Mudlarking: Lost and Found on the River Thames

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The Thames is especially rich in small portable finds; it’s not only their quantity but their quality that makes Thames finds so important. Her finds also get recorded in a nationwide Portable Antiquities Scheme database with 1 million+ items: in this way, mudlarks are contributing to citizen science.

I haven't ever seen a book such as this before and that makes this all the more of a unique experience. When the tide is out, you may see people scurrying down hidden stairs, ladders and slipways to trudge along the foreshore. So apparently I was just given and chapter sample to review, so there really isn't much to say about it.Maiklem likes to kneel down with her nose inches from the foreshore: “I breathe in the muddy aroma of silt and algae and listen to the sound of water drying on the stones: a barely discernible fizz-pop as it evaporates and the lacquered shine turns to a powdering of fine grey silt. As comprehensive as it may be, the history is never dry, and spans so much further than just that of Britain. book that's almost equal parts a love letter to London's history and its relationship to the Thames as much as it is about Maiklem's experiences of mudlarking and the array of objects she's found over the years.

If you have ever read Rachel Lichtenstein's Estuary or like the work of Iain Sinclair then I'm sure you will love this book as much as I did. Thames mud is anaerobic – that means there's no oxygen – so things that fall in thousands of years ago just wash up in the same condition that they were dropped in many years ago. The sheer amount of British history she unearths, one small speck at a time, from old father Thames will get you googling every found object in exquisite wonder. Hosted in Southwark Cathedral in celebration of London mudlark Lara Maiklem’s recent book, A Field Guide to Larking: Beachcombing, Mudlarking, Fieldwalking and More (2021), the event displays a number of found treasures. A Richard III boar badge likely worn to the king’s coronation by an attendee – also discovered by Jason in the Thames – is now used to teach schoolchildren about artefacts at the King Richard III Visitor Centre in Leicester.Non-profit organisation Thames Explorer Trust, based in Chiswick, likewise offers private foreshore tours, which you won’t need a permit to join.

It’s worth knowing that, per the Treasure Act 1996, all finders of gold and silver objects, or groups of coins from the same finds, over 300 years old, have a legal obligation to report them. Using old maps as guides to London’s former boatyards, quaysides, bridges, causeways, jetties and great houses – all those places where the rubbish was once dumped – she scours the foreshore of the Thames looking for links to another life: Roman brooches, clay pipes, Victorian shoe buckles, Mesolithic flints. Permit holders are warned of the hazards of going down to the river bank, and advised to go in groups.It is a profession or hobby or ambition not to be taken lightly as I was on the edge of my seat a few times hoping our friend didn't get sucked into the mud or swept away by the unforgiving Thames. It turns out that Ms Maiklem is a very modern mudlark, but that didn't make the book any less fascinating - moving from the tidal head of the Thames to the Estuary, she describes what she finds on the foreshore and tells fascinating stories about the people who lived, worked and died on the river, and whose lost possessions the tides still erode out of the mud. According to Jason, potential finds range from Celtic times up to modern day, and “everything in between” – as well as fossils that are millions of years old.