Combining a love of history with the joy of discovery, and offering the chance for contemplation while strolling through nature, mudlarking could be the perfect idling pursuit. Foreshore fan Marie-Louise Plum has the nitty gritty

I’m a modern-day mudlark. The River Thames is my time machine. In plucking a find from its foreshore, I’m probably the first person to touch that object in hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

More likely than not you’ve heard of mudlarking, the name given to the whimsical activity of searching a tidal riverbed, or foreshore, at low tide. It’s a pastime that has exploded in popularity over the last couple of years. The number of licensed mudlarks in London currently stands at 3,800.

The term mudlark came into use at the end of the 18th century. It referred to unfortunates – later described by the Victorian journalist and social reform advocate Henry Mayhew as “poor creatures, most deplorable in appearance” – who would scour the Thames for items of saleable value, such as “coals, old-iron, rope, bones, copper nails”.

These days mudlarking is a leisure pursuit, albeit one that’s often taken very seriously by its participants. Mudlarks search for lost, discarded, and forgotten objects, washed up by chance for one tide only – tobacco pipes thrown from the bear pits of Southwark, 17th-century trade tokens dropped by tavern-going revellers.

Twice daily, from Teddington to the Thames Estuary, the river level rises and falls by up to 24 feet. Searching this sunken channel seven meters below street level, I recover objects inextricably linked to London. The mud of the River Thames is free of oxygen, which means anything cocooned in it remains well preserved. The moment an object is dislodged from the riverbed, it begins to erode. Before this process happens, mudlarks aim to recover, preserve and record our finds, whether they’re pieces of actual treasure or slices of social history.

New finds keep coming because the foreshore itself is eroding, with motorised river traffic and each tidal wash. So, clay pipes, the cigarette butts of their day, coins and other treasures will be around for some time to come.

In the six years I’ve been searching the Thames, I’ve found many historical items: Roman hypocaust tiles, Georgian love tokens and medieval pilgrim badges; silver coins showing portraits of those kings and queens who oversaw religious persecutions, witch-hunts, and the unification of nations; decorative glass beads, used in the trade and bartering of “human cargo”, described by anthropologist Dr Anne Yentsch as “silent witnesses” of the past.

Every mudlark has their own specialist area of interest, be it coins, cufflinks or cupels. My fascination relates to something bigger than the object itself: the clues I glean from it. A maker’s name and address on a Victorian button, for example. Such clues have led me to outrageous tales of larceny and looting in the expansive archives of the Old Bailey.

It was exhilarating to find a Spanish cob “pirate” coin, possibly dropped from the pocket of a swashbuckling sea dog returning from plundering a Spanish Armada ship. I was thrilled to discover a pierced silver coin, minted in the reign of James VI, given perhaps as a love token.

However, to find an everyday item with a tantalising hint of a clue that leads you to discover more about the real lives of real people – that’s the exciting long-game of mudlarking; it’s not just about facts and figures and immovable dates, but relatable histories we can imagine our own not-too-distant ancestors inhabiting.

A while ago, over two consecutive trips, I found a clay tobacco pipe and a silver cufflink, both directly linked to a little-known association with a wonderful story behind it. The Ancient Order of Froth Blowers was a humorous members’ club whose name spoofed such haughtily titled organisations as the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes. Set up in 1924 by ex-soldier Herbert Temple, the Froth Blowers’ purpose was to raise £100 (equivalent to £5,600 today) for a children’s charity founded Sir Alfred Fripp, a surgeon who had saved Temple’s life.

Members of the Order, whose motto was Lubrication in Moderation, would meet up to enjoy “beer, beef, and baccy”, and were given titles such as Blaster, Tornado and Grand Typhoon. The highest-ranking member, the “Senior Blower”, would open meetings with the command “Gentlemen, shoot your linen”, at which point everyone projected their shirt cuffs through their jacket sleeves to reveal official Ancient Order of Froth Blowers cufflinks. Other titles given out were “Blowers” (men), “Fairy Belles” (women), and “Faithful Bow Wows” (children and dogs). The Order lasted until 1931, attracting 700,000 members and amassing a colossal £100,000 – nearly £6million in today’s money. The money was raised through membership fees and “fines” for such transgressions as not wearing cuff links.

The chances of finding these related objects, directly one after the other, were slim, but it happened. There’s magic in mudlarking. Or to put in the words of my own motto: Don’t be needy, don’t be greedy; the finds will find you.

Although originating on the Thames, mudlarking can take place on any tidal river. I recently went searching on the Mersey Estuary and found nothing but rubble clearance and some WWII anti-tank defences. But then, just as I was about to call it a day, serendipity struck again. I looked down to see a rectangular block of sandstone, half a metre long, engraved with a skull and crossbones and three sets of initials: “TN”, “LN” and “RN”. I started thinking of adventure books I’d read as a child, stories of treasure chests and maps where X marked the spot.

I contacted the Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological Network straightaway and they immediately visited the estuary to record the find. Sadly, no one was able to say for certain what the sandstone block was for, and the mystery remains to this day.

But this is another aspect to mudlarking: some finds have no answers, and we must be content with that. Even so, there’s plenty of fun to be had in investigating them. I once found a fragment of a Victorian/Edwardian roof tile inscribed “Made by FW Bol, Ponty P, Oct” and committed myself to searching of every census return for the Pontypridd and Pontypool areas from the years 1890 to 1930. I didn’t find any matches for the tile-maker’s name but it’s not inconceivable that some detail might pop up one day, and with it a whole new story, so until then, I wait.

Which brings me to another very important aspect of mudlarking: patience. As archaeologist Ivor Noël Hume, the father of modern mudlarking, writes in his seminal 1956 book Treasure in the Thames, “the river-side antiquary must change his temperament to suit new conditions, needing the patience of an angler who sets out with rod and line, but is content to catch a minnow.”

In this case, Hume was referring to mudlarks adapting to the diminishing frequency of mind-blowing finds, which as recently as 1950 were often simply sitting pretty on the surface at every low tide. By 1955, easily discoverable artefacts in the “river’s trinket box, opened for the first time soon after the Second World War” were diminishing due to “en masse foraging”.

Mudlarking for pleasure is not a recent phenomenon. The Thames has long been scoured for objects of age and importance, both organic and man-made. The first half of the above Hume quote goes like this: “The prospect of mudlarking is not too bright, for too many people have tried their hand at it.” But I think there’s still a plethora of finds to salvage if you know where and how to look – and if you have the patience.

If you’re thinking of getting out there yourself, the following are essential:

1. 1. Anyone wishing to search the Thames foreshore must purchase a permit from the Port of London Authority (PLA).
   2. If you’d like to try mudlarking before buying a permit, you can book a foreshore session with Steve Brooker, aka Mud God, at thamesandfield.com.
   3. Study any relevant documents available on the PLA website. It’s your responsibility to know where and how you are permitted to search the foreshore.
   4. Respect your surroundings. Always know where your nearest exit is. If it’s an upright ladder, make sure it’s fully attached to the wall, and that you can climb it.
   5. Kit yourself out properly. The foreshore can be a hazardous place – think slippery, sharp, trippy-over things.
   6. Don’t expect to get to grips with mudlarking in a day. It takes persistence to become accustomed to searching and finding – also known as “getting your eye in”.
   7. All mudlarks have a responsibility to record any items of treasure or significant historical value to the British Museum’s Portable Antiquities Scheme.
   8. Remember, although social media mudlarking forums can be fantastic, nothing beats books, historic publications, and most importantly, talking to people with experience. It might take time to make meaningful connections, but once you’re in, you’re in for life

This article is from Idler #85

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