Mudlarking: Lost and Found on the River Thames

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The author has extensive knowledge of the geography of London over the centuries and the Thames tides and her enthusiasm for her subject matter is infectious. She uses her imagination to breathe life into the objects she unearths and I enjoyed this immensely. I feel my knowledge of the history of London has been deepened and enlarged by her comments on these objects, the riverside locations and ultimately the Thames itself. It turns out that Ms Maiklem is a very modern mudlark, but that didn't make the book any less fascinating - moving from the tidal head of the Thames to the Estuary, she describes what she finds on the foreshore and tells fascinating stories about the people who lived, worked and died on the river, and whose lost possessions the tides still erode out of the mud. Always tempted to play the archaeologist as a child, I dreamed of striking it rich by finding King John’s lost golden treasure that sank in a river.

For some reason, until then, I'd thought of the foreshore as a forbidden space, sometimes revealed, other times covered over with water.Firstly a tendency to somewhat absurd flights of fancy (an example being when she holds up some Tudor glass and wonders whether Henry 8th looked through it when pondering Anne Boleyn's future). Objects of potential archaeological value can also be voluntarily submitted for analysis and review via the Portable Antiquities Scheme. While I found the writing and the river description, route, clarity to place names upon it- all of that IS exceptional, still! There is nothing that Maiklem does not know about the history of the river or the thingyness of things.

Organised into chapters based on location, readers take a steady meander through items that date back to the Roman fortification of Londinium as it was then known.These artefacts are often lost on land sites due to adverse soil environments, but the anaerobic qualities of the Thames foreshore preserve them. There is a great deal to learn from these pages, not least the insight that finding lost things is the best way of losing yourself.