"At the end of the walk we are standing in the shadow of a river barge, left dry on the rocky foreshore by the receding tide. Chivers finishes his reading and passes around the last artefact of the day, tiny glass phials with which to collect a bit of river water. We are led down the shore, around the barge, to a hatch in the embankment wall. It is heavy steel at the top of a concrete chute, around which rocks and pebbles have settled. This is the mouth of the Walbrook. Water only flows out of it when a sluice, hidden upstream beneath the road, is opened. It looks like barrier to a sepulchre, rendered in iron. I can’t help but think of the creek behind my house, and wonder if this is the fate of all rivers that lie inside the bounds of a city. The hatch, Chivers tells us, is opened by the sheer weight of the water that comes flowing out of it."
- Michael C. Schuller - Annexe Magazine
