Thames

by Peter Ackroyd

  Every local history of the Thames Valley, and of the towns and villages along the river, has accounts of spiritualised visitants. There seem to have been many such apparitions at Cookham, seven of them at the latest count, including a young man in a leather jerkin at Cookham Dean, and a little girl at Strande Water. Two thoroughfares by the Thames have in fact been named after their ghostly pedestrians—Monks Walk in Medmenham, and Whiteladyes Lane in Cookham. It is also said that, down Whiteladyes Lane, there can be seen on dark nights a phantom coach with headless horses. In the neighbourhood of Cookham, too, were to be found the haunts of Herne the Hunter; he is the Celtic figure, half-man and half-beast, that inhabited the popular imagination for many hundreds of years. He was reported to be seen, in the shape of a white stag, in Whiteladyes Lane itself. In legend the eponymous white lady, with streaming hair, was said to accompany Herne’s wild hunt. Similarly Herne was said to drive a wagon. So all the constituents of the ancient myth—the white lady, the horned god, the coach—appear as “ghosts” in a late variant of the same story. They are not ghosts at all, but images of lost belief. Such are the workings of the human imagination.

  It is perhaps worth noticing that many of these apparitions have been described as comprising a white or semi-white vapour. In Lower Basildon by the Thames, for example, there were independent reports of a “silvery form” and a “white, mist-like figure.” At Bisham there was reputed to be a ghost “which spreads itself across the river in a thin, white mist which means death to those who try to penetrate it.” At Sonning a “grey lady” floats across Sonning Lane. Another “grey lady” walks through the grounds of Danesfield, on a bluff above the river just beyond Hurley. At Streatley a “white lady” is seen in her “night-dress,” and at Marlow “a lady in a cloak…her apparel all in grey” is observed. At Abingdon, according to ancient testimony,

  it is most certain that there is a visible Ghost, which walks in the shape of a Christian, and most probably in woman’s shape…in the daie time it is seen onely as a woman’s head of hair upon the top of the water, in the night it constantly passeth over the bridge, it’s all white…it onely hisseth as a Snake or a Goos.

  A “white lady without a head” has often been seen in an avenue of elms at Cliveden. These are presumably clusterings of water mist, wraith-like forms of mist emerging from the surface of the water or collocations of vapour that have been taken as human forms. The phenomena are generally said to be sobbing or sighing, and at Caversham the sound of invisible oars is heard. We may assume these to be the natural sounds of the river. The stories do at least emphasise the power that the Thames is still believed to possess. The river is haunted by its past.

  PART XIV

  The River of Death

  The remains of Chertsey Abbey. “Human bones…were spread thick all over the garden”

  CHAPTER 42

  The Offerings

  The river itself is a reliquary. It once contained the bodies of the dead, long dissolved. It still contains weapons, and dwellings, and ornaments. Water is permanent; water is destructive; everything returns to its depths. Ornaments and jewellery, razors and tweezers, sickles and chisels, rapiers and axes, shears and flesh-hooks, have all been discovered. A cup of Trojan origin—a stemless cantharos manufactured between 1000 and 700 BC—was found by two dredgermen at Barn Elms near Hammersmith Bridge. A Greek rhyton of the second century BC, a curved vessel used to aerate wine, was found at Billingsgate; a hydria or water-pitcher of the sixth century BC was discovered in Barking Creek. There are also examples of objects from Cyprus and Mycenae. It would be a mistake to think of the pre-Roman tribes as in any respect “uncivilised” their culture was undoubtedly as rich and as complex as any other that has flourished beside the Thames.

  Other significant archaeological findings are directly related to the Thames, with the evident fact that over half of the Bronze Age spearheads in the Thames region were found in the river itself. The distribution of metalwork clusters along the line of the river, with the finds of socketed axes, palstaves, swords, spearheads and side-looped spearheads all found in or by the water. This clustering seems perfectly to imitate the patterns of Neolithic axes also found in the Thames, particularly in the area between Reading and Staines, and suggests that the river was once more the focus of ritual activity.

  The weapons are unlikely to have been lost there by accident; there are too many of them, in too many significant groupings, to be explained in that manner. It seems possible to surmise, therefore, that they represent votive gifts despatched into the running waters as a way of appeasing the river-gods. There may have been occasions of flooding which demanded divine intercession. There were steadily wetter conditions throughout this epoch, and there is evidence of periodic inundation that would have affected the level of the river. That is why it has been suggested that there was a change of worship from the gods of earth and sky to the gods of water. It is also possible that weapons and other goods were deposited in the flowing water to render more powerful the river’s role as a boundary. It has already been noted that frontiers and territories took on more importance in this era of population growth and more intensive settlement. The river itself was the most significant natural boundary to be found in the region, and it is likely that its role as protector was sanctified by gifts and offerings.

  Ritual deposits have been an aspect of the river’s life for many thousands of years. They have been assumed to diminish in the late medieval period, but there is some evidence to suggest that such rituals have not yet entirely disappeared. The veneration of the river is universal. Achilles threw a lock of his hair into the river Spercheios as an offering. The ancient Trojans threw live horses into the Scamander, and at a later date they sacrificed animals upon altars set up by that river’s banks. The Algonquin Indians threw tobacco into the waterfalls of their territory as an act of propitiation. The Greeks cut the throats of animals, suspended above the river, and allowed the blood to mingle with the flowing waters.

  The earliest Thames deposits, of flake flints and animal bones, derive from the Upper Palaeolithic and Early Mesolithic periods. They suggest that the worship of the river, if such it is, is of immense antiquity. There are also many artefacts, including burnt flint pebbles and pottery and tools of flint, from the Neolithic period. A hoard of Neolithic axes has been found within the Thames, while a group of Cornish axes from the same epoch has been discovered in the Thames estuary. The river has also divulged a large number of mace-heads. In a survey of the river undertaken thirty years ago, some 368 Neolithic axes were listed. They were in good condition, and appear not to have been employed for any of the ordinary purposes. If stone weapons were an emblem of power, it may have been a significant way of augmenting the authority or prestige of anyone who left them in large numbers. They may have been gifts of worship or propitiation, or sacrifices on behalf of the dead.

  Deposition seems to have been the most important ceremony during the Bronze Age, and as a result that period remains the single most fruitful in the history of riverine deposits. Various types of artefact had their own especial places. Tools were left in dry, and weapons in wet, locations. This would suggest that the more expensive and highly finished artefacts were consigned to the wet rather than to the dry. In the river itself the offerings of bones, of weapons, and of ornaments, were kept separate and distinct. Could it be that the spirit of each stretch of the river had a different purpose? By the river at Eton, for example, groups of skulls have been found; just as significantly, there are no traces of metalwork. Metal has been found in large quantities elsewhere. It has also been surmised that some parts of the river were devoted to female objects, and that other parts of the river were the repository of objects associated with the male.

  One collector from the nineteenth century, Thomas Layton, found twenty-eight rapiers of the Middle Bronze Age, thirty-three Late Bronze Age swords, thirty-four spearheads and six bronze sickles. There seem to be some people, attuned to the spirit of place, who
divine drowned hoards. Layton may simply have been fortunate, but he may have read the signs as some of his predecessors read them—a sudden passage of turbulence, where two streams crossed, or a zone of quietness in the generally disturbed flow of the water. There are many river-finders or “mud-larks” still to be seen on the foreshore, when the tide goes out, scrutinising the layers of litter and debris left by the water. The Society of Thames Mudlarks has approximately seventy members, each of whom seems to have an intuitive association with the river. They are often especially favoured. One finder discovered the small bronze tail of a peacock figurine; then, a year later, he found the rest of the figurine in another part of the river. Other stories of coincidental finds abound. It is one of the most characteristic aspects of the Thames. The river may heal that which is broken.

  The deposition of Bronze Age weapons in the river has many significant associations. There is one theory that in an act of worship they were being returned to their origin, since water was an important element of “quenching” in the process of smelting. The vision of the sword Excalibur, rising from the surface of the enchanted lake in Arthurian legend, is a significant reminder of what was once the widespread presence of water worship. The weapons may have been deposited in the river as a form of offering to ancestors, or to the spirits of the underworld. The weapons may have been symbolically “killed” in their immersion and disappearance beneath the water, in an act of expiation or thanksgiving. Five imitations of Bronze Age daggers, carved out of bone, were also discovered in the Thames.

  The ceremonies of water are connected with the discovery of wooden platforms or causeways by rivers and fens. A large causeway, made out of wooden posts and planks, has been found at Flag Fen near Peterborough. There is a stone and timber ford across a channel of the Thames in Oxfordshire, where metal offerings were found beneath its surface. But the most important riverine site is that upon the Thames itself, in the area of Vauxhall. A plaque now marks the spot on the southern bank where the early settlers constructed a causeway, dated to approximately 1400 BC, that extended over the water. It may have acted as a platform for ceremonial activities, and allowed the participants to throw their votive objects into deeper waters. But since the structure led to a small island, it has also been classified as a bridge. It is comprised of twenty large timber posts in two rows, creating a pathway into the Thames. If it is indeed a rudimentary bridge, then it may rank as the first such structure ever to be built across the river. Two spearheads have been found within its piles.

  There are also later offerings. An Iron Age sheath and dagger have been taken from the Thames at Cookham. The evidence of Iron Age water worship comes from the similar tribes in Gaul, in the first century BC, of which Strabo writes that “it was the lakes most of all that afforded the treasures their inviolability, into which the people let down heavy masses of silver and of gold.” Coins, and iron bars used as currency, were also deposited in the Thames in a manner which suggests that votive deposits were in some way connected with distinct tribal boundaries. An Iron Age wooden tankard, with bronze handle and casing, was taken up from the river; similarly an Iron Age bowl, with a small circular hole in the bottom, was found. It is suggestive that the objects are generally confined to short stretches of the Thames, such as that between Brentford and Battersea or between Teddington and Twickenham, since these happen to be the areas where Neolithic and Bronze Age artefacts have also been found.

  There was an efflorescence of activity towards the end of the Iron Age from which period have been recovered a magnificent horned helmet as well as swords and ornamental horse-trappings. At Battersea an Iron Age shield was trawled from the river-bed, richly embossed and completed with red enamel studs. At Battersea, too, were found cauldrons, battle-axes, and an iron scabbard decorated with the Celtic emblem of a dragon pair. A similar scabbard, with the dragon motif, was found in the river near Hammersmith Bridge. The increase in river worship may have been part of a generally heightened awareness of danger connected with the advance of the Roman legions towards the unknown island in the west. In a world of wars, and rumours of wars, there was a resort to the oldest and most powerful gods.

  But the Romans themselves were also inclined to venerate the waters. The number of votive offerings, dating from the Roman settlements by the river, is large enough to suggest that they adopted or imitated the customs of the ancient British tribes whom they conquered. There have been finds of brooches and of lamps, of bronze statuettes and imported red Samian ware. Some of this may be attributable to loss or spoilage, but by no means all. The Roman weapons are often “doubled back” or twisted out of shape, so that they would be rendered useless before being consigned to the river. It was a way of emphasising that their life in the human world was over.

  In the same spirit bronze figurines, taken from the river, were found to have been deliberately mutilated; their limbs were amputated, or their heads severed. An image of Mercury, with his right arm removed, was found at London Bridge; so also was a figurine of Apollo, his legs amputated. This is a perplexing phenomenon along the Thames. It has been suggested that the statuettes of the pagan gods were deliberately mutilated by the early Christians before being despatched to the water; in their mythology the underworld, with which the river had associations, had become Hell itself. So, according to this theory, the Thames would transport the heathen idols to the realm of the devil. But the act of water worship, involved in consigning images to the river, works against the assumption. Surely the devotees who left gods in the water were not denying their power or their existence—unless the river itself was seen to be a greater god from whose capacious embrace the deities might not return? The objects may have been ritually killed before their deposition, just as human beings were sacrificed in earlier ages of the world. It was another form of augmenting the power of the river.

  A large number of Roman artefacts have been revealed during the various excavations and improvements upon London Bridge. It is the primal site for the deposition of votive objects, and we can assume that it was the place favoured for those looking for the guardian spirit or god of the Thames. When it is recalled that a bridge itself is considered to be an affront to the god, it requires a double form of propitiation. There have been discovered, beside the old timbers, figurines and statuettes, lamps and pots, bells and knives, spindle-whorls and glass and jewellery. There have been discoveries of many hundreds of coins, which are concentrated in a position immediately opposite the second arch of the present bridge; this suggests the close presence of a shrine or altar on the original bridge itself.

  There are other deposits that replicate the human form, and in 1834 the brazen head of Hadrian was found near London Bridge. There were also other treasures taken up from the river. An altar, with its resident genius or god, was discovered at Bablock Hythe. At Greenwich were found a lamp with a ram’s head and a human mask. A votive plaque, carved in the shape of an altar, was found in the Thames. By London Bridge was retrieved a bronze pair of ritual forceps dedicated to the Mother Goddess, Cybele. These are stray finds over the centuries, but they testify to a continuing interest in cult practice.

  The Saxons and the Vikings have left plentiful evidence for their presence in the riverine landscape. Coins bearing the image of Alfred the Great were found in the mud of the Thames at Queenhithe, and in the water itself have been taken up axe-heads and spearheads, swords and spears. There are significant finds of Saxon material at Bray, at Windsor, and near Maidenhead. There are early Saxon spearheads in areas as diverse as Cliveden and Wandsworth, while later Saxon weapons are common in all stretches of the river. The evidence does again support the theory of ritual activity. One Saxon sword, found in the river above Shillingford Bridge, had its tip removed as an act of ceremonial “killing”—perhaps on the death of its owner. There are also many Viking battle-axes, spearheads and swords. At the last count, twenty-four Viking swords had been retrieved from the Thames. The appetite of the river is inexhaustible.

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p; There was no diminution in the scale of medieval piety towards the river. The faithful, returning from Canterbury or from other shrines, had a custom of throwing their pilgrim badges into the waters; on one small area of the foreshore, just east of Blackfriars Bridge, some 250 pewter badges were discovered by what appears to have been a jetty. Among them were the wheel of St. Catherine, the scallop-shell of St. James of Compostella and the rose of St. Dorothy. The river also contained wooden reliquaries and bronze statuettes. The pilgrims were imploring the protection of the saint, perhaps, but the ritual also suggests that they were no less interested in the pagan deities of the Thames. Crucifixes have been found in the Thames with the head of the Christ removed; there are numerous effigies of the saints on the pewter badges, again with the heads broken off. At Wapping was discovered a brass reliquary designed to contain a skull. It may have been a form of sympathetic magic, to protect the head and neck of the owner of the deposit, but it preserves the spirit of ancient rituals.

  Two silver pennies from the reign of Henry I were found near the foreshore at Billingsgate; they were bent together in symbolic manner, similar to the ritual clipping of weapons or amputation of votive figures. Many hundreds of medieval inn tokens have been taken up from the river, all of them bent and twisted out of shape. One elaborate and beautiful pilgrim badge, of the Madonna and Child, had been folded up several times before being despatched into the Thames. A lead ampulla or small vessel, depicting the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, was found at Toppings Wharf. Hundreds of communion “tokens” have also been recovered. They were all sacred offerings, their broken form attesting to their removal from the natural world of use. But to whom were these offerings made?