Once the domain of Victorian street urchins, the art of mudlarking has gone mainstream. Lucy Kenningham investigates
In the manner of a high school science fair, the room is full of stalls and bubbling with nerdiness. Groups of families and friends wander around pointing excitedly at assorted artefacts. There are folky women with funky tights, tourists with handbooks, a wide-eyed child-parent duo. Almost a dozen empty buggies are parked outside the door.
At the Mudlarking Exhibition at the Museum of London, each stand displays a collection of what might loosely be defined as ‘treasures’: foot-long, yellowing clay pipes; fragments of pottery; an extinguished vape – all laid out with great care. All were found on the shores of the Thames by the person proudly manning their stall in an activity known as mudlarking. This is one of the first mudlarking festivals, a weekend special that precedes an exhibition that will open in April, reflecting the rising interest in this esoteric pursuit. Given mudlarking was once the reserve of child labourers, its rise in popularity is somewhat surprising: it turns out it’s more fun when you’re not scraping around in the mud for a living.
You might have thought of all mudlarks as essentially the same: long-haired archaeology nuts with damp, mock-tudor clothes and glasses. But in point of fact the mudlarks themselves are as varied as the debris they find in the river. Some are elderly, geeky looking types. One is in his twenties, with a thick silver chain and a beanie. One is from a waterfaring family, another discovered the activity through social media.
The most frequently discovered objects are clay pipes, of which there are an incredible variety with intricate designs. Other common finds include coins, gems, pieces of pottery and chunks of paving stone. Some of the mudlarkers are obsessed with history; others less so. One man, when asked where his buckles might date from, just says blankly, “they’re really old”. One man has a plastic tub which includes an iPhone 11 (“I’ve found five of these since the beginning of the year”) and gives me a warning about exploding vapes. Apparently once wet they can blow up at any given moment, and often do so at irritating times – whilst being transported in a rubbish bag, for instance, scattering all the recently collected trash.
Mudlarkers photographed on the Thames between Millenium Bridge and Southwark Bridge
“The museum gave this Tudor coin back to me”, says a nice, older lady with unusually long grey hair and two missing front teeth, gesturing to a locket around her neck.
One gruff mudlark hells me he finds “unexploded Nazi bombs all the time. Most people report them to the police but I just throw them straight back into The Drink.” He delivers this information from behind a table sinking under the weight of iron cannon balls and other associated artillery, pieces of chainmail, knives, daggers and a gun.
“Check out these false teeth – my best find so far,” says another lady. The teeth aren’t false though! From their yellowing complexion and rotting interiors it’s clear they were once attached to the roof of a human mouth, probably someone who indulged in tobacco smoking.
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The geography and history of the Thames has formed an almost unique opportunity for mudlarking in London: a tidal river, flanked by accessible beaches, where civilisations have lived for millennia. The fluctuation of the tide – by seven to ten metres twice a day – does the magic, revealing the countless objects that have been protected in dense, anaerobic mud on the longest archaeological site in Britain.
Mudlarking as we know it today dates back to the 19th century, when Victorian children scavenged in the mud for anything they might be able to sell – things like coal, iron, copper nails and rope. It was a miserable and ill-rewarded job, with these kids covered in filth (the river was dirtier than it is now). As such, they were considered some of the lowest members of society.
An oil painting of the Thames in the 17th century
It wasn’t until the 1970s that mudlarking was officially “hobbified”. Towards the end of that decade, the Society of Thames Mudlarks was founded, granting members licences, which are provided by the Port of London Authority (PLA). As a result of collaboration with the society, the Museum of London, founded in 1976, has benefited from tens of thousands of historically important artefacts, and now boasts one of the largest collections of mediaeval pilgrim and secular badges and post-medieval pewter toys. Around 700 artefacts are found each year. Standout finds include a 10th century Viking dagger (aka a scramasax) with the name Osmund engraved on it, a 500-year-old Tudor knitted hat, and a pair of Medieval spectacles.
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Are you tempted to mosey on down to the beach and scramble around for a fragment of clay pipe or a mediaeval badge? Well not so fast – you need a permit first. And these are in short supply.
You might have assumed that picking up tat on the shore of the Thames was fair game, but the area is in fact private property, owned by the PLA. During the pandemic, a mixture of loneliness, a rising interest in niche hobbies and the catalyst of social media converged to make mudlarking particularly popular. Vloggers flocked to the beaches and influencer accounts like London Mudlark and London Madlark have gained some traction. In fact, it got so popular people started to worry that the treasure might run out and the riverbank become ‘crowded’.
In 2018, there were 200 applications for a mudlarking permit. In 2022, there were 5,000 so the PLA suspended the scheme to “protect the integrity and archaeology of the foreshore”. Last week it announced it would reopen applications, having introduced some changes to protect the river. There will now be 4,000 permits granted, which will each last for a year. Mudlarking has gone from a way for starving children to make a dash of dosh to an activity in such high demand it has a waiting list.
In 2018, there were 200 applications for a mudlarking permit. In 2022, there were 5,000 so the PLA suspended the scheme to “protect the integrity and archaeology of the foreshore”
And it’s not just the permit: if you find something more than 300 years old, you must report it to the Museum of London. Mudlarks arrange regular appointments with a Finder Liaison Officer who records the artefacts on the Portable Antiquities Scheme managed by the British Museum.
Those in the know also stress the danger of scrabbling about in tidal water. So your message isn’t ‘go down and have a gander,’ I cheerfully ask Kate Sumnall, the mudlarking exhibition leader at the London Museum? “Absolutely not,” she says in an iron tone. “The Thames is a working river. It’s not entirely a safe environment. It’s muddy. There’s all sorts of rubbish down there. I really don’t encourage people to go down there for themselves.”
For this reason many mudlarkers prefer to use a metal detector, trowel or sieve, rather than the Victorian manner of using one’s bare hands.
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Dreams of finding my own clay pipe crushed, Sumnall points me to a Mudlark with a Permit. Alessio Checconi, a talkative Italian who lives in Vauxhall. He describes becoming a mudlark to me, a landie, as if it was the most natural and self-evident transition in the world. After moving to London, he noticed the river was tidal, and wondered what could be found down on the shore. He’s by no means an amateur however: Checconi has a Phd in archaeology.
He has some enchanting tales about returning long lost artefacts across generations, stories that describe merry bands of mudlarks trotting across the muddy shore of the Thames like amateur detectives.
“We found a collar of a Victorian dog with the name of the street of the owner, so we traced it back. We managed to find a descendant, who we contacted and they had pictures of the great, great, great grandmother. And so the dog collar was returned.” Checconi has also delivered a button to a Victorian tailor’s great, great niece.
“It’s therapeutic for many. It’s obsessive.” He himself goes twice a week, he says. And more when he’s got holiday days. “Spring tides are a bit of an important moment in our calendar.”
Even at 5am, you will find a horde of mudlarkers down there with torches, no matter the weather, no matter the time, screening different areas, hoping to find something trapped in the one spot nobody else was able to access.
“There are a couple of prime locations known as the Roman spot and the mediaeval spot, because the portion of sediment deposited in that period is currently eroding. But realistically, you can find things all over London, because it was always inhabited right across the London Bridge area; that’s where the Romans founded Londinium in the first century.”
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In a way, the Museum of London has stumbled across an ingenious way to get its work done for it. I thought that might at least bother some people, but the mudlarks I spoke to were happy to hand over key finds to the museum which often hands the artefacts back to the finders after documenting the objects.
I’ll confess that I did spend a little time on the foreshore near Canary Wharf – just to see what all the fuss was about. And indeed, it wasn’t hard to find stuff (I might add that I didn’t actually pick anything up – largely because I don’t really care for such artefacts). But what did give me chills was a couple of other mudlarkers (presumably permit holders) who sidled up behind me.
“What are you looking for?” she asked. “Clay pipes.” I said, nonchalantly. “You won’t find any of them,” she chuckled, malevolently.
“Hello,” I said to the woman, who was in her sixties and dressed in an assortment of clashing patterns and wearing a mini backpack with bright prints of cats and dogs. She was with a man sporting long hair and earrings, dressed entirely in black and carrying a vlogging camera. I’d seen him at the exhibition.
“What are you looking for?” she asked. “Clay pipes.” I said, nonchalantly. “You won’t find any of them,” she chuckled, malevolently.
The shore was in fact littered with clay pipes – or fragments of them at least. I saw a piece of pottery with some lettering on, which I thought was cool. I considered picking it up but thought better of it.
Later, I saw the you-won’t-find-any-of-those woman pick it up and show it to her partner. Finders keepers.
There is plenty to discover though. “This is part of living in a city that has been alive and inhabited for over 10,000 years,” says Checconi. “You leave a mark, even if you don’t want to.”
In 500 years, the mudlarkers of the future with their flashy permits may well be laying out your long lost Apple Airpods and Adidas sliders on a stall at a mudlarking exhibition in the London Museum, at which the people of tomorrow will gawp and gape.