwich Railway divided the mill land into two uneven portions, with further railway works taking place in 1841 and 1850. Modern era In 1935, Bevingtons moved most of their business to Dartford, keeping the smaller section of their divided site as a warehouse, and selling the larger portion to the Bermondsey Borough Council. ==See also==