Dan Snow's History Hit - Mudlarking

Episode Date: May 4, 2020

Lara Maiklem has scoured banks of the Thames for over 15 years in pursuit of the objects that the fast moving river water unearths. The Thames is one of the longest and most varied archaeological site in the world. Previous generations have been dumping rubbish and losing valuables for thousands of years. Lara took me Mudlarking on a beautiful, bright, winter day and we found objects dating back as far as the Romans. The undoubted highlight for me was finding a coin from the 1750s. That helped turn me into a ferocious Mudlarker. In this podcast Lara and I had a follow up chat and, BRILLIANTLY, it got interrupted when a courier picked up a bag of human bones. I know. You have to listen to believe. To watch the film of Lara and I wading along the banks of the Thames and check out our discoveries, please signup to www.HistoryHit.TV We have got a flash sale on at the moment for the next few days: Use code 'pod3' at checkout for your first month free and the following THREE months for just £/$1 per month.

Hello everybody and welcome to Dan Snow's History here. I've got a treat for you this time. I recently went down to the banks of the River Thames to go mudlarking. Mudlarking is what we Brits call the eccentric band of archaeologists who walk the banks of the Thames looking for objects from our past. Now actually, I've always kind of wondered what on earth people are doing down there. It looks cold, it looks muddy. But in fact, as Lara Maitland says, who's a famous mud larker here in the UK, the Thames is one of the most accessible and one of the most remarkable seams

of archaeology anywhere in the world. 2,000 years of history, rubbish dumped into that Thames, like generation upon generation, and much of it there visible because it's scoured away by the two tides each day that come in and go out and uncover gems i went down just for the lockdown on a beautiful cold winter's day and laura and i found some amazing stuff you'll hear on this podcast we found a singed rooftop from the 17th century that we dared hope might be a piece of evidence for the great fire of london which roared on the banks of the river right on the spot we were at. We found a piece of Roman glass, we think. We found a 1750s coin. And the 1750s are my favourite decade, as a matter of fact. So it was kind of spooky that we found that coin just sitting there in the mud, twinkling up at us as the ebb tide washed it clean of the debris.

So you can actually watch Lara and my excursion on History Hit TV, which is my digital history channel. You can watch us wading on the banks of the Thames. We've got a deal on for the next few days. It's pod three, P-O-D three. You get your first month for free, and then you get three months, just one pound, euro or dollar for each of those three months. So it's a pretty sweet deal. Please head over there and check that out. We've got all the back episodes of the podcast on there. We've got hundreds of history documentaries and we are launching this week,

this week, everybody, we are launching live podcast records that subscribers can join us on. So if you subscribe to History at TV, we'll send you a link and you can join a Zoom chat between me and a leading historian as we record a podcast. And you can also submit questions as well and have the historian answer them.

We kick off with the legendary Professor Peter Frankopan, author of Silk Roads and many other books. And he'll be talking to us about Silk Roads, about the current pandemic, about lessons from history. So that'll be super interesting. Please join us on Thursday night. pandemic, about lessons from history. So that'll be super interesting. Please join us on Thursday night. Subscribers to History Hit TV get to join in on that. In the meantime, everyone, please enjoy my conversation with Lara. It's the only time I've ever recorded a podcast where a delivery of human remains was made during the podcast. You'll see. It's fascinating. was made during the podcast. You'll see. It's fascinating. Lara, good to talk to you. That was one of my highlights. Well, it's my highlights 2020. It hasn't been a great year, to be honest. We were lucky. I think our luckiest find

was the coin. But we found lots of other things. I think we found musket ball, didn't we? And pins and... A glass you thought might be Roman. Piece of glass that i think might be roman my fines liaison officer has seen a photograph of it and thinks it probably is but he needs to actually hold it and look at it to be absolutely sure but i know that some other people have found roman glass on that spot too so it's quite likely it is that was the thing that really excited me actually and the amazing thing is we found genuinely remarkable stuff. I mean, I've been on archaeological digs in fields where you find a lot less than that.

There's a team of 10 people working for two weeks. Was that a normal day for you? You're just walking along the banks of the Thames. You're not allowed to turn over rocks or dig into things. And yet we found significant amounts of material culture from the past. It's pretty standard, yeah. I mean, we did have a good day, but, you know, I have better days even. I was down there just last week, actually, and I was chatting to someone. I looked down on the foreshore and there was this little short piece of work bone that turned out to be a

Roman hinge from a casket or cupboard. And it's actually all got the wooden dowel right through the middle. So, you know, you just never know what you're going to find next. Some days I walk away with nothing, though, but we did have a pretty good day another highlight was the singed roof tile possibly 17th century so we thought maybe great fire of london who knows who knows and then of course the coins from was it 1755 were they from well that one my favorite one was from i think it was yes i mean that was into such beautiful condition and it was just tucked into that little nook there that i have to admit that's a good place to look for coins they seem to wash into that little area and I found them there before but that was a really good it looked like it had just fallen out of someone's pocket

didn't it it did it had Britannia on one side and George II on the other it came from the the seven years war was happening so it's the period of history that I know the best and I'm fascinated by so it just couldn't have been better. I keep thinking, you know, you found it, therefore I refuse to take it home. And I keep thinking, maybe I should have taken up your offer. You kindly said, come on, take it home. But I'm not a collector, you see, and I think I'd have just put it on my mantelpiece and then lost it. I just think that, you know, you're someone who is cataloguing and collecting and displaying. And I think it's best that you take things like that.

I mean, is that what you'd advise for people that go mudlarking? I'm quite free with the things that I find. You know, if there's someone who's really fascinated by that period in history or it's just something that they just would love and would give it a really good home, I'm really happy to hand it on because, you know, I've got so much stuff. It's no point in it sitting in one of my drawers if someone can really take it home and love it. So, yeah, I mean, I suppose the way I see it is really it wasn't mine before I found it I happened to chance upon it it's not really mine I'm just looking after it I'm a caretaker for its next little bit of history and then it'll be

on to the next person anyway so I'm not precious about my finds so if you want it Dan you can have it yeah no no it's okay when you go mudlarking you're walking along the sides of the river Thames at low tide and you find something. What are the rules about who that belongs to? There are quite strict rules, actually. Everybody needs a permit to go mudlarking, even if you're just going to walk along and pick things up that you see on the surface by eye. So everybody needs a permit and you can get those from the Port of London Authority and anyone can apply for one. So that's fine. That's easy.

And with your permit will come a list of rules and regulations. Then it's really important to follow these because, you know, if you don't, it just takes a few people and it starts to spoil it for everyone. So according to the rules and regulations, there are places where you're not allowed to mudlark at all. There are scheduled monuments, places like Queenhithe Dock, where the Great Eastern, the big ship, was launched

and there's a spot at Greenwich and in front of the Tower of London. Those are scheduled monuments so they're as protected as Stonehenge. You're not allowed to take anything away from there or even really go on them. The next level of protection is on the North Shore in central London where we were. You're not allowed to dig or scrape or move anything at all so you can only pick things up that are just lying there, they've been left by the tide. With a standard permit in other places, you can scrape down just a little way and use a metal detector. But of course, you know, if you are digging little holes with a metal detector, you need to fill them in, you need to be responsible and you need

to take care of the foreshore. You know, it's a really precious and quite fragile place. You don't actually own what you find, which is interesting. People think you do once you find something, it's yours. It's not. It's still owned by the PLA. So you're not allowed to trade them or sell them. Technically, that's illegal. If you find anything that's over 300 years old and historically important, you have to report it to a fines liaison officer. And they work for the Portable Antiqu portable antiquities scheme which is a fantastic project that is recording all the objects are being found by metal detectorists and on beaches and on rivers and they've recorded over a million objects now and it's really important these are

recorded if they qualify as treasure then you have to legally report them they go through the coroner and they go through the whole treasure process. An object that is legally treasure is very simply put a percentage precious metal and over 300 years old. So yes, there are rules and restrictions and it's really important that people follow them. But it is still probably the most accessible way of being a citizen archaeologist, isn't it? I mean, it's non-invasive. You have to get the permit, of course, that you have to obey the regulations. But if people want to get out, they want to do archaeology. I mean, clearly it was sort of city workers on their lunch breaks. I mean, it was an inspiring afternoon that we spent together.

Well, it was. And really, it wasn't that busy. If you think how many millions of people there are in London, it's still quite quiet on the foreshore. It's a great place to go. And yes, it is. It's hands-on history. I can't imagine anywhere else in the world where you can do it. But with that comes responsibility. And it is non-invasive. If you imagine every tide will leave something different, the next tide's going to wash it away. So if you're not picking things up off the surface, then they're just going to disappear or they're going to be damaged or washed away forever. How dynamic is that environment? I mean, if we hadn't found that coin or if we hadn't found that musket ball, would it have been swept off by the Thames? The river's a funny thing. I've seen it move really big things overnight,

and I've watched the smallest bit of rubbish, an old bike light, that's stayed around for months and months. But I've also been standing on the foreshore, and a coin has literally washed in at my feet. I've dropped things, and they've been washed away straight away. So it's a fickle monster, the Thames. It delivers things and takes things away at random. But I think probably a few more waves over that coin and it would have gone altogether because it really was just lying on the surface. Okay, then sorry to ask the boring questions.

What's the thing that you found that you treasure the most? My most treasured object? Everybody asks me that question. I'm embarrassed that you're going to ask that, I've got to say. I always say it's my Tudor shoe. It's the child's shoe that I found that is just in perfect condition. For me, something like that, rather than, I mean, coins are great. They do what they say on the tin, really. They've got everything on them.

You can tell, you know, the year they were made, how much it's worth. For me, coins aren't that exciting. Something like a shoe, though, where you can actually see the lines where someone's foot was bending and you can see the little impression of their toes in the sole. That, to me, is like time travel. It's like reaching back and shaking hands with these people who lost these objects.

It's so personal. So it's really personal things that are the most precious to me. I can't think of anything more precious or personal than a child's shoe that's 500 years old. Any of your fellow mudlarkers ever found anything that we think has actually changed our impression of the past, enriched our understanding of what's gone before? Mudlarks have found a lot of pewter toys on the foreshore.

I've got a few myself. The number of children's toys that have been found on the foreshore have really changed people's opinion of how children were treated and played in the past. I think there's a sort of assumption that children didn't really have a childhood, but they very much did. And they were bought these toys and trinkets and they played with them. And the toys, particularly 17th century pewter toys that have been found, have really changed people's opinions of the past. If that's your doorbell, feel free to go and get it, Lara. Yes, I've got to rush off. It's the end of the channel. If that's your doorbell, feel free to go and get it, Lara.

Yes, I've got to rush off. It's DHL and I can't miss this. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer.

Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Okay, did you get your deliveries? I did, I did. It's a bit surreal, really. A while ago, well, in the summer, I found some human remains on the foreshore and I've been working with Murdoch University in Australia

to try and get them out to their forensics department to study them further. They're old. They're sort of between 200, 300 years old and I thought I'd managed to get them. We organised the whole thing. We've cleared customs. We've cleared the coroner.

And DHL picked them up yesterday. And they've just dropped them back and told me they can't carry human remains. So we're back to square one to try and get them off to Australia. In the middle of this podcast, you just had a bag of bones delivered to your house. I did, yes. He's all wrapped up. That is epic. That's absolutely extraordinary.

What a shame though what a pain in the neck i know we've got all the paperwork we just need to find someone who'll ship them now so that's oh that's a pain and that is the interesting thing about being a mudlark on the river thames is you don't know what period i mean what's the oldest presumably you found worked flint you found things from the stone age i imagine i have i've got mesolithic flints the oldest i've found and they're really fairly common, actually. The difficulty with finding them is that flint is quite natural on the foreshore. So the foreshore is covered with bits of flint. So it's working out which bits are worked and which bits are natural. And I'm still not that

great at doing that. I pick up a lot of bits that look like they're scrapers and things, and they turn out to be natural. Obviously, the oldest things we find are fossils. But the oldest man-made things, yeah, are Mesolithic flints. So you've got Mesolithic flints all the way up to, well, obviously yesterday's rubbish. And that's the really nice thing. I mean, I'm a generalist and it must be nice for you to have to have a working knowledge. I mean, what I was so astonished by when we went out together is the breadth of your knowledge, the expertise and all these different periods. But where are your weak spots? My weak spots, like I say, identifying flints is pretty much a weak spot. My knowledge of ceramics and pottery is very limited compared to some of

the people I've met down on the foreshore who really know their stuff. So I know the basics, but you know, there's so much, there's so many different pottery shards you can find that my knowledge of pottery is fairly minimal compared to theirs. And what are your strongest suits? What do you consider yourself a bit of an expert in? I mean, pipes are so common on the foreshore that you end up learning quite a lot about them. But then there's a whole Facebook group or there's a whole organisation called the Society for Clay Pipe Research. And these are people who know everything there is. There are so many people with so much knowledge and information. That's the great thing about the foreshore is that you

can tap into all these experts with their brilliant knowledge. And so, you know, I am very, very general and very, very sort of fairly basic, my knowledge, but I'm gathering a group of people around me who can help me. What do you get particularly, I mean, you've mentioned the shoe, but is there another period that you'd like to find more of? Or each day is presumably just a new adventure? Each day is a completely new adventure. I mean, you find objects that are associated with what was going on there. So Rotherhithe, for example, there were ships being broken up in the 18th, 19th century. So a lot of what you find is associated

with that. And a lot of the objects you find are 17th, 18th century. In central London, it goes right back to Roman times. So you can sort of direct what you're going to find a little bit by where you go. The objects that I love are medieval objects. You don't find that many of them. The Romans left loads behind. There's loads of Roman stuff and there's loads of Victorian stuff. That's quite easy to find. It's that little sort of Tudor medieval phase that I'm really obsessed with

that I'd really like to find more of. And I don't know if that's because I haven't found, you know, a huge amount compared to the amount of Roman stuff I've found. But it's just a time in history that I'm interested in and I'd like to find more of. Does the modern stuff weigh heavily? What have you learned about the river and what we're doing to it today? Every generation adds something to the river in terms of rubbish.

The difference being that our ancestors' rubbish is harmless. It's made of bone and clay and glass and that's all going to break down quite naturally and harmlessly go back into what the river's made up of. The problem with what we're leaving behind is that it's not harmless, it's plastic. We're the plastic age and when you're down on the river and you see the amount of plastic, I mean for an urban river it is quite clean. What you're not seeing is what's floating beneath the surface, about a foot beneath the surface. That's where all the plastic bags and the wet wipes are. At Hammersmith, there is an island that's entirely made of wet wipes. So our refuse, our rubbish, is changing the geography of the river in a way that our ancestors never had.

And I've stood on this wet wipe island. It's disgusting. When you go out to the estuary, that's where you get these banks of floating plastic. That's where you get all the old buckets and bottles and things like that. It's really sad. It's really sad that that's our legacy is plastic. So, you know, it is damaging the environment, our refuse. And that's what concerns me. It's one thing to look on the banks of the River Thames in London, on the site of the ancient Roman settlements and 2,000 years worth of history. But when you go out to the estuary, what do you find? And I always think of that kind of Dickensian. It's an overlooked part of the UK, all the fancy people living in London.

They don't look too far down the South Essex and North Kent coast, do they? It must be rather a wonderful landscape and presumably quite rich in archaeology. Yes, I love the estuary. It's very bleak. It's got that sort of strange, sort of ugly beautifulness about it. It's very bleak. It's empty. It's windswept. There's no trees. There's just miles and miles of mud when the river goes out. But it's an ancient, ancient land. It's where a lot of people landed when they invaded us. The Romans had their kilns out. But it's an ancient, ancient land. It's where a lot of people landed when they invaded us. The Romans had their kilns out there. There's loads of Roman pottery and Roman kilns out that way. When our rubbish changed, going back to rubbish, you know, sort of at the end of the Victorian period, when we started to produce things that were essentially to throw away objects,

until then, people actually paid for the right to go through the refuse. After then, when we started to produce things that were designed to be thrown away, the local councils in London had to buy up swathes of empty marshland out in Kent and Essex to dump London's rubbish. They took it out on barges, dumped it by the river. And a lot of that's now eroding into the river. So you get places where you get all this Victorian junk just falling onto the foreshore. And so you find a lot of Victorian bottles and pottery and bits and bobs out there as well. At certain places, you can find perfectly preserved 18th century wine bottles because they have been in the mud. They've been encased in the mud and they're perfectly preserved and they

presumably were thrown off the prison hulks and the passing ships. So although you can mudlark out there, it's quite dangerous to mudlark out there because the mud's so thick. Finds are few and far between, but there's some interesting stuff to find out there. If people are inspired by the documentary we made together, which is on History Hit TV or this podcast, how do they become a mudlarker? The first thing they need to do is get their permit from the Port of London Authority. I think it costs around £80 for three years. Once you've got that, read all your rules and restrictions, look at the maps it comes with and where you can and can't go.

And I'm going to interrupt you and read your best-selling book, which is called... Read my best-selling book, Mudlarking. Mudlarking. And just go out there and give it a go. Do they get washed away? Do they understand tides and things like that? Read up about the tides. The Thames is tidal. It goes up and down twice a day. There are tide tables on the Port of London Authority website. Be really careful. Study the tides. Know when the tide's coming back in. Make sure you don't get cut off. Keep an eye on your exit routes. Go with a friend. Take your mobile phone.

Keep an eye on your exit routes. Go with a friend. Take your mobile phone. The foreshore is slippery. There are nails and there's glassware, sensible footwear. Let people know when you're going, when you're going to be out there. And respect the foreshore. Don't start digging holes in it and things like that.

Be respectful. Pick up what you can see. Only take what you want. You don't need a bag of clay pipe stems. You just maybe need a couple. Leave the rest there. Be respectful and enjoy it. Maybe post your finds, the things that you find on my Facebook page and my Instagram page.

Keep in touch with other mudlarks. Find out what they're finding as well. There's a great community out there. And lastly, remind me why it's called mudlarking. Why it's called mudlarking. That goes back to the Victorians. Do you know, I don't know. Nobody really knows where the origin of mudlarking comes from. The very first time it was mentioned was at the end of the 18th century,

with these groups of really the poorest and lowest of the low, scratching around for whatever they could find on the foreshore to eco-living. And they went through the Victorian times, there were armies of little children and old people and women trying to find enough to keep them out of the workhouses it's a name that we've adopted from them and really we're just hobbyists we're very lucky we don't have to do it to survive anymore i don't know if you'd survive if you suddenly got banned from it i'd be worried about you would you i'd be worried about me actually i'm a much nicer person when i come back from the foreshore there's something about leaving that foreshore which in your own little world and then climbing out in your wellies and your mud-covered overalls, and you're standing in the commercial, corporate, financial heart of one of the world's great cities, and

people whizzing around you, and you have to readjust every time. It's just a magical moment, isn't it? It is. It is. It's two wells in London. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast, and please take me again one day. Of course, you're very welcome to come. It's two worlds in London. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast, Lara. And please take me again one day. Of course, you're very welcome to come. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, a bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money,

makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.