Lara MAIKLEM
As Britain marks an archaeological milestone, reveals the pleasure of ‘mudlarking’
This week was a big one in the world of we hunters and scavengers. The British Museum’s Portable Antiquities Scheme recorded its 1.5millionth archaeological object – a 700-year-old pope’s seal found in a field in Shropshire. And I, a licensed mudlark, found the one item I had been searching for in 15 years of scouring the banks of the River Thames, where the lost and discarded possessions of long-forgotten Londoners wash up on the foreshore at low tide.
The British Museum’s scheme was created in 1997 to record the objects of archaeological interest that are found by members of the public in the fields, beaches and rivers of England and Wales. Most of them have been discovered by metal detectorists and the number has been steadily growing, as equipment becomes more affordable and the hobby flourishes.
I don’t use a metal detector, though. I search only by eye, looking for the straight lines and perfect circles that nature doesn’t make, but the human hand does.
My incredible find – a medieval pilgrim badge – unearthed on a deserted, dark and sultry part of the foreshore near London Bridge, was as the culmination of f hours of searching g in all weathers; of peering ering between stones and nd kneeling on wet sand, and, looking and looking ng and often finding nothing. ing.
I’m not saying that hat metal detecting is easy, I’m ’m sure it isn’t. But it certainly nly increases your search-to-find d ratio. It’s never appealed to me, though.
For me, mudlarking ng is a sensory experience e that goes way beyond the objects bjects I bring home. It’s an n escape, if only for a few hours, ours, from the chaos of the city and the demands of modern living. It wouldn’t be the same if I was plugged ged into a set of earphones listen listening for beeps.
I fi find the objects that the detectorists mis miss, too. Colourful gla glass trade beads th that dropped into th the river as they we were being loaded on to ships bound for West Africa; slend slender bone pins that once o held up the long h hair of Roman women women; the top of a rare medieva medieval Islamic glass vessel; 16t 16th-century wooden combs; co a complete Bronze Age pot; a glass eye; and a bone c counter from an 18th- 18th-century centur riverside pleasure g garden in Vauxhall. I If I hadn’t been using my eyes eye so keenly, would I have missed them all? Relying on tides to deliver the river’s tre treasure, rather
Lara Maiklem
than forcing it to give them up with a spade or trowel, further reduces my chance of a find, but this gentle approach is far kinder to an already dramatically eroding foreshore. The river is busier now than it has been for decades and the waves created by every passing boat suck a little more of the shore away with them. This is a double-edged sword for we mudlarks, who now number around 1,500 in the UK. While erosion is washing away valuable archaeology, it is also releasing and scattering the contents of the foreshore for us to find, and keeping it free of mud.
During lockdown, the boats stopped running and – probably for the first time since the Romans founded the
Relying on tides to deliver the river’s treasure is kinder to an eroding foreshore
city in AD47 – the Thames was quiet. The Clipper river bus stopped running, party boats were silenced, tourist boats bobbed at their moorings and the high-speed Ribs vanished. Only the occasional police or Port of London Authority boat glided past. We mudlarks were also asked to stay away by the PLA, which administers the tidal Thames and issues the permits that allow us to use it as our hunting ground. Without the constant wake of boats crashing on to the foreshore, the surface was soon covered with a thick glaze of smooth silty mud that began to turn green with algae. Even if I had been allowed down there, I wouldn’t have been able to see a thing.
Mudlarks were finally allowed back on to the river at the end of May and the Clipper service has now resumed. It has taken several weeks for the mud to wash away, but I’m now starting to find things again – and my longawaited badge was a perfect welcome back present from the river.
Pilgrim badges like this were made in vast numbers and sold as souvenirs at the many medieval shrines that pilgrims visited.
They pinned them to their cloaks and hats to show where they’d been and to bring a bit of the magic back home with them. More of these pewter badges have been found in the Thames than anywhere else in the country, some of them almost ritually folded in half, which has led historians to speculate that they were tossed into the river by returning pilgrims as thanks for a safe journey.
Many would have begun their pilgrimage to Canterbury from London Bridge, where there was a small chapel dedicated to St Thomas
Becket. Since a good proportion of the badges retrieved from the river have been of Becket, I always assumed that, if I was lucky enough to find one, it would bear his image. But I was wrong. This little badge was dropped into the river almost 600 years ago by a pilgrim returning from the shrine of St Osmund in Salisbury. The Norman noble and clergyman, a contemporary of William the Conqueror, was canonised in 1457 and is the patron saint of insanity, mental illness, paralysis and toothache.
It’s rarer than a Becket badge and perfectly matches the one that’s kept at the museum in Salisbury, which
This little badge was dropped into the river almost 600 years ago by a pilgrim
suggests it may even have been cast from the same mould. Apart from missing a little decoration around the edge it is perfect, as so many Thamesfound badges are, owing to the preserving nature of the anaerobic mud.
Since it is not made of precious metal, my badge doesn’t legally qualify as treasure, but neither does it belong to me. Anything found on the Thames foreshore legally belongs to the PLA and the terms of my mudlarking licence require me to report anything that is more than 300 years old and of historic importance to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. The PLA are generous and mostly allow us to keep what we find, but sometimes the Museum of London asks if they can have an object. I firmly believe in sharing history and have donated some of my finds to them.
If my little St Osmund is important enough to warrant a place in their collection then they are welcome to him – although having waited 15 years to find him, it might be a bit more of a struggle to let go.