![]() ![]() "So this is handmade, they date from about 1400 to 1800," she says, picking up one of the pins. It's got some quite large inclusions in it, so it could be a piece of Roman pottery. Like a mysterious brown thing I dig out of the mud by my feet. Maiklem been mudlarking for more than fifteen years, and her book is a detailed tour of both the Thames and the treasures you can find there. Writer Lara Maiklem is one of these modern-day mudlarks - and in fact, her new book is called Mudlark: In Search of London's Past Along the River Thames. Today, people still pick things out of the river mud, but now it's the history they're looking for. They were called mudlarks, and their work was dirty and dangerous. It's a bright, blowy day - seagulls are wheeling overhead, barges pass by in the background, and everywhere I look, there are little fragments of history.Ĭenturies ago, poor children scraped a living here, scavenging among piles of bones, household junk and worse that washed down from the city. Or rather, several worlds, layered on top of each other and jumbled together in the slightly stinky river mud. On the north side of the river Thames, between a pub and a railway bridge, there's a rickety staircase down to another world. ![]()
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