Once a tributary of the River Thames, flows from the Effra were incorporated in the Victorian era into a combined sewer draining much of the historic area of Peckham and Brixton.

Historically the Effra was fed partly by a line of springs that emerged at between 80 and 100 metres above sea level along the 5 km ridge of the Great North Wood, where a layer of gravels overlies the impermeable London Clay.

[7] The lowest part of the river was diverted as early as the 13th century, after the monks of Bermondsey Priory made an agreement with neighbouring landowners to end flooding problems.

The art critic John Ruskin, who grew up at Herne Hill close to one of the Effra's tributaries, described "the good I got out of the tadpole-haunted ditch in Croxted Lane",[8] and made an early sketch of a bridge over it.

By that time the Effra was heavily polluted with domestic waste, due to increasing development along its course, and by 1821 it was classed as an open sewer downstream of North Brixton.

[9] It still often flooded in heavy rain, and residents of Brixton Road and South Lambeth repeatedly complained of their houses being inundated.

[9] In 1847 the commissioners of the Surrey and East Kent Sewers, under the direction of surveyor Joseph Gwilt, carried out works "arching over" (culverting) the Effra[10] as far upstream as Herne Hill.

[15] A local story tells of a coffin found floating down the Thames in Victorian times, which was traced back to West Norwood Cemetery.

Further investigation revealed that the ground beneath the grave had subsided, and the entire coffin had fallen into the underground Effra river, floating downstream to Vauxhall and entering the Thames.

The project gained publicity in local newspapers and radio stations before the journalists noticed that the group had scattered, the whole thing being a stunt carried out in the name of art.