The foreshore on Saturday

I was supposed to be going along to do some survey work with the Surrey Docks Farm Research Project today.  It was cancelled due to the torrential rain and is now rescheduled for 26th October.

Yesterday, unsure if I would be able to make it today anyway, I went  down to the Thames foreshore at low tide to see if I could find anything to contribute to their search.  I used the watermans stairs at Surrey Docks Farm, walking as far as the Hilton and back.  I was in hiking boots, not wellies, so I didn't venture out very far into the mud, which can ooze well over ankle level. Somehow I still ended up looking as though I was wearing asymmetrical blue warpaint when I arrived home. 

I wanted to have a closer poke at a long cylinder that I had noticed last time (photo above), to see if it had any markings, but although I cleaned it off there was nothing to be seen.  It weighs an absolute ton. The cylinder itself is undamaged and may have its original contents in tact. On closer inspection it has connections at both rounded ends, so it may have had taps and hoses.  It continues to intrigue.

Brick from Marston Vale works, Bedfordshire

As well as bagging a bit of London stock with very characteristic burned holes, more for sentimental reasons than anything (I became quite fond of it whilst researching it), I trundled around amongst the brick that was dumped there after the Second World War.  The brick dump was an exercise of clearance following the wholesale destruction of the Downtown area during the Blitz.  I'm vaguely interested in where building materials came from and how far they traveled from brick factory to building, so I took some photographs of factory names fired into the brick and will look into that a little more.  Many of the bricks are too water-worn to be of use, but in some cases the manufacturer names are incredibly clear.  Liberally scattered around are red bricks from Marston Vale (Bedfordshire), mixed red and yellow "Phorpres" examples from the London Brick Company (Peterborough) and yellow bricks from Milton Hall (Essex) brickworks.

Thorn pipe with leaf motif on seams

The real find of the day was in the clay pipe department. I found two interesting pieces, as well as a lot of short pieces of unmarked stem.  The first of these pieces was a very plain bowl, with a heel and a centimeter or so of stem, without markings.  From its shape alone it is difficult to date.  Pipes with bowls of this shape were made from the 17th to the early 19th Centuries.  The other piece is certainly later in date and it is, superbly, completely in tact.  I found it immediately under the Farm's foreshore.  As you can see from the photograph, it has little decorative bumps on the bowl and stem called "thorns" (pipes featuring this are referred to as thorn pipes).  There are two identical lines of leaf motif, the outer line partly damaged, from the base of the bowl to the top along each of the seams at opposite ends, in line with the pipe stem.  Both were common features of late 19th Century pipes, as was the very short length.  There are no manufacturer markings, which is real shame, and may be because the area immediately beneath the bowl has been damaged.

Sherd of a large vessel, with glazed interior

I also picked up two bits of ceramic, just because I liked them, and a piece of jet black rock that I've now posted to my friendly local geological expert to sort out for me (photo below).  There are all sorts of different types of stone scattered over the Thames foreshore, including piles of flint, but this is particularly distinctive, jet black with percussion ripples, and looks remarkably like a rather rough form of obsidian or even basalt. There was nothing remotely similar that I could see anywhere else along the foreshore, but I daresay it will turn out to be something very tame!  Rocks have an unfriendly habit of looking as though they may be something really exciting before turning out to be simply a different colour or form of something fairly bog standard. I'll report back when I know for sure what it is.  

Pottering around in the mud and stone is far from glamorous (somehow when I arrived home, wild-haired, my face was liberally painted with blueish mud, making me look more like Braveheart than a respectable local citizen), and none of the finds that usually turn up have any financial value, but the odds and ends that have emerged on the few occasions that I've walked along the foreshore have been endlessly interesting.  It is a terrific way to spend some spare time. 

As I was returning to the steps back to the real world, one of the modern Mississippi-style stern-wheeled paddle steamers went downriver.  I had no idea that there were any of these still carrying tourists on the Thames, although I've seen them moored at Tower Bridge.  It looked distinctly odd passing Canary Wharf!  The paddles are purely decorative, of course.

Brick from Milton Hall brickworks, Essex

Clay tobacco pipe fragments from the Thames foreshore

Three unusually long pieces of clay pipe
from the Thames foreshore at Rotherhithe

Yesterday's pootle along the Thames foreshore between Surrey Docks Farm and the Hilton produced an awful lot of clay pipe, most of which consisted of small pieces of the shaft of pipes, some of which were very heavily weathered, but there were some bits of more interest.  A couple of the shaft pieces were unusually long.  Because most don't normally survive the battering of the Thames tides, they are usually only an inch or two long, but I stumbled across two that were over 6 inches long. One piece of a clay pipe shaft was decorated. 

I also found two pipe bowls, one of which was marked with a manufacturer's stamp ("EW").   I still haven't found who or when this stamp represents, but hope to do so shortly. I wanted to record them immediately before cleaning them up so that I had a record of them as they were when they were found and I hadn't washed my hands when I took the photos, so apologies for the poor quality of the shots, and the fact that my fingers and nails are glazed with mud!  I will take more photos of them when they have been cleaned.

As I posted yesterday, there's a small but helpful section about clay pipes on the Museum of London website and here on another of their pages.

Three short pieces of clay pipe and a
piece of decorated ceramic

Three pieces of heavily water-worn clay pipe,
where the shaft meets the bowl at the heel

My very dirty fingers holding the bowl of
one clay pipe to show the base of the heal,
marked EW (and again below)

A clay pipe bowl, with markings at the
base, either accidental or deliberate

A decorated piece of clay pipe shaft

A typical piece of unmarked clay pipe shaft with
the remains of the heal and the beginning
of the bowl

Update re the Surrey Docks Farm Heritage Project

Today the Surrey Docks Farm Heritage Project took another step towards piecing together the various chunks of data about the site now occupied by Surrey Docks Farm, and its foreshore area.   So far, apart from an inspection visit, the project has focused on archival research, which has produced some excellent information about the site, particularly during the period when the London River Ambulance receiving-station was based at South Wharf (more commonly known as Acorn Wharf).   Other research paths have also been identified and are being pursued by both the experts and the volunteers on the project.  I will produce a single post when the work has been finished, but I thought that a couple of photographs of the work in progress might be of interest.

Today's work focused on uncovering, cleaning, photographing and planning some of the many wooden remains of ships, the River Amulance receiving-station's pier and other features on the Thames foreshore, all revealed at low tide.  I should have taken some "before" photos, because if you weren't actually there you wouldn't believe what sort of state all of these wooden features were in before they were uncovered, washed and brushed to remove the thick, cloying mud so that the features of wood and fittings could be seen and recorded. Most conspicuously, vast wooden posts that once supported the ambulance station pier remain without any sign of serious rot setting in, but the remains of a flat-bottomed barge and other less informative wooden remains were examined.

A group of volunteers was organized into a useful team by the friendly and expert Thames Discovery Programme people, with the assistance of two co-opted Museum of London staff members, who had been persuaded to give up their Sunday afternoon to help out.  As someone who can't communicate anything without the aid of PowerPoint, I was so impressed at how well they took a bunch of amateurs and turned them into an effective, if slightly hesitant, group of assistants.  They are a great bunch of people, professionals and volunteers alike.

We worked for about two and a half hours, starting before low tide and working until the tide started to come in.  It is amazing how quickly the tide creeps up on you.  With my back to the river, helping one of the Thames Discovery people plan one of the wooden features in the mud, I was quite happy to keep going to complete the job until it was pointed out that the water would soon be lapping at my ankles!  

Mudlarking is a time-honoured Thames activity, and in addition to the more formal work of revealing and cleaning structures, wandering along the foreshore produced a fascinating collection of bottles, ceramics, bits of clay pipe, and anchors, deliberately halved, which served as mooring weights (and I presume were marked by buoys).  There was also a staggering carpet of bricks that had been cleared from sites bombed during the Blitz when Rotherhithe, targeted with great ease because of the moonlight reflecting off the Surrey Commercial Docks, suffered really appalling damage. 

Once you begin to understand what you're looking at, through the eyes of the people who know what they're talking about, the Thames foreshore begins to reveal a very multi-layered account of itself. Truly fascinating.

Various passers-by came to watch and asked questions, and the Thames Discovery people were welcoming, friendly and informative, which was really great to see.

It was a good day, if a very muddy one!  I was somewhat impressed, when I arrived home, at how much of the Thames foreshore was liberally plastered to my face, hands, hair and clothing. Thank goodness for my 10-year Tetanus jab!  My wellies were a sight to behold, and I created something of a stir on my walk home, looking as though I had just come from an Olympic-standard mud wrestling contest. 

As ever, click on the photos to see the bigger version, which may help you to pick out some of the details.

Related posts:

Surrey Docks Farm Heritage Project starts up    
Research taking place into the heritage of the Surrey Docks Farm site

Surrey Docks Farm heritage project starts up

I went up to the Surrey Docks Farm earlier today to attend the kick-off meeting for the heritage project, the purpose of which is the investigation of the heritage of the site, known at different times as Wells Shipyard, Barnards Wharf, Acorn Wharf and South Wharf.  

Quite a lot is known about the site when it was run by the Wells and Barnard families, but, perhaps surprisingly, less is known about the period from 1888 until the establishment of the Farm in 1986.  In the early 1880s the Metropolitan Asylums Board purchased the site to set up a river ambulance station, established to diagnose and ship out smallpox cases to isolation hospitals downriver.  However, there are some large gaps in the history of the site, particularly in the post war years, and one of the aims of the project is to find out more about the site during the periods when data is not readily available.  

Looking down at the foreshore at low tide with the fieldwork team, prior to the actual survey work, it is remarkable how much survives in the mud, and what can be gleaned from the surviving remains.  

The organizers have already done some excellent research, pulling together documents, images, maps and aerial photographs of the site, all of which help to chart its changes and pinpoint different uses. I am chuffed to bits to be involved in the project, and am really looking forward to contributing to the group's research and finding out more about what remains in the ground.  Everyone is so keen, and there are lots of different skills being brought to bear on the task.

If you grew up around here or worked here and have knowledge about the site, it would be most welcome.  See the above poster for information and contact details.

The Wells yard 1816

The site in 1843

Ordnance Survey Map 1868

Ordnance Survey Map 1894

 

Ordnance Survey Map 1914

Research taking place into the heritage of the Surrey Docks Farm site

Excavation taking place on the Thames foreshore
at Bermondsey Wall West

I was just having a look at the Surrey Docks Farm website to check out their latest news, and found that a Heritage Lottery Fund project is being rolled out at the site of the farm.

With the assistance of Thames Discovery (which is holding tomorrow's Stephen Humphrey lecture about Rotherhithe), they are looking into the history of the site that the farm now occupies, and will be carrying out archaeological surveys in the immediate area to see if more clues are available about the site's past.

They would welcome any input from anyone who may know more about the site's earlier roles as a shipyard, timber yard, river ambulance station and its uses in the poorly documented period between 1945 and 1985.  Any sort of information will be welcome, whether you have personal memories or can tell them stories you have heard from family members or friends.     

It sounds like a really excellent project.

Have a look at the news update on the Surrey Docks Farm website for more information and contact details:

http://www.surreydocksfarm.org.uk/surrey-docks-farm-bringing-our-thames-heritage-to-life/

Pure self indulgence on my part:
A sleepy June piglet at Surrey Docks Farm