The Westbourne or Kilburn is a converted small River Thames tributary in London, rising in Hampstead and Brondesbury Park and which as a drain unites and flows southward through Kilburn and Bayswater (west end of Paddington) to skirt underneath the east of Hyde Park’s Serpentine lake then through central Chelsea under Sloane Square.
It passes centrally under the south side of Royal Hospital Chelsea’s Ranelagh Gardens before discharging into Inner London’s old-fashioned, but grandiose combined sewer system, with exceptional discharges (to be abated by a 2021-completion scheme) into the Inner London Tideway. Since the latter 19th century, the population of its catchment has risen further but to reduce the toll it places on the Beckton Sewage Treatment Works and related bills[clarification needed] its narrow basin has been assisted by private soakaways, and public surface water drains.
Its depression has been replaced with and adopted as a reliable route for a gravity combined sewer. The formation of the Serpentine relied on the water, a lake with an long, ornate footbridge and various activities associated,[clarification needed] which today uses little-polluted water from a great depth.
The river was originally called the Kilburn (Cye Bourne – royal stream, ‘Bourne and burn’ being the Germanic word equivalent to rivulet as in the geographical term ‘winterbourne’) but has been known, at different times and in different places, as Kelebourne, Kilburn, Bayswater, Bayswater River, Bayswater Rivulet, Serpentine River, The Bourne, Westburn Brook, the Ranelagh River and the Ranelagh Sewer. It is of similar size to the Fleet.
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