Earlier this week, Lara Maiklem climbed to the foreshore of the River Thames at low tide to spend a few hours gently floating on its surface in pursuit of a 20-year obsession.
Known on social media as the London Mudlark and the author of three books in the snap, Maiklem is at the forefront of a growing number of people who spend their free time combing through the mud of the capital’s river in search of historical artefacts.
Maiklem said: “I have spent the last 20 years moving down to the muddy, cold, smelly foreshore. It is obsessive, addictive, hypnotic. Once you start, it just pulls you back.
“I go there to get away from everything. And it’s a place where you can time travel. You get this sense of the past locked in the mud, sometimes for thousands of years.”
Maiklem started posting her finds on social media in 2012. Since then, enthusiasm for the pastime has grown to such an extent that the port of London authority (PLA) had to stop issuing licenses for mud fireworks. Between 2018 and 2022, the demand for permits rose from 200 per year to more than 5,000. The PLA was forced to act to “protect the integrity and archeology of the foreshore”, it said.
This week the London museum, which provides a home for important finds on the Thames foreshore, announced a major exhibition, Secrets of the Thames: Mudlarking London’s Lost Treasureswhich opens next April.
Describing the tidal river as a “lifetime capsule”, the museum has promised to tell the story of how generations of mud larks uncovered thousands of years of human history through finds ranging from clay pipes and trap teeth to a Viking-era dagger and a medieval gold ring with the inscription “For love I was given”.
Kate Sumnall, the exhibition’s curator, said: “We are so familiar with the Thames just flowing peacefully through the middle of the city. Many people don’t give it a second thought. It has always been there, the city grew up around it, millions of people lived next to it. And bits and pieces of their life were dropped or thrown in, and were preserved in the mud.”
Mudlarking on the Thames foreshore was first recorded around 200 years ago, but Sumnall said the practice probably dated back to the 19th century. “It tended to be people living in extreme poverty scrambling around trying to find usable scraps that could be sold,” Sumnall said. Children were often sent to search for items to sell.
“In more recent years, it’s evolved into a practice where people get satisfaction from the search, the find, and then knowing that you’re the first person to touch something in potentially hundreds or even thousands of years.”
Mudlarking soared during the Covid pandemic, when organized and social activities were banned. But social media also fueled interest as posts about porcupines’ discoveries took off.
Most finds are “everyday, ordinary things that people have thrown away or lost”, said Maiklem. “For me, that’s the beauty of it – these are ordinary people who have disappeared from history, but they may have left something behind.
“But also the river is such a beautiful place to go. In a frantic city, this is a place where you can sit and do nothing. You can look into it, and you can give it your problems, and it will take them away.”
Maiklem visits the foreshore once or twice a week. “I would spend five to six hours literally staring at mud. By the time I’m done, I’m a much nicer person.”
Artifacts have been unearthed from prehistoric communities that camped, hunted and farmed along the river, the Romans who founded Londinium, and Vikings who traveled by water to expand their territory.
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Maiklem’s favorite discoveries are shoes. “They keep the essence of the individual, they are so personal. When you pull a shoe out of the mud and you can see those little toe prints and the heel print of someone who lived 500 years ago, it’s like reaching back through time. There’s something about shoes that sends a shiver down my spine.”
Among items to be exhibited at the London museum’s exhibition is a well-preserved knitted woolen cap that was caught in the river mud some 500 years ago. “We’ve all had those moments where our hats fly off in the wind, especially when you’re near water,” Sumnall said.
“We also have an absolutely stunning, beautiful gold ring dating from around 1450, with a beautiful pink stone set in it. It is really a modern design as it is a solid band with an oval gemstone set inside that solid band. If you saw it on a person today, it wouldn’t look out of place.
“It has some letters on the outside, and the translation is: ‘For love I was given’. So it was something given between lovers, perhaps at the point of engagement. And it is now in as good condition as it was when it was given.
“So what is it doing in the river? Is it often cold at the river, and someone took off a glove with the ring flying away too? Or was it a lovers’ argument, the end of a relationship, the ring thrown into the water? Someone who says, ‘That’s it, I’m done’.”
The PLA said the Thames embankment is London’s longest-running archaeological site, with finds dating back to 4500 BC. Mudlarks, which paid £106 for a three-year license until 2022, must report all finds 300 years old or more to the London museum.
Of the approximately 5,000 items reported to the museum each year, approximately 700 are recorded and a small number are incorporated into its collections.
