by Lara Maiklem
Standing in the middle of the Estuary, where the river is at its widest and most powerful, I suddenly remember the little river on the farm and how some days I would wake to find it spread across the garden, unrecognisable, no longer a gentle clear stream but an angry muddy stranger creeping slowly up the lawn. My parents told me stories of how the river used to flood the house when they first moved there, running through the pigsties before it seeped up through the cellar and into the kitchen, leaving behind a thick layer of sludge and the stink of pigs. Dad once had to rescue my brothers, driving a tractor through the flood water to where they stood waiting in their wellies by the back door. The course of the river was straightened before I was born and forced further north, but I still feared the rain as I lay in bed listening to it fall on the old tiles above me, and dreaded the river’s transformation, terrified of it invading the house again.
Now, panic flutters in my gut as I watch the water inch closer. In central London the tides cover the riverbed gradually, licking my heels and nudging me off the foreshore bit by bit, back to the river wall where a set of stairs or a ladder will take me to safety. But so close to the source of the tide itself, the water moves quickly, spreading across the mud and filling the channel before you know it. A fast-moving tide will overtake sluggish legs mired in mud and swiftly surround sandbanks, cutting off the way back to the shore. The water has already covered our footprints behind us and it won’t be long before it has erased the ones we’re making now. If I were to stay standing where I am, I’d be at least twelve foot under water by the time it reached the top of the seaweed-covered rocks under the concrete wall where James and I scrambled down just a few hours ago.
I cast my eye to land and calculate the distance still to go, picturing the water on its journey upstream. The river is like a great khaki snake-dragon, smoothing and stroking its treasures, hiding them in its coils. It has already rounded the bend at Lower Hope Point and will be passing the dump at Tilbury, drawing over broken bottles and teapots, silencing the cursing housewives and crying children. At Blackwall it will flow over the possessions dropped by pilgrims and adventurers before it loops its way around the Isle of Dogs to Greenwich to sort the remains of Tudor feasts for the next low tide. I watch it in my mind’s eye, as it travels on past Cuckold’s Point and into the Pool, where it will play on the bones of abandoned warships and pluck nails from the mud as it journeys to Tower Bridge. Now it makes its way through the city, past Trig Lane, where last week it handed me half the grizzled face of a beardy Bellarmine, and Queenhithe, where I collected a handful of Georgian clay pipes, then it pushes west to swirl around the prehistoric remains at Vauxhall. At Hammersmith it will check its cache for a special secret, ensuring the pieces of metal type that were passed into its care are still squirrelled away, out of the reach of mudlarks, before it crawls on westwards to the tidal head. Around four and a half hours from now, the river will have reached the locks and weir at Teddington. Here it will take a deep, earthy, leaf-scented breath, before beginning its journey seawards once more.
My legs are starting to get stiff and I know I need to keep moving. I turn my back on the river and step off the rubble back into the mud. I lurch a few feet landwards, but my river ancestors are holding tight to my boots. They don’t want me to leave. I fix my eyes on the thin yellow strip of sand in the distance and force myself forwards through the sludge, conjuring the week’s tide tables in my mind as a distraction. I’m exhausted, but I’m planning my next trip. The tides are good for the next seven days and with a bit of shuffling, pleading and creative planning I am sure I can rearrange my schedule around them. I’ve got to pick the kids up from school tomorrow, but I have a meeting near London Bridge on Friday and I should be able to fit in a quick lark afterwards. In my head I tell my river forebears: I’ll be back with you on the river soon.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My knowledge barely grazes that of the specialists and professionals I’ve met and consulted in my years as a mudlark. They have helped me to turn anonymous objects into living history and to understand the river itself. There’s a long list of people I am indebted to for helping me with my research for this book and for reading and checking my facts. The mudlarks that shared their stories with me are another special group, they are the ones that know the true value of the river and the treasures it holds. For everyone’s kindness, help and support, thank you:
Anton Vamplew (astronomer), Chiz Harward (archaeologist), Chris Coode (Thames21), Chris Knight (St Austell Brewery), Claire Newton (photographer and artist), the Company of Watermen and Lightermen, Dave (mudlark), Dr David Higgins (clay pipe specialist and chair of the National Pipe Archive and the Society for Clay Pipe Research), David Pearson (conservation manager at the Mary Rose Trust, Portsmouth), David Powell (lead token specialist and editor of the Leaden Tokens Telegraph, who helped me to resumect Robert Kingsland), Eliott Wragg (archaeologist), Dr Fiona Fearnhead (palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum), Dr Fiona Haughey (foreshore archaeologist), Gerald A. Livings (jeweller and reproduction aglet maker, Wisconsin), Graham (mudlark), Heather Coleman (clay pipe maker), Ian Richardson (Treasure Registrar, British Museum), James (mudlark), Jane Henderson (Department of Archaeology and Conservation at Cardiff University), Jane Sidell (Inspector of Ancient Monuments, thank you for patiently explaining the mysteries of prehistory to me – over and over again), Johnny (mudlark and artist), Julia Smith (mudlark), Kimberley Roche (archaeological conservator), Kristian Schug (for his research on Private French), Livetts Marine Logistics (Chris Livett, Edward Livett, William Waylet, Alex Miles, Adam Davis), Lynn Burchell, Metropolitan Police Marine Policing Unit (Sergeant Ian Spooner, PC Martin Davis, PC Peter Sandell, Adam O’Grady), Michael Lewis (Portable Antiquities Scheme and Treasure Finds, British Museum), Mike Webber (archaeologist), Nathalie Cohen (archaeologist), Ninya Mikhaila (Tudor tailor), Port of London Authority (Martin Garside and Alex Mortley), Richard Carey (mudlark and clay pipe collector and specialist), Richard Hemery (mudlark and pottery specialist), Robert Green (type designer), Robert Jeffries (Hon Curator at the Thames River Police Museum), Stuart Wyatt (Finds Liaison Officer at the Museum of London), Tim Ash (RNLI), Yogesh Patel (BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Neasden, London), Yvonne Saunderson (Marine Police Suicide Prevention Team).
I can’t thank the team at Bloomsbury enough for their insight, creativity, hard work and professionalism, especially Alexis for her unwavering faith – it was a long road but we got there in the end! A huge thanks to my very brilliant editor Anna, who just ‘got’ me, to Marigold, who’s been such a delight to work with, and to Johnny for letting me loose on his precious sketchbooks for the cover and end pages. I wouldn’t be sitting here writing any of this without my agent Sarah and her assistant Eli at United Agents: your excellent instinct was right, Sarah, thank you for persuading me to do it.
Thank you to James for sharing so much, Geoff for my floating hotel room in the Docklands and Bob and Philly for their open house. To all my friends and family, who’ve been so patient and supportive, I’m sorry for being ‘absent’ for the last two years, but I’m back now. For the twins, my little life-changers, who tiptoed past my room for what must have felt like an eternity, this book is my gift to you.
Finally, and most importantly, my ever patient and loving wife, my rock and my inspiration, for keeping life at bay, listening unendingly to me bleat on about ‘the book’ and celebrating with me every time I ‘finished’. You made all this possible by giving me the most precious gifts of all: time and freedom. For that, from the very bottom of my heart, I thank you.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books and publications listed once, under the chapter where they are first used.
MAIN EPIGRAPH
Richard Rowe, ‘A Pair of Mudlarks’, Life in the London Streets (1881)
MUDLARK
Lesley Brown (Ed), The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, (Oxford, 1993) [epigraph]
Jerzy Gawronski and Peter
Kranendonk, Stuff: Catalogue Archaeological Finds, Amsterdam’s North/South Metro Line (Amsterdam, 2018)
TIDAL HEAD
St. James’s Gazette, June 1884 [epigraph]
Globe, 25 June 1884
Peter Ackroyd, Thames: Sacred River (London, 2008)
A. A. C. Hedges, Bottles and Bottle Collecting (Buckinghamshire, 1996)
‘All About Richmond Lock and Weir on the Thames’, Port of London Authority (2014) [film]
HAMMERSMITH
Letter to a Customer from T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, 14 February 1918 [epigraph]
T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, The Journals of Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson 1879–1922 (New York, 1969)
Colin Franklin, The Private Presses (London, 1990)
Ruari McLean (ed.), Typographers on Type: An Illustrated Anthology from William Morris to the Present Day (London, 1995)
Marianne Tidcombe, The Doves Bindery (London, 1991)
VAUXHALL
John Burns (Liberal MP 1892–1918), quoted in a Daily Mail report of his death, 25 January 1943. The remark was reputedly made to an American who had spoken disparagingly about the River Thames [epigraph]
Nathalie Cohen and Eliott Wragg, The River’s Tale: Archaeology on the Thames Foreshore in Greater London (Museum of London Archaeology, 2017)
Ivor Noël Hume, Treasure in the Thames (London, 1956)
Ivor Noël Hume, All the Best Rubbish (New York, 1974)
Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys Esquire (London, first published 1825)
Simon Webb, Life in Roman London (Stroud, 2011)
The Archaeology of Greater London: An Assessment of Archaeological Evidence for Human Presence in the Area Now Covered by Greater London, Museum of London Archaeology Service (London, 2000)
TRIG LANE
Ivor Noël Hume, Treasure in the Thames (London, 1956) [epigraph]
Janet Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d (London, 1988)
Peter Barber, London, A History in Maps (London, 2012)
Geoff Egan and Frances Pritchard, Dress Accessories 1150–1450 (London, 1991)
Lois Sherr Dubin, The History of Beads (New York, 1987)
Kevin Leahy and Michael Lewis, Finds Identified: The British Museum’s Portable Antiquities Scheme (London, 2018)
Bridget McConnel, The Collector’s Guide to Thimbles (London, 1995)
Gustav and Chrissie Milne, Medieval Waterfront Development at Trig Lane, London (London, 1982)
Hans Van Lemmen, Medieval Tiles (Princes Risborough, 2000)
BANKSIDE
Ivor Noël Hume, Treasure in the Thames (London, 1956) [epigraph]
Kirby’s Wonderful and Eccentric Museum; or Magazine of Remarkable Characters, Vol. III (London, 1820)
Matthew Green, London: A Travel Guide Through Time (London, 2015)
Ivor Noël Hume, If These Pots Could Talk: Collecting 2,000 Years of British Household Pottery (Milwaukee, 2001)
Lloyd Laing, Pottery in Britain 4000 bc to ad 1900: A Guide to Identifying Pot Sherds (Essex, 2014)
Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England (London, 2012)
Stephen Porter, Shakespeare’s London (Stroud, 2011)
Brian Read, Hooked-Clasps and Eyes (Somerset, 2008)
Gillian Tindall, The House by the Thames and the People who Lived There (London, 2006)
QUEENHITHE
Charles Manby Smith, ‘The Tide Waitress’, Curiosities of London Life or Phases, Physiological and Social of the Great Metropolis (1853) [epigraph]
Francis Grew and Margrethe de Neergaard, Shoes and Pattens: Medieval Finds from Excavations in London (London, 1988)
John Matusiak, The Tudors in 100 Objects (Stroud, 2016)
LONDON BRIDGE
James Greenwood, ‘Gleaners of Thames Bank’, Toilers in London, by One of the Crowd (1883) [epigraph]
TOWER BEACH
Charles Manby Smith, ‘The Tide Waitress’, Curiosities of London Life or Phases, Physiological and Social of the Great Metropolis (1853) [epigraph]
Caitlin Davies, Downstream: A History and Celebration of Swimming the River Thames (London, 2015)
Kenneth Porter and Stephen Wynn, Castle Point in the Great War (Barnsley, 2015)
Harriet White, Legge’s Mount, The Tower of London, London: Scientific Examination of the Crucibles, Research Department Report Series, English Heritage (2010)
ROTHERHITHE
Henry Mayhew, Letters to the Morning Chronicle (1849–50) [epigraph]
Daniel Defoe, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–7)
John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn (first published 1818)
WAPPING
Frederick Marryat, Poor Jack (1840) [epigraph]
Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis; Containing a Detail of the Various Crimes and Misdemeanors By Which Public and Private Property and Security are, at Present, injured and Endangered: and Suggesting Remedies for their Prevention (London, 1796)
Geoff Egan and Hazel Forsyth, Toys, Trifles and Trinkets (London, 2005)
Michele Field and Timothy Millett, Convict Love Tokens: The Leaden Hearts the Convicts Left Behind (Adelaide, 1998)
Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor (1851)
James Hardy Vaux, Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux (1819)
GREENWICH
Richard Rowe, ‘A Brood of Mudlarks’, Episodes in an Obscure Life (1871) [epigraph]
Clive Aslet, The Story of Greenwich (London, 1999)
Tracy Borman, The Private Lives of the Tudors (London, 2016)
Geoff Egan, The Medieval Household: Medieval Finds From Excavations in London (London, 1998)
Martin Hammond, Bricks and Brickmaking (London, 1981)
Drew Smith, Oyster: A Gastronomic History (London, 2015)
Olivia Williams, Gin Glorious Gin: How Mother’s Ruin Became the Spirit of London (London, 2014)
TILBURY
Henry Mayhew, ‘Of the Sewer Hunters’, London Labour and the London Poor (1851) [epigraph]
Helen East, London Folk Tales (Stroud, 2012)
Alexander Moring (ed.), The Story of the Willow Pattern Plate (London, 1952)
Phil Stride, The Thames Thideway: Preventing Another Stink (Stroud, 2019)
Nigel Watson, The Port of London Authority: A Century of Service 1909–2009 (London, 2009)
The Secret Life of Landfill, BBC4 (first aired October 2018)
ESTUARY
James Greenwood, ‘Gleaners of Thames Bank’, Toilers in London, by One of the Crowd (1883) [epigraph]
Edward Carpenter, Peter Kendall and Sarah Newsome, The Hoo Peninsula Landscape (Historic England, 2015)
WEBSITES
Agas Map: https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/map.htm
Amy Johnson Trust: www.amyjohnsonartstrust.co.uk
British Museum: www.britishmuseum.org
Convict records: https://convictrecords.com.au
Cory Riverside Energy: www.coryenergy.com
Currency converter: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter
Diary of Samuel Pepys: www.pepysdiary.com
Doves type: https://typespec.co.uk/doves-type/
English Heritage: www.english-heritage.org.uk
Friends of Ham Lands: www.hamunitedgroup.org.uk
Geological Society: www.geolsoc.org.uk
Historic England: https://historicengland.org.uk/
Historic Jamestown: https://historicjamestowne.org
Leaden Tokens Telegraph: www.leadtokens.org.uk
Libraries Tasmania convict records: https://www.libraries.tas.gov.au
Marine Biological Association Recording Scheme: www.mittencrabs.org.uk
Mary Rose: www.maryrose.org
Mayflower: www.mayflower400uk.org
National Archives: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
National Museum of the Royal Navy: www.nmrn.org.uk
Old Royal Naval College Greenwich: www.ornc.org
Portable Antiquities Scheme database: www.finds.org
.uk
Port of London Authority: www.pla.co.uk
Pub History and Historical Street Directories: www.pubshistory.com
Richmond Council: www.richmond.gov.uk
Rocque map: www.locatinglondon.org
Rose farthings: www.britnumsoc.org
Royal Armouries: www.royalarmouries.org
Royal Mint: www.royalmint.com
Royal Museums Greenwich: www.rmg.co.uk
Royal Palaces: www.hrp.org.uk
St Margaret’s Community: www.stmargarets.london
St Mary’s, Willesden (the Shrine of Our Lady of Willesden): www.shrineofmary.org
Sugar refining: www.mawer.clara.net
Thames Barrier: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-thames-barrier
Thames Discovery Programme: www.thamesdiscovery.org
Thames21: www.thames21.org.uk
UK Detector Finds database: www.ukdfd.co.uk
Victoria and Albert Museum Collections (Penn Tile): https://www.vam.ac.uk/collections
Visscher map: www.panoramaofthethames.com
Wilson Art Gallery and Museum: www.cheltenhammuseum.org.uk
Zoological Society of London: www.zsl.org
MUSEUMS
Brandon Heritage Centre, Suffolk
British Museum, London
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Globe Exhibition, London
Little Woodham Living History Village, Hampshire
Mary Rose, Portsmouth
Museum of London
National Maritime Museum, London
Natural History Museum, London
Royal Armouries, Leeds
Thames River Police Museum, London
Tower of London
Victoria and Albert Museum, London