Thames

by Peter Ackroyd

  A theory was then proposed to explain the phenomenon: the “Isis” emerged at the source and continued to Dorchester, while the element of “Thames” came from the river Thame that entered at Dorchester. A glance at the Anglo-Saxon records, where it was always known as the Thames, would alone render the supposition worthless. Nevertheless it has persisted for centuries. The parliamentary Acts from 1750 to 1842 refer to the “Rivers Thames and Isis,” as does the Thames Conservancy Act of 1894. Even the maps of the Ordnance Survey still refer to its course from Thames Head to Dorchester as that of the “River Thames or Isis.” The naming of rivers is a difficult matter.

  But if it is a confusion, it is a fruitful one. The persistence of the fallacy of Thame and Isis suggests that it has some inner resonance, some essential rightness in defiance of the laws of etymology. Isis, after all, is charged with general human memory. She is the Mother Goddess, the benefactress of rivers. She is the womb of regeneration. She is the goddess of fertility, the Lady of Abundance, the sister and consort of Osiris, who rules the underworld. The fertile Thames emerges from unknown depths. She is the female soul of the world, the anima, who may appear in a thousand different incarnations. Three Roman effigies of the son of Isis, Horus, have been found in the waters by London Bridge. The image is that of the mother giving birth to the son on a tidal river, representing one of the most powerful of all myths of regeneration.

  The cult of Isis was maintained throughout the Roman empire, and at the temple of Isis in Pompeii water was sprinkled upon the heads of her adherents as blessing and benediction. The Thames itself was used for ritual inundation and Christian baptism. Isis was the winged goddess, hailed as “the oldest of the old,” who was the protectress of agriculture and of the arts of healing, of law and of justice. She was the “provider of sweetness in assemblies.” All of these activities, including the making of laws and the dispensing of justice, have for many centuries, and perhaps for many thousands of years, taken place beside the banks of the Thames. We may think of Runnymede. The Thames was the home of the Neolithic cursus. It is the home of the present Parliament.

  Thus in the poetry of rivers she has become pre-eminent. In the verses of Spenser she is wreathed in ancientness like some primaeval god. At the marriage feast in The Faerie Queene, the Thames is preceded by:

  His auncient parents, namely, th’auncient Thame;

  But much more aged was his wife than he,

  The Ouze, whom men doe Isis rightly name,

  Full weak and crooked creature seemed shee,

  And almost blind through Eld, that scarce her way could see.

  In Drayton’s Polyolbion there is a younger incarnation of the goddess:

  That Isis, Cotswolds heire, long woo’d was lastly wonne,

  And instantly should wed with Tame, old Chiltern’s sonne.

  And thus also in Warton:

  Beauteous Isis, and her husband Thame,

  With mingled waves for ever flow the same.

  The poetry celebrates the sense of place, and creates in myth what has only a perilous and ambiguous foundation in fact. It is the story of the human race.

  Isis is herself the progenetrix of all the river nymphs and river goddesses who decorate the streams and springs of the world. They are known as water fays, water shapes, water nixies, water wreaths, water elfs and water fairies. Virgil names fifty of them in the Aeneid. The Severn is named after the British goddess Habrina or Sabrina. The Clyde comes under the protection of Clota. The Dee belongs to Deva. Curiously enough the Thames has been associated with no tutelary goddess—except, of course, Isis herself. The absence of a known female deity may well have prompted Leland into making the connection with the Egyptian goddess in the first place. It was a way of affirming ancient beliefs about the power of the waters. That is why in 1806 Turner exhibited a painting of an idealised Thames, supposedly depicted at Weybridge, which he entitled Isis. It is a visionary conception of the river, with the darkening water flowing between great trees and with what seems to be the fragment of a ruined temple in the foreground.

  When confronted with Father Thames and with Isis as the assumed deities of the Thames, it is perhaps not surprising that there has been some debate concerning the gender of the river. In the whole of the British Isles, however, only the Derwent is known unequivocally as “he.” The Thames itself seems to switch identity. In its upper reaches it is presumed to be feminine, and was known to William Morris as “this far off, lonely mother of the Thames,” yet as the river approaches London it is deemed to be masculine. When the river is fierce or strong, it is also regarded as masculine. So sexual stereotypes prevail in the understanding of nature itself. In the battle of the sexes, the tributaries of the Thames are generally regarded as feminine.

  Isis represents the water as feminine. It is the water as the female principle, circling like amniotic fluid. In the images of Isis the water is also seen to be milk, the nutritive fluid. The water is feminine because, in mingling with clay, it creates shape and form. There are a host of associations and affiliations here that defy rational enquiry precisely because they go back to the earliest periods of human consciousness. So the Thames can enter mythic history alongside the Styx and the Acheron, Lethe and Phlegethon, a river that takes its traveller beyond the ordinary world and into another world of dream and spirit.

  The legends of its sexuality are a recognition of the evident fact that the river is a living thing. The Thames has its own presence. It has its own organic laws of growth and change, charged with what Bernard Shaw described as a “life force.” The surface of the water has so complex a wave structure that it seems to function as the membrane of a living organism, like the ear; its capillary structure, stirred by movement, communicates its changes to the whole. It has been so intimately concerned with human destiny, replete with desires and fears, that it has acquired a human personality.

  Over many centuries it has been venerated and propitiated. In The Historic Thames Hilaire Belloc wrote that “I cannot get away from it, that the Thames may be alive.” Some travellers have confessed to the sensation, along certain stretches of the river, of being watched. The great historian of the Thames, F. S. Thacker, has commented in The Thames Highway (1914) that “Thames is one living spirit, whole and indivisible, from the loneliness at Trewsbury Mead to his final loneliness seaward of the Nore.” For many devotees there is indeed some spirit, some atmosphere, some brooding life that persists through time.

  When the river is described it always assumes a human dimension. It is patient, making its way through every obstacle. It is ruthless, wearing down the hardest rocks. It is unpredictable, especially when its current is interrupted or diverted. Its course from source to sea has been categorised as one of youth, maturity and old age. Its character changes within each terrain. It becomes terrible and vindictive. It becomes sportive. It becomes treacherous. It becomes imperial. It becomes industrious. It gives human characteristics to its topography.

  CHAPTER 5

  The River of Stone

  The basin of the Thames is largely enclosed by hills, with the Cotswold Hills to the extreme west; at their northern end the Cotswolds sweep round towards Edge Hill, and then the hill wall moves across the Central Tableland until it reaches the long stretch of the East Anglian Heights that proceed eastward. On the south side of the river the hills, forming the rim of the basin, curve round by way of the Marlborough Downs and then the North Downs that proceed to the coast of Kent. The area of the basin itself rarely rises more than 200 feet (61 m) above sea level, and can be described as gently rippling, except for the great ridge of chalk that makes up the Chilterns. Over millennia the Thames has made its way through the chalk, but the Chilterns remain as a token of ancient cataclysm.

  The geology of the Thames is in fact exceedingly complex, at least to those who are not professional geologists, but it is not without relevance to those who are interested in the distant ages of the earth. Above the area known as Goring Gap—where the river has fo
rced its way through the ridge of chalk of which the Chilterns are a part—the topography consists of soft clay valleys and ridges formed out of sandstone or limestone. Below the Goring Gap the river flows across the “London Basin” comprised of chalk, sand, gravel and clay. The limestone of the Cotswolds to the west gives way to the area known as the Oxford Clay Vale which is succeeded by the chalk of the Chilterns and the Berkshire Downs; then, to the south of the Chilterns, lies the clay which is in turn succeeded by sandstone, sand and gravel.

  Of course there are always local variations and differences, dependent upon the flow of ancient oceans and the tumults of the primaeval earth. There are areas of gravel and boulder clay, for example, that have been moved by the phenomenon of the ice ages known as “glacial drift.” The river, too, has deposited various layers of gravel and loam along its course. The levels of clay and stone are tokens of patterns and processes that persisted for hundreds of millions of years, the emblems of a longevity inconceivable to humankind. They are ribbons in the hair of Gaia. As God asked Job, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.” In the late seventeenth century Bishop Burnet wrote a book entitled A Sacred Theory of the Earth; such a book could still be written about the river.

  The area known as the London Basin provides an example of the variousness of the topography. It is made up of chalk overlaid with gravel and with clay, but the depth of the chalk varies at different locations; at Lambeth it lies 250 feet (76 m) beneath the surface while further downriver, at Rotherhithe, it is at a depth of 46 feet (14 m). The Saxon word for chalk is chilt, thus naming the Chilterns themselves. Above the chalk lie layers of red mottled clay and permeable sand, then the London clay laid down some sixty million years ago, and above that gravel and brick-earth.

  These ancient stones still play an essential role in the life of the river; towns such as Greenwich and Greenhithe, Woolwich and Gravesend, are built upon outcrops of chalk. Just at the point where the Thames curves to the south, immediately before the entrance of the Cherwell, there is a stretch of ancient gravel. This is the site of Oxford. The stones are the foundations of present life. The brick-earth has, in addition, furnished the fabric of London dwellings. It has often been observed that the buildings of the Thames towns and villages seem to “fit” their surroundings, from the glowing Cotswold stone of a farmhouse to the flint walling and chalk plaster of a barn or dovecot. In every case the stone is part of the genius loci.

  There was once the mystery of “dene-holes” by the river, large and interconnected subterranean tunnels clustered around the banks of the Thames like large vase-shaped structures with narrow necks; they consist of a vertical shaft with a bell-like chamber beneath, connected to other similarly shaped chambers. They have been variously interpreted as ancient observatories or grain pits, sepulchral chambers or refuges from invaders. It seems most likely, however, that they were constructed by the Saxons for some form of chalk-mining. But the evidence is unclear.

  There is also the phenomenon of the terraces, formed when there has been a fall in sea-level. When the sea falls, the river cuts deeper through its previous floodplain, leaving it marked out as a terrace above the new floodplain. The Boyn Hill terrace lies 100 feet (30 m) above the present course of the river, for example, and was laid down some 375,000 years ago. This was succeeded by the Taplow terrace, some 50 feet (15 m) lower. The most recent is known more simply as the Flood Plain terrace. There are other gradations and variations of terraces, with other names. The alluvial floodplain of the Upper Thames is a relatively new development, dating no further back than the second millennium BC, but the terraces themselves are perhaps more obvious in London where they must be surmounted by human ingenuity. The steep climb from the Embankment to the Strand, by Charing Cross underground station, is the indication of a rift that took place over aeons of time. The rise between the middle and upper terraces of the Thames can in turn be seen beside the National Gallery to the north of Trafalgar Square. We are treading upon prehistory.

  Those who trust the spirit of place must take account of these geological gradations and alterations. There is no reason to doubt that human consciousness is changed by the experience of living above clay, rather than above chalk, even though the nature of that change is not understood. It is a matter of speculation whether the oolite of the Cotswolds has a resonance different from the sandstone rock of Clifton Hampden. How does the fossiliferous clay of Woolwich compare to the sandy pebble of Blackheath? Does it make any difference that the inhabitants of the estuary walk above preserved primaeval forests? Does the vast marsh, beneath the surface of the Vale of the White Horse, exert its own influence?

  The earliest inhabitants of the Thames Valley believed that there was an intrinsic power in stone, and the builders of the great monuments of Britain were concerned to use precisely the right kind of stone for their enterprise. Certain types of stone, from different geographical locations, had different powers and associations. The ancient tribes were perhaps more attuned to the natural world, and sensed what the twenty-first-century inhabitants of the Thames Valley ignore or reject.

  There is, for example, reason to believe that the inhabitants north of the Thames once differed from those who lived to the south of the river. This may have to do in large part with tribal identity, county identity and general lack of contact; but topography and geology, the earth itself, may also play a part. Certainly the difference between north and south was once more marked. One historian of the Thames region, in the early twentieth century, spent much of his life examining the songs and the customs of the Thames people. In Folk Songs of the Upper Thames (1923) Alfred Williams notes that in Wiltshire and Buckinghamshire, the counties immediately south of the Thames, the people “are rather more boisterous and spontaneous, more hearty, hardy, strong, blunt, and vigorous, and a little less musical” the inhabitants of Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, north of the Thames, are “gentler, easier, softer in manner, but weaker, more pliable, and less sturdy than the others.” The northerners are more refined and more artistic than the southerners but “they have not quite the same tenacity and independence of spirit.”

  Other observers noted similar tendencies. In the nineteenth century the principal entertainment of the northern counties was that of morris-dancing, while in the southern counties it was wrestling and sword-play. There is no record of morris-dancing in any of the counties south of the Thames. The stone of the north is mellow Cotswold stone; the stone of the south is flint and brick. There seems also to have been a human continuity, since the same differences in temperament and character can be identified between the Angles north of the Thames and the Saxons south of the river. There may also be some connection with the provenance of the law, with the contrast between Danish and Saxon legislation on either side of the Thames leading to differences in behaviour.

  It is certainly true that, until relatively recent times, the same stock seems to have persisted in identifiable areas. In the mid-nineteenth century the inhabitants of the area by the Chiltern Hills were “more uncultivated” than their neighbours, the land known at the time as “wild country” with local names such as “Hell Hole” and “Gallows Common” not to be found on any maps. But in a history of the Thames, James Thorne’s Rambles by Rivers (1847), it is stated that “this roughness does not cross the Thames” and that “the Berkshire men are civiller” with the same “vigour of mind” that Alfred Williams noticed half a century later.

  The most obvious and characteristic difference was to be found in London itself, where the divisive presence of the Thames once fashioned two very different areas of human activity and human personality. It was forcibly expressed in the nineteenth century by Charles Mackay in The Thames and Its Tributaries (1840) where he asserted of the southern people that “the progress of civilisation does nothing for them…a thousand years effect nothing more than to change the wigwam into a hovel, and at the latter point they stop.” He noted that on the northern
side “railways are constructed” and other amenities are built while the inhabitants of the other bank “experience no improvement.” This may be construed as an accident of topography, with the bogs and marshes of the southern stretch now largely removed by the unerring march of civilisation, but it was really no accident at all. It had to do with the nature of the place, and of the river that helped to create it. It is interesting that in the ninth century King Alfred declared that when he ascended the throne there were very few, if any, scholars “south of the Thames.” The inhabitants on both sides of the Thames estuary still have very little awareness of each other.

  The language is also different. To the south of the Thames the water crowfoot is known as the water lily, while to the north it is called rait. The ox-eye daisy was known in Wiltshire as dog daisy or horse daisy, while over the water in Oxfordshire it was known as moon daisy. The river has always been a frontier.

  CHAPTER 6

  Birth

  The source is the place of enchantment, where the boundary between the visible and invisible realms is to be found. It is commonly deemed to be a sanctuary, guarded or protected by the spirits of the young water. The water issuing from the dark earth can also be seen as an image of human existence emerging from the unknown. We trace the stream from darkness, from the very place of origin in its blind cavern, until it issues to the light and open day. It is a metaphor of birth and death, of beginning and ending. Water itself represents the beginning of every living thing. The journey towards the source is the journey backwards, away from human history. Force and purity come from the source. Youthfulness derives from the source. So springs the myth of the fountain of youth. It is the fons et origo. It is the Well of Life or, in the Norse phrase, the Well of Wyrd.