I’m often asked what my favourite types of pottery finds are. I have a bit of a thing for Staffordshire Combed Slipware, its yellow and striped colourways reminding me of the decoration on a Mr Kipling Bakewell Tart. (For my North American readers, this is a type of cake available in shops throughout the UK and nothing whatsoever to do with the more derogatory use of the word unfortunately used to describe women.) And anything with a potter’s thumb print visible on the piece will always come home with me, especially those found on Surrey/Hampshire (medieval) whiteware or post medieval redware. But I also have a fondness for modern sherds and anything floral is a keeper too, much to the despair of my ever patient family. ‘What? Another ten pieces of that cracked willow-themed stuff? How much of it do you need?’ I’m not sure everyone at home still fully understands my obsession, even after all these years of me searching the river.

When I first began mudlarking nine years ago, I fell more than a bit in love with sherds of blue on white bone china that I often spotted on the Thames Foreshore. Not to everyone’s taste but there was something attractive about the blue flowers (I later realised were asters) that embellished a particular type of crockery in such a blowsy, confident manner. It was some while before I identified the floral design on these sherds of cups, saucers, plates and other types of table ware as belonging to the famous Express Dairies.

It’s been a pleasure to research my Express Dairies Thames-found pottery sherds as this is a well documented company with a fabulous, extensive and detailed archive including photos, posters, newsletters, recipes for the stressed housewife, in-house magazine and story books for children.

I’ve borrowed a few bits and pieces from the archive for the purpose of writing this little blog but recommend you click on the link below and have a browse through it yourselves. It’s an absolute joy.

https://expressdairytales.uk/history-of-express-dairy

A few weeks ago I spotted a painting on social media. Thinking it was Victorian-era I was surprised to discover it had been painted in 1965 by Peter Colville Horridge Gardner. It’s called ‘Express Dairy’ and shows a horse and milk cart from the dairy on Dawes Road, Fulham. A real portal to a bygone age and I love it because it captures perfectly what this firm stood for.

Express Dairies are a former brand of Dairy Crest, a throwback to decades past when wholesome milk was delivered to your door by a cheery milkman and all was right with the world. They specialised almost entirely in home deliveries of milk and other dairy products.

The company was founded by George Barham in 1864 as the ‘Express County Milk Supply Company’, the name deriving from the days when fresh milk was brought overnight into London by rail – an express locomotive – thereby enabling a speedy and efficient delivery to customers, this reflected in many of the publicity posters produced by the firm.

They had two major creameries and bottling plants in London. The first was located near South Acton railway station on the North London Line, giving access to milk trains from Great Western Railways and Southern Railways. The second was at the company’s HQ in Cricklewood, adjacent to the station. This ensured good railway access for milk trains from London, the Midlands and Scottish Railways. All bases were covered.

And as we’re on the subject of overnight milk trains I have to sneak in a particular milk-related story from my time as a history undergraduate. I’d been to a student gig which ended in the wee late hours – if memory serves it was the doo-wop revivalist group ‘Darts.’ Rita Ray, Griff Fender and manic, wild-eyed, wild-haired Den Hegarty, famous for hit songs such as ‘Daddy Cool’ and ‘The Boy From New York City’ – give them a google if you’re too young to remember. My memory is hazy on the details but after the gig I headed to the station with a friend and we missed our last train home. Somehow we managed to get a lift on a milk train leaving in the early hours of the morning and it dropped us off at Strawberry Hill Depot, from where we were able to get safely back to our beds. I don’t recall if it was an Express Dairies milk train but it did the job and got us home in one piece. I can, however, still remember the bone-shaking rattle of the milk churns.

And who amongst us hasn’t cadged a lift on a late night milk train post gig in order to get home after an evening out? A story to tell the grandchildren one day…

Post war society was changing fast and Express Dairies faced difficult times keeping up with new demands from consumers. The advent of supermarkets created heavy competition and the customer was presented with much greater choice than ever before. To meet this challenge, Express Dairies developed and launched long-life milk thus ensuring its brand and name remained present in customers’ minds. The downside of the march of the supermarket inevitably meant that the desire for home delivered milk began to decline as the supermarkets offered cheaper dairy produce. But somehow the delivery of milk in the early hours survived and still continues. While researching this article late into last night, fuelled by cups of tea and biscuits, I could hear our local milkman purring down the road on his electric milk float, stopping here and there to leave milk on people’s doorsteps. It’s strangely comforting to know this tradition thrives to this day.

Express Dairies was eventually taken over by Dairy Crest in 2006, who sold its deliveries business to Creamline Dairies in July 2013 and its milk processing business to the German firm Müller in December 2015, thus bringing about the end of an era. If you have any personal memories of Express Dairies and milk deliveries please let me know.

As mentioned, I’ve found many sherds of Express Dairies pottery while mudlarking on the Thames Foreshore – fragments from milk pitchers, ceramic jars, cream pots, tea caddies, tea sets including cups and saucers – the stylised blue on white aster popping up brightly from the mud and gravel.

I’m grateful to fellow mudlark Tobias Nehmy Neto for allowing me to share his Express Dairies-related finds from the river. Tobias has found brass buttons featuring the Express Dairies logo, almost certainly from the uniform of a milkman from the company. As with most Thames finds we’ll never know exactly how these got into the river but they look beautiful and open another door to the past of this much-loved firm.

The buttons were made by Firmin & Sons of London. This famous firm has been proudly making buttons since 1655, one of the oldest manufacturing companies in the the UK and indeed the world. From modest and humble beginnings as button makers, the firm expanded rapidly to become designers and suppliers of uniforms, livery badges and buttons (complete uniforms too) serving numerous monarchs, and receiving the Royal Warrant. Now located in Birmingham, they continue to manufacture buttons, badges, uniforms for the military, swords, horse furniture, corporate clothing, livery, medallions and so much more in their factories.

Tobias has found many incredible items in his time mudlarking. I recommend his Instagram account for more details of his finds @tob2n and he has a YouTube channel that’s well worth subscribing to at https://www.youtube.com/user/Tob2n

I’m extremely proud to have been asked to become an ambassador for Thames 21, a charity that campaigns, educates and works with communities to protect rivers, canals, streams, ponds and lakes in London. The Thames itself is one of our great public spaces in the capital and faces enormous challenges in this time of climate emergency and biodiversity loss. Whilst permission is needed to mudlark and detect on the Thames Foreshore (currently permits have been suspended by the Port of London Authority – https://pla.co.uk/thames-foreshore-permits) much of the river is free for people to access and walk on at low tide, though there are some restricted places and obviously care must be taken.

Thames 21 are launching London Rivers Week, 22nd to 30th June, a week long annual campaign inspiring the public to celebrate all of London’s rivers and the many projects taking place to protect them. The aim is to actively connect communities with their local rivers, to care for and protect their blue and green spaces.

This year’s theme is ‘London is a river city’, focusing on health, well-being and culture. Culture and nature have always been intertwined – literature, music, history, archaeology, arts – and rivers and green spaces have provided great inspiration to people across the world.

There are many activities and opportunities for people to get involved – free walks, webinars, talks, river clean-ups. There’s something for everyone; individuals, families and children.

London Rivers Week raises awareness of the capital’s network of rivers, how they benefit us and how we can preserve them. Click on the link below to find out more and register for an activity or event.

Do join in if you can!

https://www.thames21.org.uk/events/category/london-rivers-week-2024/

#Londonriversweek2024 #lrw2024 #londonriversweek24

January has seen a welcome return to the Thames Foreshore after the over-indulgence of Christmas and the New Year. I like this time of year, after all, my ancestors came from both East and North East Europe so cold winters are in my DNA but, much as I love scarves, hats, fleecy gilets and warm woolly jumpers, I find myself starting to long for the return of longer, warmer, brighter days and increasingly shorter nights. Roll on Spring!

My first jaunt to the river in 2024 took place in South West London, my home patch of the capital. Winter aside, the last few months have seen truly miserable weather where it seemed as if it was never going to stop raining. Literally, weeks and weeks of heavy downpours have predictably resulted in very high water levels on the Thames, disappointing low tides and plenty of flooding of the Thames Path, particularly affecting the area covering Putney to Teddington Lock.

During this heavy rainy period, I took my mudlarking friend Tom down to the foreshore in South West London as he’d never been to the river in this neck of the woods and was keen to explore. Without giving away too many secrets (some of the regulars who come here won’t forgive me if I do), the foreshore in this location has a very different look and feel from the foreshore you’ll find in the Centre of London. It’s much more built up with tons of hard core covering potentially interesting find spots, and a longer foreshore where you can walk for some considerable distance wasting a lot of valuable searching time if you’re a newbie. It helps if you’re with someone who can point out where the artefact scatters are.

But there are intriguing finds to be made here and many interesting Thames archaeological features. You’ll find pre-historic peat, Iron Age posts, the remains of Anglo-Saxon fish traps, ancient causeways, rotting timbers, Georgian-era mooring posts, old wharves and broken sherds from the potteries that once churned out their wares up on the embankment. The South West London foreshore is home to many thousands of years of the capital’s history, still visible at low tide.

Tom and I arrived on the foreshore with an hour and a half to go before the turn of the tide and made our way slowly downstream, with me pointing out favourite spots and ancient features. I’d already noticed that the tide was far higher than I’d been expecting (moral of this story – check live tide timetables when the weather is dodgy, not just predicted ones) and there was a much stronger prevailing wind at river level than we experienced higher up on the embankment.

We pottered downstream towards an interesting part of the foreshore known for being a location for pottery sherd deposits; clay, stoneware and porcelain fragments tumbling about in the river for centuries before being dumped at low tide for us to search. So engrossed were we in potential finds – Tom found some intriguing metal, I was distracted by an old button – that I took my eye off the river.

I’ve never done this before and Lord knows why I did this time. Mudlarking is engrossing, addictive and it’s easy to lose all sense of time and place. When you’ve spotted something interesting, the temptation to search a bit further, for a bit longer, is extremely strong. ‘We’ve still got plenty of time’ you tell yourself. If only. You’ve probably guessed what happened next… (cue Hammer Horror music.) I looked up from our spot on the foreshore where we were both crouched, chatting away, when I realised to my horror that the tide was coming in fast. It would soon be lapping round our feet, and not that gently either. The wind had picked up and was making itself felt.

As luck, or bad luck would have it, we were midway between two exit points - one further downstream near a well known sports club, next to which is a handy slipway, and one upstream which, although a wee bit nearer, suddenly seemed five miles away. The closest exit was actually a ladder attached to the embankment wall close by but it was rusting, with missing rungs, and decidedly dodgy. No thanks.

There’s something about being in a dangerous situation that seems to numb the brain and make time stand still. I felt guilty that I’d let Tom down by being the (ho ho ho) expert on this part of the river and yet, when it was most crucial, I’d taken my eye off the ball and put us both at risk.

It can be hard to keep calm when the river’s coming in quickly towards you, swirling around you, underneath you, trapping you in its watery embrace. Stupidly I hadn’t brought my usual wellies with me that day but was wearing ordinary walking boots. Fine if you’re hill walking, but of no use when the water’s coming up to your knees fast and the lower half of you is becoming waterlogged.

After nine years of mudlarking I’d forgotten a few cardinal rules – never ignore the pinch points on the foreshore and, on days when the low tide is much higher than expected, the tide will rush in more quickly than you think.

I won’t lie, I panicked.

We made our way as quickly as we could to the main river steps upstream before encountering a savage pinch point which we had no choice but to wade through, the water up to our knee caps now and rising fast. ‘How deep can it be?’ I tried to reason with myself. Well, quite deep and getting deeper. Oh and why am I feeling strong currents gripping my feet? Where have they come from? Who knows. Just keep moving and remember to stay calm and breathe. In for four, out for four. Repeat.

And the mud, oh the mud. Thames mud is gloriously protective when it comes to ancient artefacts, its anaerobic quailities stabilising finds and making them look as fresh as the day they were lost, but if you find yourself stuck in it trying to escape a rising tide it quickly becomes your enemy. Feet sinking fast into it, the mud is like stepping into glue. It impedes your exit and sucks you into its gloopy embrace. At one stage, one of my boots stuck fast and I thought I’d end up bootless. As if that was the only thing to worry about.

Tom stayed calm (more than could be said for yours truly) and somehow we eventually slopped and sloshed our way onto a drier area of foreshore before, thank goodness, the river steps came into sight. We were now home and free, though it took a while for the shakes to leave me. I was mightily relieved I hadn’t been on my own and, when we debriefed afterwards, realised that both the RNLI and Port of London Authority had rescue boats berthed not too far away. We were probably very close to making that call-out but thankfully we didn’t have to. In the words of W. Shakespeare, ‘all’s well that ends well.’

Lesson learnt.

A few weeks after this drama, I made myself return to the scene of the ‘disaster-that-nearly-was’ because I genuinely feared I might have lost my nerve. But the day was clear, river levels were normal and there were quite a few other mudlarks pottering about. I felt safe. Keeping careful watch on the time and the tide this time, I didn’t find very much, but didn’t care. I kept my nerve and gradually began to relax again.

I also made a return visit to the Chelsea Foreshore in January, a favourite spot of mine not often visited by mudlarks. The foreshore here is becoming increasingly narrow and less accessible due to rising sea levels, a side effect of climate change. An extremely good low tide had been predicted that day, the weather was glorious (see the Mediterranean blue skies in the photo above) and it was time to catch up with some of the Chelsea Houseboat community I’ve got to know over the years.

The Chelsea Foreshore, north side of Battersea Bridge, is glorious for so many reasons. Once the location of a Saxon Manor House, also later the home of Sir Thomas More, Henry VIII’s Lord High Chancellor and friend, until the King ordered his execution because Thomas refused to acknowledge him as Head of the Church in England. With friends like Henry VIII, who needs enemies? Thomas More’s eldest daughter Margaret (More) Roper embarked on a dangerous journey by boat from Chelsea to London Bridge in order to retrieve her father’s head, impaled on a spike after his execution, thus saving it from a watery grave. One of the most learned women in 16th century England, I’m a huge admirer of her intelligence and bravery.

And not forgetting that in the 19th century Chelsea was where William de Morgan had a ceramics factory, the perfect forerunner of the area’s later creative, arty, Bohemian reputation before the cost of real estate drove most artists elsewhere.

But I digress. I’d specifically come down to Chelsea to check on the Chelsea fish trap here. Carbon dated to AD 730-900, this is a beautiful thing and one of the few remaining Saxon fish traps on the Thames. Most people passing by on the embankment above barely give it a second glance. I was therefore gutted to arrive and find that even as the waters receded a bit you still couldn’t see a thing, so high was the water level. Chatting to one of the houseboat owners later, I was told the tide levels have been overwhelming in recent months and therefore the fish trap hasn’t actually been seen for quite some time. Eventually it will be claimed by the river, but I hope that doesn’t happen for many years yet.

Below is one of my photos of the V-shaped fish trap taken in 2018. I hope it becomes visible again soon.

But it hasn’t all been doom and gloom and impossibly high low tides. My first visit to the City of London foreshore this year was an excellent one where I made a dream find, something on my bucket list for a very long time.

Many mudlarks dream of finding a paw print of some description, usually embedded in an ancient floor or roof tile. Usually these tend to feature a dog or a cat and it was thrilling when one of these was thrown at my feet by wash from a passing Thames Clipper. The tiniest hint of a claw visible in my paw print find indicates a dog was responsible (NB: cats retract their claws when they walk whereas dogs don’t), and a fellow mudlark recently found a tile with a goat’s hoof print. Equally there have been some very big cat paw prints found on mudlarked tiles. I’ve had conversations with larkers about the possible provenance of these and we speculated that they might even belong to a puma or lynx.

This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds if you consider that the biggest amphitheatre in Roman London was located at the site of the current Guildhall Art Gallery (Guildhall Yard, Aldermanbury, in the City of London). This was once the site of plays, executions, gladiatorial and animal combat and other gory spectacles. There would have been many animal escapes into the city so it’s therefore quite possible that a wretched Roman roof tile maker, having layed out his tiles to dry in the open air, returned to find a massive wild cat paw print embedded deep into his work.

Last, but not least, I’m excited to let everyone know that the first of this year’s mudlarking exhibitions will soon be taking place at the stunning Watermen’s Hall, the historic home of the Thames Watermen and Lightermen, on Saturday 24th February and Sunday 25th February, from 10am -4pm. The venue is located at 16-18 St Mary-At-Hill, near the Tower of London, and entry is free.

On each of the two days, fifteen mudlarks will be displaying their personal collections and I’ll be exhibiting some of my favourite mudlarking finds on the Saturday, so do please come. For further information on this and other mudlarking exhibitions to be announced later in the year, follow @handsonhistorymudlarks plus event organisers @jasonmudlark aka Jason Sandy, @mudika.thames aka Monika Buttling-Smith and @oldfatherthames aka Marie-Louise Plum, on Instagram.

Earlier in the year I was invited to spend the morning at The Thames River Police Museum in Wapping and was shown round by the very knowledgeable and welcoming curator, Rob Jeffries. I’ve always been fascinated by Wapping, its history, particularly in relation to the growth of the docks and warehouses, recent redevelopment and how this has impacted on the area. So I eagerly accepted Rob’s invitation to visit, and took the other half with me as well who had never been to Wapping. It made for a great day out for the two of us even though the weather was cold, windy and the clouds in the sky a dark steel grey. And, yes, a pub lunch was involved too.

I first started to visit the Wapping foreshore in 2017. I’d been mudlarking in both South West London and the City of London areas before then, but had never taken myself out further east (downstream) and realised it was time to do so. It’s always been important to me to broaden my knowledge of different mudlarking areas and what they might reveal archaeologically and historically re mudlarking artefacts.

Regarding the history of Wapping itself, I can only touch the surface in this blog as there is so much to write. It’s a fascinating area with a deep, rich, and sometimes violent history, as was much of London in centuries past. Now it’s a diverse and modern district with cafes, galleries and restaurants, though sometimes it worries me that the atmosphere can be a little bit bleak and empty when leaving the station, walking down the high street, and not seeing many people about, certainly during the week.

Wapping was first mentioned in the 13th century when it was little more than a tiny settlement on the river Thames. The first wharf was constructed in 1395 and the area began to grow quickly, becoming known as Wapping-on-the-Woze and eventually becoming an important port and maritime hub.

The area particularly flourished in the 19th century when the London Docks were built to the north and west of the high street. As docks and huge warehouses were constructed, the local population suffered as many of their houses were demolished to make way for the vast new builds. Squeezed between the very high walls of the docks and warehouses, Wapping could feel quite isolated at times, though the community welcomed the opening of Wapping Station in 1869 which helped them access other parts of the capital.

Wapping has always nurtured a diverse community with people from all round the world coming to live there over the centuries. In the 15th century, a community of seamen from the Low Countries (Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg) began to arrive there and settle, followed in later years by a sizeable Irish population in the 16th century, while in 1702 a French speaking church was built and established at Milk Alley, many French speakers coming from Jersey and Guernsey to look for work. In the 18th century, Wapping also saw a sizeable increase in seamen of colour being baptised in the area and choosing to make their lives there. Many of these seamen may well have been originally enslaved, then given their freedom on becoming sailors, marrying and making a new life for themselves in Wapping. This is a particularly interesting area for research, and one I may come back to in the fullness of time, as it shows how 18th century British history constantly intersects with the slave trade on so many different levels.

German bombing during the second world war devastated the Wapping area as docks, warehouses, plus homes were destroyed and many lives lost. The area remained scarred and derelict for decades after, until the 1980s in fact, when the formation of the London Development Docklands Corporation, a government quango set up to redevelop the area when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, brought many changes to Wapping. Not everyone welcomed the new redevelopment; residents who’d lived in the area for generations, as so often happens, felt priced out of the new luxury apartments and houses and voiced anxiety that the community would start to change around them as wealthy people moved in and older established families could no longer afford to live there. It’s difficult not to have sympathy with these views.

For all the sometimes empty atmosphere of some of the Wapping area, enough character remains from the old warehouses and foreshore to give visitors a sense of what it would have looked and felt like in centuries past. Sailors would be constantly arriving in boats and barges, bringing with them goods from all round the world, to enjoy some drunken time in the taverns, inns and brothels that lined the Thames Foreshore here. If you close your eyes, you can almost smell the scent of tea, coffee, spices, even gunpowder as it was brought in from ships lining the local docks.

There is so much more one can write about Wapping, but I must return to my visit to the Thames River Police Museum before I get carried away. (NB: for those who haven’t been here, but would like to visit, the museum is not open to the public. Visits are by appointment only and you will need to contact Robert Jeffries, the curator and retired ex-policeman, to arrange your trip.)

Housed in an old carpenter’s workshop, above and around it is Wapping Police Station, HQ of the Thames River Police, known as the Marine Policing Unit (MPU.)

In 1798, a newly formed body of police officers, a move initiated by Magistrate Patrick Colquhoun and Master Mariner John Harriott, brought much needed law and order to the Thames, riven as it was by all sorts of criminality that was spiralling out of control. Pressured and initially funded by the West India Company, who were losing huge sums of money because of the theft of goods from their boats and barges.

In those early days, the newly formed river police were largely taken from the Navy. Press-ganged sailors returning to London needed work and they possessed the three main requirements to police the river – they were handy with a firearm, sword and could row a boat.

Eventually absorbed into London’s Metropolitan Police in 1839, becoming Thames Division, today the Thames and all of London’s waterways are policed by the Marine Policing Unit (MPU) of the Metropolitan Police Service. Their role now is to save lives when people are in difficulty on the water, catch river criminals and work with Counter-Terrorism Units.

During the visit to the museum I learnt the names of master criminal gangs from the 17th and 18th centuries, prolific offenders, highly organised and who instilled terror in anyone who dared cross or challenge them.

Chief among these gangs were the highly feared Nighthorsemen, a sort of River Thames Mafia, who targeted goods on West India Company Ships, a lucrative and rewarding bit of thieving which the authorities wanted stopped as their losses were so great. The thieving focused on specific items that could be easily disposed of, eg sugar.

Also among the 17th century/18th century criminal gangs were the Lighthorsemen, Lumpers and Shufflehunters, who tended to focus on the theft of smaller items. I was intrigued by these names as I’d never heard of them and have resolved to find out more when time allows.

The museum also holds poignant original diaries detailing the work and many of the cases that involved the river police. I was very moved to read about the compassion shown over the retrieval of a newborn baby from the Thames (something that was sadly not uncommon in centuries past if the baby was stillborn or unwanted), and was then carefully taken to a mortuary for identification.

I also want to pay tribute to Ann Hunt, whose name I had never heard of until my visit to the Thames Police Museum, but who was the first serving female officer in the river police. Part of her uniform, including her hat (see photo below), is on display in the museum.

Ann’s training would have started with two years in the Met Police on land, before undertaking an intensive interview and selection process to join Thames Division.

It was fascinating to absorb so much from this small museum, sometimes larger museums can be overwhelming, but we left having learnt so many new things about London’s history regarding the river and thankful for the hugely important work the River Police do. Whenever I see one of their launches speeding along the Thames on their way to an incident I’m always full of gratitude for the work they and other professionals do (also the RNLI) to keep us safe on the river.

Of course doing touristy things leaves one hungry so we decamped to one of the many excellent Wapping pubs in the vicinity of the museum, choosing The Captain Kidd, 108 Wapping High Street for a scampi, chips and beer lunch. Highly recommended.

Last, but not least, I’d like to take the opportunity of thanking everyone who reads, messages me with their kind comments, or subscribes to my Thames Blogs and Burblings, and to wish you all a Merry Christmas and peaceful and happy New Year. I’ll be posting my next blog in the new year so this is the last one of 2023.

And if you’re looking for mudlarking or mudlarking-related books for yourself or as a gift for someone else this Christmas, then I heartily recommend the following excellent reads:

‘London In Fragments’ by Ted Sandling. The first modern mudlarking book I read and so beautifully written and illustrated. A really inspirational book.

‘London Clay: Journeys In The Deep City’ by Tom Chivers. This book is not about mudlarking as such, but rather full of stories that are a great mix of London’s geology, history, folklore and memoir. I learnt so much from Tom’s book.

‘Mudlark’d: Hidden Histories From The River Thames’ by Malcolm Russell. This book features the stories of forgotten people told through lost objects, revealed by changing tides. A welcome addition to books on mudlarking, Malcolm also reveals many previously unknown aspects of London’s history.

‘Mudlarks: Treasures From The Thames’ by Jason Sandy. A beautifully put together book featuring the stories of individual mudlarks and some of the incredible finds they’ve made over their years on the Thames Foreshore. One of the most stunningly illustrated books on mudlarking I’ve seen so far.

‘Mudlarking: Lost And Found On the River Thames’ by Lara Maiklem. A beautifully written book detailing how it feels to be a mudlark and our emotional connections to the river. Lara writes about what made her start mudlarking and the enjoyment and peace of mind she gets from being on the Thames Foreshore.

‘A Field Guide To Mudlarking’ by Lara Maiklem. A practical, useful and helpful guide to mudlarking, beachcombing, field walking etc and how to recognise finds.

‘The River’s Tale’ by Nathalie Cohen and Eliott Wragg. A really useful book focusing on the archaeology of the Thames Foreshore rather than finds, and what we learn about the river’s use in centuries past from the historic features found on the foreshore at low tide. This book adds a different dimension of knowledge for lovers of the River Thames and its archaeological past.

And on that note, leaving you with some of my Thames-found pins decorated in arty Christmas tree fashion. Have a good one!

September has come round again in the blink of an eye.

It’s been a busy summer, a family wedding in Provence (which was quite magical) but I haven’t had as much time to spend on the foreshore as I’d like. As I type, the weather isn’t exactly autumnal in London either. I’m currently melting as a result of an unexpected heatwave that has broken UK records for this time of year, and actually drove me off the foreshore at the beginning of the week as it was far too hot to be out mudlarking at midday, in 30 degrees plus. I’ll be happier when we’re back to what are more normal temperatures for this time of year, thank you very much.

September also means a return of the annual Totally Thames Festival with its unique, diverse, accessible and comprehensive programme of arts, cultural and historical events celebrating the River Thames in London. This features a number of mudlarking exhibitions, including this coming weekend’s event (Saturday 16th September and Sunday 17th September) in the atmospheric environment of the magnificent St Paul’s Cathedral.

I’m particularly excited about the St Paul’s event because it will also feature the work of sculptor Billie Bond (on Instagram as @billiebondsculptor) who will be exhibiting her ‘Foreshore Foundlings’, inspired by some spectacular mudlarking finds that remind us of the inevitability of life and our connection to past lives on the River Thames. One of the most striking of Billie’s exhibits (reproduced in black stoneware and gold leaf, and in my top three favourite mudlarking finds ever) is based on a small hand-carved medieval bone bead, known as a Memento Mori, spotted by fellow mudlark Caroline Nunneley (@carolinenunneleymudlark on Instagram)

Billie will also be giving a talk at the National Maritime Museum on Saturday 23rd September. You can follow @handsonhistory on Instagram for more information on the September mudlarking exhibitions and click on the link for further details regarding the Totally Thames calendar of events for this year’s celebration of the river https://thamesfestivaltrust.org/whats-on/

Late August was a good one for Roman finds from the river. Nothing va-va-voom spectacular, wonderful though that would be (and I’m still searching fruitlessly for a Roman bone gaming counter as they continue to elude me…) but instead fragments of things that to the untrained eye might not look that interesting.

This small but perfectly formed sherd is known as colour-coated ware, lost to the river in the days when Britain was a province of the Roman Empire, Londinium its capital. A place of status, a port, strategically important and protected by a 3 km city wall.

This pottery was made in the Nene Valley, modern day Peterborough area, and introduced by migrant potters from the Lower Rhineland in the mid 2nd century, later made in potteries in Colchester too.

I recently read an academic paper which told me that Nene Valley ware replaced the orange terracotta Samian ware as the preferred table vessels in high status Roman homes as fashions began to change. Nene Valley colour-coated ware has also been found in non Roman aristocratic homes showing how the upper classes eventually and willingly adopted Roman trends.

As this was high status pottery, its breakage would have caused great annoyance. And always those many questions that whirl around in a mudlark’s brain; how did this sherd get in the river? who broke it? who last held it in their hands? what sort of Roman curses did they scream on realising the piece was smashed to smithereens?

Nene Valley pottery was considered the height of sophistication, the pieces characterised by a pale base fabric with strongly contrasting darker surface colour (known as slip) and creamy decoration showing hunting scenes, grapes, vines, olive leaves and other types of floral design.

My found sherd of Nene Valley pottery also includes a nice bit of rouletting at the base of the decoration, characteristically seen both at the bottom and top of this kind of colour-coated ware.

This is why I love the Thames. Some days it gives you a nice little haul, some days nothing at all, and many in-between days where all you find is a small sherd of pottery but one with a rich history to tell, ancient voices, long gone, reaching out to us across the millennia.

If you want to read more about Nene Valley pottery I recommend the following introduction –

Nene Valley Archaeological Trust – https://www.nenevalleyarchaeology.co.uk/

If the Romans are your thing, I also heartily recommend a trip to the Roman City Wall at Vine Street, in the City of London, where you’ll find a surviving section of Roman Wall that once surrounded Londinium nearly 2,000 years ago.

The Roman Wall served as a protective boundary and also a status symbol, proclaiming the wealth and importance of this Roman City. When the Romans left in AD 410 the wall fell into disrepair, only rebuilt during the medieval era when it marked the limits of the medieval city of London.

As centuries came and went, London grew and the area around the wall underwent significant change – new buildings, shops, businesses, houses, taverns and wharehouses swallowed up what was once the Roman wall.

In 1905 the inner face of the wall was exposed and preserved in the basement of Roman Wall House. In 1979, the outer face was uncovered, together with a previously unknown bastion (defensive fortification.)

There are many objects on display, not all of them from the Roman period, belonging to people who lived and worked here over the centuries as London grew and evolved into the city we know today – these long lost items were found in rubbish dumps, defensive ditches, cesspits, workshops, houses, a warehouse and underneath an office block.

Do pop in and visit if you can. It’s free to enter though you need to book a time slot. The exhibition is at:

The City Wall at Vine Street, entrance at 12, Jewry Street, London EC3N 2HT. Opening times are 9am- 6pm, Sunday to Monday. Nearest stations are Aldgate or Aldgate East.

I haven’t been able to mudlark for the last couple of months – a combination of family wedding preparation and recovering from surgery has kept me away. So it was a real joy to return the the Thames Foreshore this week and get stuck in the mud again (though not literally…. thank goodness.) The sun shone and the weather’s been perfect, particularly in the early mornings, though getting hotter as the day kicks in.

I visited a few favourite river spots this week and, although I didn’t make that many finds (to be honest, you often don’t find that much on one visit, however fruitful some mudlarking accounts may look on Instagram) – I did come away with one or two nice things and was more than happy with that.

My star find on Monday morning’s trip to the foreshore was this fabulous clay pipe bowl. With partial stem (it’s not often one finds a complete, undamaged clay pipe these days though it does happen if you’re lucky) and bowl showing the crest of the Prince of Wales – ostrich feathers with the motto ‘Ich Dien’, or ‘I serve.’

It’s thought the crest was adopted after the Battle of Crécy in 1346 when the Black Prince (Edward, eldest son of Edward III) killed the King of Bohemia and assumed his crest design and motto.

The actual title of Prince of Wales was thought to have originated when Edward I of England subjugated Wales in 1276. His eldest son, Edward II, born in Carnarvon in 1284, was created the very first Prince of Wales in 1301, the title being passed on to each subsequent eldest son. The title continues to this day, a gift of the monarch, the current incumbent being Prince William, eldest son of newly crowned King Charles III. Recent polls suggest that the average Welsh citizen, if not strongly opposed to being linked to this archaic and largely symbolic title is, at best, increasingly indifferent to it.

A large number of Prince of Wales armorial pipe bowls found in London date from the second half of the 18th century, though some later ones are from the 19th century. The second half of the 18th century was, however, the period when the most elaborate of these pipes were produced in many different designs, each variation indicating who the pipe maker was.

The pipes were made predominantly to display loyalty to whoever was the Prince of Wales at the time but the ostrich feather motif was also linked to a large number of taverns. Bryant Lillywhite in his book ‘London Signs’ records over fifty ‘Prince of Wales’ taverns between 1606 -1851, as well as at least eighty five called ‘The Feathers.’ This design would therefore have featured on numerous tavern pipes.

And although commonly used as a tavern sign, the ostrich feather motif was also used by a variety of tradesemen, particularly booksellers, and sometimes appear in 17th – 19th century tokens.

My own clay pipe find is similar to the illustration in Fig 33, and other examples of this style of armorial Prince of Wales design on a pipe bowl have been found at Battersea, Chiswick and Lambeth, where we know pipe makers were in business making these clay pipes.

Researching this clay pipe design I fell down a rabbit hole of alternative pipe research new to me, and which led me into some fascinating yet dark areas of history. Who knew clay pipes were once such rigid indicators of social class and even criminality?

I am particularly grateful to Sarah Inskip and Angela Joy Muir for research they’ve done into past criminal records showing how clay pipes, particularly the stem, were both frequently used as a lethal weapon and also as a barometer of morality, especially where women were concerned.

By the 18th century, public smoking and tobacco use were considered a distinctly unfeminine habit, restricted mostly, though not entirely, to women from the labouring classes. Depictions of female pipe smoking were frequently associated with rough manners, loose morals and sex work.

Thomas Rowlandson’s satirical print (see image above) depicts several Billingsgate fishwives carrying baskets on their heads while smoking clay pipes. The term ‘fishwife’ of itself has lingering (and, to my mind, unfair) connotations of coarse, filthy, gossiping, screeching women, whereas the reality was that the lives of these women were hard and unforgiving as they heaved and carried and sold fish in order to eke out a living. Higher status women in Rowlandson’s other prints were, of course, never featured with clay pipes. In one of his other prints – ‘St Giles Courtship’ – a pipe-smoking soldier is shown flirting with a young working class woman whose breasts are exposed and who is wearing a hat with a clay pipe tucked into the band. The message was clear though hypocritical to our modern eyes – ie that clay pipe smoking was not a ladylike thing to be seen doing.

Bewteen 1615-1904, sixty six different instances were found in court records showing clay pipes being involved in threats to life. Many of the cases are from London (thanks to the availability of Old Bailey records, an invaluable source of historical criminal information) and the frequency with which London cases were reported nationally, though documents and newspaper reports show that similar cases were widespread throughout Britain.

These cases involved the use of a clay pipe as a weapon of assault, some of which resulted in death, as well as assaults, wounding or cutting of the victim including eye gouging.

There were many scenarios where a violent attack involving a clay pipe -turned-weapon escalated from what had started as a minor dispute. Records show that in 1882 David Bratley was stabbed in the face with a clay pipe stem by Edward Seamey at a coffee stall, while Daniel Mynch was charged with stabbing James Barry in the eye in the street after he refused to give him some tobacco in 1878.

Many other court cases involve clay pipe attacks where people were socialising together and had drunk too much, also attacks where people were in close proximity eg in prison, or within a strained domestic setting, eg family, where records show a husband violently assaulting his wife, lodger or even landlord.

Old Bailey records show that clay pipe assailants were predominantly men (of sixty three cases where the gender of the perpetrator was known, fifty nine involved a male assailant) though women feature as aggressors too, although they were more likely to use a clay pipe as a weapon for reasons of self-defence or to attack another woman.

In 1858 at the Cherry Tree public house in East London, Margaret Shea was charged with using a pipe to ‘unlawfully wound and cut the face’ of Ellen McCue, a costermonger ( a fruit and vegetable seller) after a dispute broke out in the street between the two women’s sisters. In Cardiff in 1864, Ann Cummings ‘a gaudily attired female’ was charged with stabbing a sailor by the name of James Slack in the face with a pipe stem, puncturing his cheek and narrowly missing his eye. In Ann’s defence she stated that James and another man approached her and another woman and ‘attempted unwelcome familiarities’ with them. Although not explicitly stated, there are conflicting acounts of what happened and the suggestion is that Ann may have been a sex worker soliciting on the street, her case and that of other women showing details of the lives of sex workers in 19th century Britain and the risk of ever present violence that shadowed them. In these instances, the clay pipe became a weapon in women’s hands just as it did in men’s.

It was good to be back on the Thames Foreshore again and I’ll be treating my clay pipe finds with a new found caution.

Sources:

‘The Archaeology Of The Clay Tobacco Pipe’ edited by Peter Davey

Bryant Lillywhite ‘London Signs’ (pub 1972)

‘Clay Pipes bearing the Prince of Wales Feathers’ by Richard Le Cheminant

‘Material encounters: the alternative use of clay tobacco pipes in England and Wales, c.1600 -1900’ by Sarah Inskip and Angela Joy Muir

http://www.pipearchive.co.uk

March is Women’s History Month so I’ve been spending time immersed in researching a spectacular recent Thames find, long since at the top of my ‘mudlarking finds’ wish list, that fits the bill perfectly regarding exploration of the lives of women in the past and their links to living and working on the Thames.

The challenge of in-depth research is both exciting but also daunting if you want to do your subject the justice it deserves, and I’m only at the very start of this journey.

No research is ever done in isolation and I’m grateful to Professor Tracey Hill, who has kindly signposted me in the direction of the Guild of Pinmakers or Pinners, a Guild no longer in existence and one I didn’t know existed. Tracey has also told me how she’s found pins used to mark a particular page in historical manuscripts. This was apparently a fairly common practice, though archivists and conservators tend now to remove them from documents in the interests of preservation and avoid staining and tearing of fragile documents.

Every find starts with a trip to the foreshore and it wasn’t the greatest of low tides the day I found my Pinner’s bone. I pretty much had the foreshore to myself, which was an unexpected bonus and doesn’t happen very often.

What seemed to me to be a fairly common bovine bone, I initially thought a femur though my knowledge of animal bone names isn’t my greatest strength, caught my eye when I noticed some deep grooves and clear chiselling at its base as I picked it up to take a closer look.

I’d found a Pinner’s bone.

Pinner’s Bones or Pinholders were usually made from the lower leg of a cow or horse, ie the metapodia or cannon bones. They were sawn in half with grooves, such as in the trio of photos below shown from different angles, where the pin wire was placed ready for filing.

London Archaeological excavations have found many Pinners’ bones at the site of religious orders, particularly, though not exclusively, nuns, suggesting this was a popular way for an Order to generate additional income. Before buttons became widely used, rich and poor were literally pinned into their clothing with a variety of different types and lengths of pins, which is why mudlarks find so many of these, fallen off clothing or washed into the river via drains.

Pinners’ tools, such as my find, were used by the maker to help sharpen the pin, beginning life as drawn wire (brass/copper alloy.) This was placed in the groove at the end of the bone, at an angle, and rotated to fashion a pin point. The pin head, which could be a solid head or wound wire-head, was soldered by hand afterwards.

The 14th century saw a huge expansion in the Pinners’ craft, the pin makers’ process becoming more refined and elegant. Finer ones were used to pin delicate materials such as silk, linen headdresses or transparent veils, and sometimes shown in Medieval art.

Queen Elizabeth I’s household accounts show her pin maker, Robert Careles, supplying her with hundreds of thousands of pins every six months, from ‘small helde Pynnes’ to ‘great verthyngale Pynnes.’ They were looked after and stored carefully on pin cushions when not in use. Pins were never left in precious fabric as this might tear or stain the garment due to oxidisation. It took at least two hours to pin the Queen into her clothing every day, and a similar length of time to unpin her afterwards. Pity her ladies maids who had to do this without actually touching the Royal body.

Yet the primary purpose of this blog and current research isn’t so much to discuss pins and their use in depth, but rather to begin the process of drilling down to a different layer of the pin making trade. This is a huge work in progress, and I’ve barely scratched the surface, the scale of this project making me realise just how much work will be involved in order to bring to life the stories of women who worked in this business.

I’m grateful for the fact that while the south side of the river (Southwark/Bankside) was largely a stinking, chaotic, unregulated mess during the medieval and later periods, the north side was subject to strict and careful regulation by the Guilds within the City of London.

The British Library has The Pinners’ Book, showing early accounts from 1462-1464. This is evidence of the Pinners organising themselves into a craft of recognised standing, and in 1463 they showed their growing influence when they petitioned Edward IV for protection from increasing foreign imports.

A preliminary search through documentation shows that women (often completely absent from medieval records unless they paid poll tax or committed crimes) begin to be named from the early 14th century onwards as members of the Pinners’ Craft, but only if they were the wives or daughters of a deceased pin maker. It seems this practice was also in existence in France where the Parisian aglet-making Guild protected widows by allowing them to continue with the business run by their late husbands.

Margaret Hall is listed as having paid 10 shillings, a lot of money for that time, to become a member of the Pinners’ Craft in 1477. Other widows are named as paying 3s 4d to keep up a Pinners’ workshop after the death of their husbands. Among their number were Margaret Exnyng, Margaret Golde, Margaret Crawford and Katherine Smyth, who were all admitted to the Pinners’ fraternity in 1498, though accused of being ‘forins’, ie trained outside the City of London.

The London Metropolitan Archives has further documents that first mention a Guild of Pinmakers or Pinners as early as 1376, thought not their detailed accounts, which began to be kept much later. From the late 15th century onwards they had also become associated with the guild of wire-workers, and later in 1567/8 with the Girdlers’ Company.

But by 1605, the Pinmakers’ Company received their own charter of incorporation. Seven years earlier, in 1598, the Company left the Hall in Addle Street, west of Mansion House and bordering Addle Hill, just off Carter Lane, west of St Paul’s Cathedral.

The Pinmakers’ Company had rented the Addle Street Hall from the Plaisterers’ Company, after which they decamped to a site in St Mary At Hill, and eventually to St Katherine Cree, which they abandoned in 1723.

The most detailed records of the Worshipful Company of Pinmakers are from the 17th to 19th centuries, the latter date surprising as it shows that full scale industrialistion hadn’t fully put paid to the hand-made pinning business although by this time pins were being mass-produced in factories.

The next stage of my research is to look in more detail at the wills of women actively involved in the pinning trade, and see what new light this might shed on their status and role in business during the late Medieval period.