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This week I hade the great honour of speaking at the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers Court Luncheon at Trinity House, opposite the Tower of London. The Clockmakers are one of 110 livery companies in the Square Mile of the City of London
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Image: Anthony Gray

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2023-03-31

Last week the river gave me this beautiful 1901 halfpenny, minted the year Queen Victoria died, the first Australian Parliament opened, Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as the 26th US President and the Boxer rebellion in China came to an end.
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2023-03-29

My old Mudlarking pal Pete moved to Tasmania a few years ago, but old habits die hard and he’s is still looking. So far he's found 7 buttons like mine, at a site associated with transported convicts and matched them to convict shirt buttons on the Museum of Sydney website
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2023-03-03

This year I became the first female juror for the Court Leet of the King’s Manor in Southwark in its 500+ year history. I am one of only 24 Jurors and they’ve also put me on this year’s Christmas card 😆

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2022-12-10

Found and left on the Thames foreshore, a late 19th to early 20th century fresnel lens from an old ship lantern. The design meant that the lens could be relatively thin and light, while still spreading its beam for some distance.

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2022-09-26

The tide was low enough a few weeks ago to see the remains of an early Anglo-Saxon fish trap, radiocarbon dated to AD 550-670.

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2022-07-25

art edit created by universe053.^-^ [original photo by nicola white]

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2022-07-08

A recent exciting and unexpected Thames find is this Tudor dress hook, which cd be used to hitch up your Tudor dress to keep it from trailing in the mud. As always I love to imagine who lost this & if she went home with a puddle soaked skirt hem

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2022-05-03

Thank you to Ken McAuley for sharing this amazing Thames find from last week. Its most likely to be a brass dog collar, dated 1692 and owned by Mr John Michell of 'Newington Butts in Surrey', which is now part of central London.

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2022-03-06

A wobbly bottom – the base of an 18th c wine bottle, found and left on the foreshore. Large enough to be from a mallet bottle, the transitionary shape between the squat onion bottles of the late 17th and early 18th c and the cylindrical bottles we recognise today.

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2022-03-02

Charles I stepped onto the wooden scaffold in front of Banqueting Hall on a bitterly cold day on 30 January 1649, exactly 373 years ago today.
Perhaps one of these Caroline coins, all found on the Thames foreshore, was in the pocket of a bystander.

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2022-01-31

The reason you need steel toe caps when Mudlarking is because these little fellas are shin height and prepared to murder if they mistake a shiny pebble for one of their eggs

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2021-10-29

A sailmaker’s palm. This lead disc fits perfectly in my palm and the surface is worn and pitted from the needles pushed against it during its working life. It was held in place by a piece of thick leather and worked as a thimble. C.1500-1800.

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2021-06-04

Waste of an glazier found during at On a print by Jan Luyken (1694) you can see these panes were produced originally as large discs and cut into smaller pieces at the building site.

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2021-05-17

Thanks to Brian, one of my followers on Instagram, I now know this shard came from a German Rareren jug made c.1596 by the prolific potter Ian Emens Mennicken. The applied relief eight local aristocratic coats of arms and an inscription, see comments for translation

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2021-02-17

Political token mimicking a commercial token inviting the holder to redeem it at Newgate jail where the 4 named men were held for sedition for publishing a book on the rights or ordinary citizens. Found on my 1st visit back to the foreshore after Lockdown 1 last year

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2021-01-03

These are 18th century clay wig curlers, some broken, all found on the Thames foreshore. Did you know they set the curls in hair by wrapping it around these curlers then baking it in a pastry crust. Ingenious!
(See comments for quote)

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2020-12-08

For - a solution to pestilence in the 13th-14th century was pilgrimage. This rare and elabourate ampulla from the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury is a London find properly recorded with . (https://t.co/aSdumvRAJH)

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2020-11-06

Going mudlarking, I have my permit And read all the do’s and don’t’s. I’m a newbie, if you see me say hello. Hopefully it will be a great first time

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2020-10-09