Thames Mudlarks News Today

The Doves typeface was thrown into the water a century ago, following a dispute between its creators. Pieces of it are now on show in London.

Despite new licences being suspended, messing about on the river has never felt so good

“Where did you discover that?” I ask, peering at the gold nugget in Lara Maiklem’s box of finds.

A mudlark is the name given to a person who scavenges in the foreshore of a river for objects that could be sold. This term applies specifically to those operating along the Thames River in London during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The foreshore is growing crowded | Britain

He died as he lived: Scraping out a miserable existence that was centered around mud.

    Ever since man first quenched his thirst in its waters, he has left his mark on the riverbed. Ivor Noël Hume, Treasure in the Thames (1956)     London would not exist without the River Thames.  It is a source of fresh water and food, a path of communication and transportation, and acts as a real and imaginary boundary.  More importantly, it facilitates trade using the incoming and outgoing tides that has made London such a functional and successful port.   Since the beginning of ti...

A collection of battered 17th century trading tokens, including ones minted in the year of the Great Fire of London in 1666, could fetch £20,000 at auction.   Roger Green, who is from Kent, spent 35 years collecting the tokens on the muddy banks of the River Thames. They were issued by traders instead of money due to a lack of available small change at the time. Many of the money tokens bear the names of the traders who once issued them, including Walter and William.   The entire collectio...

For decades now, the diminutive but delightful Shire classics have been the niche collector’s best friend. These little books, whose subjects have included clay pipes, pewter, samplers, historic ships, ceramics and even the Victorian domestic servant, for me evoke pleasurable hours browsing in village bookshops. So it is with great affection that I picked up their latest publication, Jason Sandy and Nick Stevens’s Thames Mudlarking: Searching for London’s Lost Treasures – which was eve...