It's no secret that your geeky friend thoroughly enjoys watching a few mudlarkers' films on Youtube. In a stressful world I find such content very relaxing and it broadens my historical knowledge. However, I had no idea until a chance conversation last year that a friend of mine shares my taste....who better to go with than her then when I found out about the 'Secrets of the Thames' exhibition in London.
The original mudlarkers were the very poorest who scavenged down by the river to find anything that they could see whether that be old bits of rope, metal or coal. Nowadays it's a hobby, but there are rules that you have to follow in the city. Any Thames mudlark has to have their own permit issued by the Port of London Authority and they're not all the same. Some people are allowed to dig deeper etc. Many common finds are things such as broken clay pipes, buttons, pins, vulcanite stoppers, animal bones and old cutlery, but every period in time is there to find and you never know what the tide will bring in. The more special finds must be logged with the Portable Antiquities Scheme by the London mudlarks, but many of them get them back once they've been recorded.
It turns out that people have been dropping things in the river or on the foreshore for a very long time and there were finds on display stretching back to the Neolithic and right up to the 21st century when medals stolen from the tennis doubles player, Peter Fleming, were discovered. Here's a few of my favourites
This first one is a bone memento mori bead from the 1400s and shows a young woman on one side and a skull on the other. It was constantly rotating so I had to take these whilst it was moving all the time!
An 18th century set of dentures available to only those who had the means of paying for them. In case you're wondering yes those are real human teeth you're looking at so I dread to think where they sourced them from. Sometimes those in dire straits would have had their teeth removed for payment, but often they came from the dead. There are tales of teeth being removed from those who had fallen on the battle fields.
This one is a curious tale of thousands of pieces of type face. The Doves Press was formed of a partnership between two friends T J Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker. It operated in Hammersmith and was named after a local pub. As part of their work they designed a unique typeface called the Doves Type, but unfortunately all did not go well and the pair acrimoniously split in 1909. Rather than let Walker make money from the typeface upon Cobden- Smith's death the latter took it upon himself to make 170 separate trips to the river into which he threw every single piece. They really had fallen out hadn't they!
Below is one of the Viking finds which has come to light. This knife is known as a seax and we know it belonged to Osmond because he had his name on it.
Two of the most famous finds from the 19th century are the so called Waterloo helmet [Iron Age] and the Battersea Shield [also Iron Age] which many will have seen in their usual home over in the British Museum
17th century pewter toys. They were on a similar scale to the lead soldiers and toys children had in more recent centuries. I like the lady's rather fierce expression. She's not to be messed with.
This one is an amazing survival. It's the leather cover from a 15th century prayer book and an illustration of how it would have looked when it was new.
We had a chance to chat to one of the archaeologists who had a selection of Thames finds that we were allowed to handle. At one point he asked us to see if we could put a range of pottery shards in the correct date order. I was quite chuffed to get them all correct [obviously some information from my viewing of the Youtube offerings has gone in] bar one when I identified a Medieval roof tile as being Roman. The giveaway detail was that the hole in it was square to allow for a metal square headed nail apparently. I shall make sure that I don't get caught out again😉
Having learnt that the Thames foreshore is a designated archaeological site and the river has been sanctified as a holy river since the 1970s we felt it would have been rude not to have paid a visit to the foreshore itself. We found our way down some steps near Tower Bridge and went for a little explore of our own. That is allowed and no we didn't pocket any finds.
꩜Aril꩜
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