Mudlark: In Search of London's Past Along the River Thames

by Lara Maiklem

it is often the tiniest of objects that tell the greatest stories.

At London Bridge, the tides rise by about three feet every hundred years, as the ice caps melt, London sinks and various other geographical and environmental conditions come into play.

When I was by the river, I was somewhere else, disconnected from the city and a world away from my problems.

When the pages of set type were destroyed after printing, each tiny piece had to be put back into a separate compartment in a type case. This is where the terms ‘upper case’ and ‘lower case’ come from: capital letters went in the top part of the case and small letters went beneath them in the lower part.

Then in 1928 there was a great flood. The Thames burst its banks at Hammersmith and the ashes of Cobden-Sanderson and his wife were taken away by the current to join his beloved font. He guards it from the river now.

They are all set in Doves – and the comma … the comma is mine.

‘After all, it’s not a discovery if you keep it to yourself.’ I nodded enthusiastically. My thoughts exactly.

England was supposed to be experiencing a warm phase at the time of the Romans, but anyone arriving from southern Europe would still have found our damp little island in the northern bounds of the Empire miserably cold, so those who could afford it built hypocaust systems into their homes to keep themselves warm.

Ggl what this looks like!

If we are afraid to give way to our imagination, the river’s treasures must inevitably remain dull and lifeless, for it is only in our minds that they can be transported from soulless museum cases back to their original settings. Ivor Noël Hume, Treasure in the Thames (1956)

He would have returned the money box to the room behind the theatre, known to all as the box office, and left as his master began to smash the pots and count his profits.

Is this why its called a box office?

The Mayflower pub is still one of the only places in the UK where American postage stamps are sold, a leftover from the days when it was licensed to sell British stamps to mariners for their letters home.

become a popular London pastime.

Thats fucked

Tilbury is a reminder of the permanence of the things we throw away today. It tells a story of overconsumption and wanton waste, and sends us a message for the future. We may ship our rubbish east and hide it in landfill sites. We might even build nature reserves on top of it. But much of it is never going away.