This feature first appeared in May 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.
People once moored boats here.
We’re looking at the York Watergate — not in York, but in London. The elaborately chiselled structure was once on the river, used by visitors to the London home of the Archbishop of York. The keen observer will notice that you can’t get a boat up here any more. Obstacles to navigation include 50 metres of lawn, a dual carriageway, an interceptor sewer, cycle superhighway C3, and the Circle-District underground line. It’s like finding a bus stop on the second floor of a shopping mall.
The York Watergate is a relic of another London. When it was built, some 400 years ago, the Thames lapped right up against its fancypants columns. Then, before you could say “vermicular rustication”, it found itself high and dry. Joseph Bazalgette’s mighty Embankment marooned the watergate far from the Thames. It lives on with no practical purpose, though it’s much treasured as an attractive bauble for Embankment Gardens.
Let us recall it to life, as a portal once again. The York Watergate can be our entry point into a London that is neither present, nor wholly lost. A London that was seemingly erased, yet lingers on in trace, remnant and shadow. It is our gateway to Vestigial London…
