Unlocking the history beneath our feet – the rise of mudlarking

were often boys from poor families in search of coal, iron, copper nails and rope to sell. Now they are hobbyists, walking with backs bent and heads bowed at low tide to see what spoils the river has disgorged that day.

To mudlark, you need a permit from the Port of London Authority (PLA). But there’s a catch: so popular has mudlarking become, the PLA paused issuing new licences in autumn 2022, “to protect the unique historical integrity” of the foreshore.

The suspension of permits means I am not allowed to “go mudlarking” with Maiklem. I’m just here to watch her on the South Bank. She found the gold a fortnight earlier. “It could have been from a prospector, or washed down the drain from a goldsmith’s.” She once found a 16th-century sword, but her favourite finds are the old shoes that wash up. Some still bear the toe prints of long-dead Londoners, preserved by a lack of oxygen.

Maiklem, in her black latex gloves, is as close to a professional mudlark as it’s possible to be, having published Mudlarking: Lost and Found on the River Thames, and a practical handbook, A Field Guide to Larking. She also has 130,000 Instagram followers.

Within a few minutes she has found a floor tile that “could be Tudor”; a hardwood peg that “could be a treenail used to hold ships together”; the edge of a large red pot; and some clay pipe stems from the 19th century.

She points out a roof tile. The size of the hole in the middle dates it from before the Great Fire of London. “After the fire, they weren’t allowed to put these on roofs with wooden pegs, they

Lara Maiklem: ‘The story of London is locked away in the mud of the Thames’