“I hate water. It scares me,” says Lara Maiklem. “I just don’t go in.
” We’re standing along the south bank of the Thames, across the water from St Paul’s Cathedral. The waves are lapping close to our feet among the roar of the wind and rolling shingles. It’s ironic that Maiklem, Britain ’s best-known mudlark, feels this way about the Thames, but it’s the treasures the river deposits on its banks that sustain her addiction to this place.
The author of the bestselling Mudlarking: Lost and Found on the River Thames , loves scouring the south bank for old and fascinating objects. “It’s my escape from everything,” she smiles. “Five or six hours staring at mud and I go home a much nicer person.
” The original ‘mudlarks’ were impoverished women, children and old people looking for rags and bone and coal to sell. Nowadays, it’s a permit-only activity for archaeology enthusiasts. When I meet Maiklem, she’s geared up in gloves and knee pads and has already found a gold button that may or may not be centuries old.
Had it been chucked away on land, it would have gradually been buried over time, but the Thames does things differently: objects dating back to Roman times and beyond still appear on its shores each day. “New stuff comes in on every tide,” Maiklem explains. It’s due to the shape of the river channel.
When the 18th and 19th century Londoners needed to pull barges over the water, they flattened the Thames’ natural V-shape by filling t.