KATHRYN HUGHES
It’s a muddy treasure trove
Mudlark’d: Hidden Histories From The River Thames Malcolm Russell Thames & Hudson £25 ★★★★★
We have microbiology to thank for the fact that the banks of the Thames contain a treasure trove of ancient artefacts. Due to the low levels of oxygen in the silty tidal mud, centuries-worth of human history have washed up perfectly preserved on the river’s shore. Coins, jewellery, chamber pots, teeth, arrowheads, boot soles and tuning forks have all been discovered by modern mudlarks, those men and women who spend their spare time combing the riverbank for ancient treasure.
In this absorbing book, Malcolm Russell tells the story of the most interesting finds, including the many he has made himself. On a shingly patch in the City of London, for instance, he has recovered a bone pin, used two millennia ago to create the tall and elaborate hairstyles worn by the wealthy female citizens of Roman Londinium.
Not that these high-maintenance women would ever think of fixing their own hair – Russell explains that bone pins were used by ornatrices, skilled hairdressers who were also most likely enslaved. Typically, these women had been scooped up as spoils of war before being sold on: a wax and silver fir writing tablet found near the River Walbrook, a Thames tributary, records the sale of a Gaulish female called Fortunata (which ironically means ‘Lucky’).
Other ‘strangers’ – the old word for foreigners – who left their traces on the Thames include the many Flemish textile workers who poured into London during the religious wars of the 17th Century. As Protestant refugees from Catholic Europe, they
brought with them their exquisite handicraft skills. One significant find is a bodkin, used for piercing cloth in lacemaking. It features an ear scoop at one end, with which the worker harvested her own earwax for stopping the ends of the thread from fraying.
One of Russell’s more tragic finds concerns a glass bead production tube. He explains that in the 1600s, a London merchant called Sir Nicholas Crispe began manufacturing brightly coloured glass beads on his estate on the banks of the Thames at Hammersmith. Crispe then sent these beads out to the coast of West Africa, where he exchanged them for a wealth of local goods, including redwood, hides, wax, gum, pepper, sugar and enslaved people. The majority of this human cargo was then transported across the Atlantic to work on the sugar and tobacco plantations of the West Indies.
By the end of the 18th Century, though, an increasing number of Africans – perhaps as many as 15,000 – were brought directly to Britain. Having a black footman in a gorgeous uniform to serve you at dinner or open your carriage door now became the latest status symbol for fashionable Londoners.
Religion, inevitably, left its mark on the Thames. One of the most perfectly preserved finds is a lead ampulla, or miniature container, found at Wandsworth. It had been used to transport holy water back from the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury. Gruesomely, this ‘Canterbury Water’ contained a small trace of the martyred Becket’s own blood and was supposed to be rubbed on to any part of the pilgrim’s body that needed healing (useful for the blisters that appeared on the feet of those who had trudged the 65 miles from the capital to Canterbury Cathedral).
However, not all of the religious objects discovered near the river relate to ancient history. One of Russell’s own finds includes statuettes of Hindu gods and sages. He explains that in 1970, the Thames was blessed to become a sacred river to the Hindu faith. This allowed it to be used as a depository for idols that needed to be ritually cleansed in running water.
Inevitably, some of these tales from the riverbank bear witness to the seamier side of life. A fragment of a drinking beaker found by Russell allows him to explain how, in the ginsoaked 18th Century, men began the custom of kissing a female relative upon meeting to check if her breath smelt of alcohol.
The discovery of a rotten molar leads him seamlessly into an explanation of how the arrival of sugar in wealthy Londoners’ diet meant that blackened teeth became a status symbol (only peasants and beggars were in the happy position of being able to flash their pearly whites).
Russell opens this magnificent book by declaring the Thames to be ‘liquid history’. Fittingly, the phrase isn’t originally his but belongs to a man called John Burns who, in 1889, led 100,000 striking dockers to a historic victory.
Like so much else in this beautifully illustrated study, Burns’s words have been washed up in perfect working condition, ready to bear witness to stories of untold richness.