Thorney: London’s Forgotten Island

Years ago, when working for the Guardian, I would occasionally take a short cut along a thoroughfare in Westminster called Old Pye Street. On the side of the road on the corner of St Ann’s Lane there was a tiny building that was home to an outfit called The Thorney Island Society (and Friends of St James’s and the Green Park). I presumed it to be a pleasantly eccentric organisation as I knew of no islands nearby apart from the one I was standing on formed by England, Scotland and Wales.

It was only after retirement that I stopped to read what it was all about. It turned out there was, and indeed still is, an island in the centre of London. Formed, it is claimed, by the junction of the Tyburn river - now running underground in the sewage system - with the Thames.