Mudlarking

by Lara Maiklem

  It is the long-gone palace that was connected to the wooden posts and which lies in the bricks and masonry on the foreshore that draws me in here and keeps me coming back. Greenwich is unique. There is nowhere else I know of on the tidal Thames where the objects it reveals can be placed with such certainty. Most foreshore finds are a muddle of history that, unless they are marked in some way, are nearly impossible to attribute to a particular building or location. But at Greenwich, the objects have a provenance that’s difficult to deny. Nearly every old object found here has an association with the palace and with the people who lived and worked in it.

  I have a fascination with the Tudors that comes from growing up with them in a sixteenth-century farmhouse. Anyone who has lived in a very old house knows about the ghosts who inhabit its bricks and the lived-in feeling its previous occupants have given it. The house I grew up in had settled comfortably into its years and our ghosts were happy ones. The house itself was a traditional hall house, with red peg tiles that reached halfway down its walls and small windows to keep in the heat. My mother painted all the doors bright yellow to give it a welcoming look, and on cold nights we gathered by the large open inglenook fireplace, away from the draughts that you could almost see blowing across the hallway floor.

  The low ceilings were criss-crossed by oak beams that had been ravaged over the centuries by beetles and worm, and wherever you went the floorboards creaked and moaned as if the house was complaining as you stepped on it. A colony of bats lived in the rafters and flitted out from a hole above my bedroom window at dusk every evening. The forgotten rooms at the back of the house smelled of mould and damp and terrified me at night when I was sent there to get more potatoes or dog food in the dark, but they fascinated me during the day when I could see past the junk and cobwebs to what they must once have been like. This was where the old kitchen and dairy had been. There were worn terracotta tiles on the floor of the kitchen and a Victorian iron range rusting away at one end. The dairy still had a pounded mud floor and a thick, wide wooden plank shelf under the small window. I went in there to feel the history of the house and to imagine the people who had cooked on the range and who had worn down the steps carrying the food they made through the now bricked-up door back into the main house.

  I could only guess at who had lived in our house and what had happened there over the centuries, but the history of the medieval palace at Greenwich has been written down and recorded. History books tell me that Henry VIII was born there, as were his daughters Mary and Elizabeth, while his only son Edward died there at the age of fifteen, crying out in pain from the agony of his diseased body. Henry married two of his wives, Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves at Greenwich, and on 29 May 1533, Anne Boleyn was escorted from there by a huge flotilla of sumptuously decorated barges four miles upriver to the Tower in advance of her coronation on 1 June. Her journey was quite the spectacle, she was dressed in gold cloth and accompanied by gun salutes and music, but less than three years later she made the same journey under very different circumstances. On 2 May 1536, she was taken under arrest from Greenwich upriver, past Rotherhithe and Wapping, to the entrance to Traitor’s Gate. Seventeen days later, after a trial found her guilty of charges including incest, conspiracy and adultery, she was beheaded at the Tower.

  There had been a large house on the river at Greenwich since at least early medieval times. The palace began life as a manor house called Bella Court, or Plesaunce, from the Latin meaning ‘pleasant place to live’. When it came into the hands of Henry VII in the late fifteenth century he renamed it the Palace of Placentia, demolished much of it and set about rebuilding a fine riverside residence. The earliest depictions of the palace are two sketches by the Flemish artist Anthony van den Wyngaerde, who drew it from the front and the back in 1558. The riverfront view is drawn from the bank opposite and shows an imposing and rambling brick building around a series of courtyards with a chapel at the eastern end and a large gatehouse just off-centre, which opens onto the river. At the western end of the palace is a wooden jetty, which I’m sure corresponds with the posts and baseplates that are still emerging from the mud and washing away on the tides. Behind it is the hill where I made my decision to move to Greenwich on that hot summer day.

  Henry VII was responsible for much of what we see in the sketches, but his son Henry VIII spent the most time and money on the palace, adding kennels, stables, a cockpit, armour workshops, tennis courts and a permanent tiltyard for jousting. Of all his sixty-three houses and palaces, Greenwich Palace, as it had become known, was one of his favourites and he made it his primary royal residence. It was close enough to the city to get to with ease by barge and far enough away to escape to when there was an outbreak of plague. The Royal Dockyards at Deptford and Woolwich were close by and behind the palace was a deer park. Henry spent his time here hunting, jousting, courting, feasting and celebrating. He filled the palace with people and held extravagant entertainments.

  The objects that are hidden in the mud at Greenwich fill in the details that are missing from the history books and bring the world of the Tudor palace to life. The foreshore here is like one large midden, a palatial version of the one in front of the house where I grew up, and in which are buried the ordinary lives behind the lavish parties. Here I can hold the tangible remains of everyday life in a Tudor palace: the soft remnants of reeds that may have covered its floors, the thick shards of pottery used in its kitchens, and even the food that was served and eaten.

  Vast numbers of cooking pots and dishes were used in the preparation and presentation of food and many of those that broke ended up in the river. They are concentrated around the jetty, which must have been a convenient place for dumping rubbish and kitchen waste. I have quite a collection of feet and handles from pipkins, the pot-bellied earthenware cooking pots that were used in most houses from medieval times through to the eighteenth century. Pipkins came in a variety of styles and shapes, but most English-made pipkins had three stumpy legs and a single handle, which was usually hollow to disperse the heat. A stick could also be inserted in the handle, making it easier to move around when it was hot. Pipkins were sat close to or actually in the hot embers of the fire and the shards that lie on the foreshore are often blackened by soot from the last moments of their useful life; the handles are coloured more heavily on the side that was exposed to the fire.

  Chafing dishes – ceramic braziers that held hot coals – were another common way of cooking food that required gentle heating. I have the flared bottom half of one of these and pieces of green and yellow glazed rims with little triangular projections for supporting a plate or bowl. Maybe they were used to prepare delicacies for the king and important guests or perhaps just to coddle an egg for the cook’s late-night snack. Chafing dishes were also used to keep food warm, perhaps during the feasts at the palace, which could last for hours.

  I have spent many absorbed and happy hours searching for the remains of feasts and everyday meals at court in the mud here. The bones that shift about the foreshore in long drifts and collect in corners against the wall are obvious to any visitor – apparently the police get a lot of calls from distressed people who think they have found evidence of a massacre. Among them I have found dogs’ teeth, a cat’s skull and the lower jaw of a rat – vermin from the halls and kitchens – but most of the bones are from the animals that were eaten at the palace. Wealthy Tudors and royalty enjoyed a rich diet that consisted mainly of meat. Drovers herded their animals from as far away as Wales to London, and flocks of geese, their feet dipped in tar and covered with sand to protect them, were driven in from the countryside. The large bones at Greenwich are mainly from domestic animals – cows, sheep, goats and pigs that would have been far smaller than the commercial beasts we breed today. Some of the bones have deep cut marks from sharp knives and cleavers and many of the larger ones have been smashed for the rich creamy marrow that was scooped out from inside them.

  The bones of wild animals are here too – deer f
rom the 200-acre royal park behind the palace, boar and maybe even seal and porpoise. I’ve found part of a large and once handsome deer antler, chopped off at one end, possibly by an axe. I have yet to find a seal or porpoise bone, but I know what a boar tusk looks like and I have found many of them on the Thames foreshore, especially at Greenwich. It is thought native wild boar had been hunted to extinction in Britain by the thirteenth century, and their reintroduced cousins had disappeared by the seventeenth century. Boar now thrive from released and escaped stock in certain parts of the country, but tusks from the foreshore are likely to date from a time when the nobility tested their skill and bravery against these wild pigs with long spears, daggers and heavyset dogs. Boar tusks don’t last well once they’re removed from the mud, though, and eventually shear apart and splinter into sharp fragments as they dry out.

  It takes a keener eye to spot the smaller bones that are mixed in with the mud: the delicate skull of a rabbit, or possibly a hare, and countless fragile hollow bird bones. Most are about the right size for a chicken, but they could just as well be peacock, pheasant, heron, stork, goose, duck, gull, swan or even turkey bones, a new delicacy that arrived from America in the mid-sixteenth century. Beyond these bird bones are the frangible wishbones of pigeon, quail, teal, woodcock and the many songbirds that were consumed at court. The Tudors thought nothing of eating lark, robin, blackbird, thrush and linnet, beautiful delicate creatures that I’m sure were netted in their thousands on the marshes and scrublands close to Greenwich and across the water on the Isle of Dogs.

  Fish replaced meat on Fridays and Saturdays, and also on the many religious holidays that occurred throughout the year. Sea fish were brought up the Thames from the Estuary and beyond, wrapped in seaweed to keep them fresh or salted in barrels. Freshwater fish were pulled from the river itself and kept alive in cisterns and ponds until they were needed. The tiny bones of the fish these people ate are perfectly preserved in the mud. All you have to do is look. I get down on my hands and knees, as close as I can to the foreshore, and pick a small patch of dark grey mud to analyse. Sometimes I find miniature hoards of fish bones, circular vertebrae with sharp spines that once supported the meaty flesh of cod, salmon, pike, haddock and perch. Other marine delicacies were also enjoyed at the palace. I have found the spiny armour from the skin of a thornback ray, the claws of large crabs and the shells of winkles, whelks, mussels, cockles and oysters.

  The rough, grey, scab-like shells of oysters litter the foreshore in central London as well as at Greenwich. Harvested in the mouth of the Thames Estuary and along the coasts of Kent and Essex, packed into barrels, baskets and crates, and brought upriver to the city, they are the ancient remains of countless meals, common food for the masses throughout London’s history. Native Britons regarded oysters as subsistence food, but the Romans considered them a delicacy and exported vast quantities of British oysters to Rome. They became protein for the poor, especially in Victorian times when they could be bought three for a penny. In the early 1900s, however, the filth that was being discharged into the Thames contaminated the oyster beds and the industry collapsed. The invasive Pacific oyster was introduced in 1926 to boost stocks, but most of the shells found on the foreshore are from native oysters, which have larger, more oval-shaped shells and a distinct hooked beak where the two shells meet. For mudlarks, oyster shells away from the Estuary are a good indicator of human population density – and where there are plenty of shells, there are likely to be good finds.

  Close-up searching at Greenwich also reveals the remains of the fruit and nuts that were eaten between courses and at the end of meals. Ancient hazelnut and walnut shells survive miraculously well encased in oxygen-free mud. They are delicate, softened and waterlogged though, and dissolve quickly as soon as they are exposed to the tides. The apples, pears, blackberries and strawberries that were consumed have left no tangible evidence, but I have found plum and cherry pits and apricot stones, blackened by 500 years of darkness. I imagine a rakish courtier, lounging lazily against a window recess and looking out over the river as he rolls ripe cherries around in his mouth and spits the pits on to the flagstone floor. They mingle with the rest of the filth, and eventually, perhaps weeks or even months later, are swept up by a skivvy, dumped into a wheelbarrow and tipped off the wooden jetty into the river.

  While more robust fruits such as oranges, lemons and pomegranates were brought to London on the ships that sailed past the palace on their way to the Pool, softer fruits like apricots and cherries were grown at specialist orchards in Kent on imported trees tended by the royal fruiterer. Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn were said to be particularly fond of fruit. Perhaps I have found the stones of apricots they shared together in the first bloom of their love.

  Henry was also fond of sugar, which was a luxury at the time. There are references to it being kept under lock and key at Hampton Court, along with exotic spices, fruits and nuts. Sweet treats were prepared for the king by his confectioner, Mrs Cornwallis. She was the only woman listed as being a member of his kitchens and was described as ‘the wife who makes the king’s puddings’. I like to imagine her stirring her famous custards, jellies and quince marmalade in the vast, sweltering kitchens at Greenwich. Elizabeth inherited her father’s love of sugar, which had become popular and fashionable, albeit still expensive by the time she lived at Greenwich Palace. It was eaten with vegetables and meat and used to preserve fruit. It was also used to produce all manner of sweetmeats, including marchpane, a type of almond and sugar ‘dough’, like marzipan, that was sculpted into elaborate centrepieces for banquets. It is said Elizabeth liked sugar so much that her teeth went black from it. Social climbers emulated this by rubbing soot into their own teeth to make them appear wealthy enough to afford sugar.

  One morning a very friendly Swiss lady came up to me on the foreshore at Greenwich. Her English wasn’t very good, but she made it clear she’d found something that interested her and motioned for me to hold out my hand, into which she dropped a human molar. The top surface was worn almost smooth, but apart from that it was a clean yellowy white and in very good condition, a distinct contrast to the three other human teeth I’ve found on the river, which were dirty grey with gingery-brown roots and eaten away by deep dark cavities that sent shivers down my spine. I was reminded of something I had once been told by an archaeologist about the dating of teeth – that before the Elizabethans, since there wasn’t much sugar and certainly no tobacco to discolour and rot them, teeth were often cleaner and less decayed. People kept their teeth for longer and through eating bread made with stone-ground, often gritty flour they wore the cusps of their teeth down. By this theory, the tooth I had just been given looked old.

  It wasn’t until the discovery of the New World, where sugar cane could be grown on vast plantations worked by armies of slaves, that sugar became cheaper and more widely available. By the eighteenth century, sugar refining was big business and there were hundreds of sugar houses in London making rock-hard sugar ‘loaves’ in moulds that varied in size. Thick syrupy refined raw sugar was poured into the mould and as it slowly dripped through the small hole in the bottom into a collecting pot, it left brown crystallised sugar behind. Poor-quality sugar crystallised less easily and was made in larger moulds, while white sugar fetched a better price and was made by slowly dripping a solution of white clay through it to draw out the remaining brown molasses. Once the mould was full, the sugar loaf was knocked out and dried in a stove room at sixty degrees Celsius.

  Large shards of red earthenware moulds that were used to make sugar loaves are embedded in the foreshore just upstream from Greenwich Pier towards Deptford. There were two potteries at Deptford that made these moulds and it’s possible that those that broke during the firing process were gathered up and used to fill and stabilise the foreshore here. The shards are thick and have white slip roughly painted on the inside, which helps to date them since sugar moulds were not slip-coated until the late seventeenth century. So they weren’t destin
ed for the palace.

  Formal feasting at the Tudor court was not a greedy, gobbling free-for-all, but followed a strict code of etiquette. Manners were important. Plate after plate of food was brought out of the kitchens and presented to the king before being distributed to his guests, with sumptuary law restricting the number of dishes people were permitted to eat according to their social rank. A cardinal was allowed nine dishes, an earl seven, and knights of the garter six. They cut and stabbed their food with knives, used pewter spoons for soups, pottage and stews, but otherwise ate with their fingers which, in the palace at least, they wiped on a linen napkin draped over one shoulder.

  I have quite a collection of bone, ivory and wooden knife handles that date back to early medieval times and several pieces of bone and pewter spoons: knops and broken handles, and an acorn finial from a sixteenth-century pewter spoon, which would have had a wide round bowl. Acorns were a remedy for cholera and the ‘bloody flux’ (dysentery), and acorn finials were popular at this time as a symbol of immortality and a talisman. People of all social classes carried their own knives and spoons for fear of infection and illness, which explains why so many are found on the foreshore.

  Henry VIII also dined less formally in his private chambers, sometimes with close friends and occasionally with one of his wives. Large ceramic stoves covered with green-glazed earthenware tiles moulded with heraldic symbols probably heated some of these rooms. I know of one spot on the foreshore where fragments of similar stove tiles can be found, but they are rare and I have only three shards, one with the moulded top of a column that probably flanked the royal coat of arms or Tudor rose. Henry may have favoured glass goblets instead of gold or silver in his private rooms, perhaps a gift from the Venetian ambassador who was often seen at court. The goblet stems I have found at Greenwich match complete examples of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venetian goblets held at the Victoria and Albert Museum. They are shaped like large teardrops, hollow and rainbow-coloured with iridescence where the 400-year-old glass has begun to fracture into micro-fine layers that reflect light like a prism. What whispers of love and court gossip were they privy to?