When I went Mudlarking On The Foreshore Of The Thames

The foreshore of the Thames is a generally very overlooked part of the city. If you are walking along the embankment at low tide, peer over the wall down to the riverside and you may well spot a few characters wandering along, necks craned downwards, eyes scanning the sand, shingle and mud beneath their feet.

They are most likely ‘mudlarking’. It is something that I have wanted to do for years now, so signed up to an event with the environmental charity, Thames 21, led by the London Mudlark herself Lara Maiklem.

Lara has mudlarked for years but in 2019 published her first, of now three, books called Mudlarking: Lost and Found on the River Thames. It was a real inspiration for me when I first started researching and exploring London. It opened my eyes to just how much London has to offer, as well as how its past can be engaged with in the present. 

What is mudlarking? 

A ‘Mudlark’ was historically the word used to describe those, often living in poverty, who scratched a living from the foreshore of the river, such as rope, coal and iron. These were often children, usually young boys, sent out by their parents. Mudlarks were, in Victorian London, considered amongst the lowest echelons of society.

Henry Mayhew, the social commentator of mid 19th century London, described mudlarks as ‘compelled from utter destitution to seek for the means of appeasing their hunger in the mud of the river‘.

Thankfully, in modern London, mudlarking is a hobby. Anyone can walk along the foreshore (be careful of the tides!) but you need a license from the Port of London Authority to mudlark and look for historic treasures. There are also other rules and regulations, for example, there are areas out of bounds for mudlarking, such as Queenhithe dock, which I have written about before here. There is more information about the rules here.

As this was a special event organised by Thames 21 we did not have to get licenses. We walked from the foreshore by the Tate Modern, underneath Blackfriars Bridge and finished by the Oxo Building. 

The Bountiful Thames

The conditions and history of the Thames make it probably the best place in the world for mudlarking. London has two thousand years of history and the Thames has been at the heart of it throughout. It was a major transport and trade route for centuries and the riverside would have once been lined with docks, wharves, factories, breweries, taverns and houses.

A vast amount of items have been lost or discarded into the river over the last two millenia and they sometimes emerge, from the mud, scoured by the tidal waters, for the first time in hundreds of years. 

The Thames has a relatively large tidal range and the foreshore is exposed twice a day, ready for mudlarks to see what the river has churned up. The Thames mud also creates anaerobic conditions and can preserve items for centuries. The foreshore essentially, twice a day, turns into the longest archaeological site in Britain.

We spent nearly two hours down on the foreshore, walking along and showing finds to Lara for her to identify. A fount of knowledge, she could nearly always say what it was, or at least give a very good educated guess.

Tobacco and Sugar

Each item, whether more unusual or more everyday, had an interesting tale to tell about London.

We found plenty of clay pipe stems, a common foreshore item.

Tobacco was brought over to England for the first time in 16th century and started to be smoked in pipes. 

It was very expensive at first, brought over from the New World, and so the size of the bowls were small. They were nicknamed ‘fairy pipes’. The bowls however grew over the 17th century and 18th centuries. 

In 1614, a pamphleteer claimed that there were 7000 tobacco houses in London where tobacco, pipes and accessories were sold. This would have made them more numerous than taverns. Many pipes, or pipe stems, then were just discarded and either thrown in, or found their way to, the river.

This was another item we found, a broken shard from a sugar mould.

This is another very good example of how a simple fragment can be a window into history. 

Sugar cane started to be grown in vast quantities in the New World on plantations worked by slaves. The sugar was brought back to London and refined in sugar houses in London. Raw syrupy sugar was poured into a mould and dripped through a small hole in the bottom, leaving behind a brown crystallised sugar.

Once the mould was full, the sugar loaf would be knocked out and dried in a stove room. The shards are thick, with white slip painted on the inside. 

One small item, just lying on the foreshore, opens up a story of London’s place at the heart of the British Empire.

Bones and Pins

There were also lots of animal bones, the discarded remains from stews, chops, joints and waste from bone working workshops and butchers.

Small handmade pins are also a very common find on the foreshore. I did not spot one, but some in the group did. They are naturally very small, so it takes a bit of ‘getting your eye in’.

These date from the 14th-18th centuries when pin making was mechanised. 

Pin-making was a huge industry because everyone needed them. Most people would be pinned into their clothes, baby’s pinned into their swaddling and corpses pinned into death shrouds. Hundreds for example could be used just in the complex gathering of Elizabethan neck ruffs. I am not sure how comfortable I would feel with hundreds of tiny pins right by my neck, but there we go.

Women would be given money to buy pins for the family, ‘pin money’, a phrase still sometimes used today to mean a small insignificant amount. 

The Mystery Item

I found this unusual item… 

Lara reckoned it was early plastic, bakelite for example. She discounted it being a cigarette holder because it is not hollow all the way through. 

Let me know in the comments below if you have any ideas!

I had a really lovely time mudlarking and would love to do it again at some point. It was a surprisingly relaxing experience, focussing your attention in on the foreshore. It was also just fascinating to get a glimpse into just how much history there is, hiding in plain sight by the river, in the heart of one of the busiest cities in the world.

You can find out more about Lara’s books here and Thames 21 events here.

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