welcome

to the TDP newsletter - Spring 2010

Join TDP on site this summer!
We’re planning a packed schedule this summer, making the most of Updates
News
some good low tides and (hopefully!) sunny weather, and you are
welcome to attend as many or as few sessions as you are able.
The aims of the summer season are twofold. Firstly, the fieldwork will ??????????
give all of you the opportunity to consolidate and build upon the initial
training undertaken at Custom House, Isleworth, Charlton, Strand-on- ???????
the-Green, Bankside or Trig Lane, and the fieldwork last summer at
Alderman Stairs, Putney and Bermondsey. Secondly, we are
expanding the number of key sites available for detailed recording
through the work at Burrell’s Wharf, the Tower of London, Greenwich,
Kew, Woolwich and Rotherhithe.
There will also be opportunities to join the FROG teams across London
for work at their key sites.

As always, please keep an eye on the website for updated information

regarding events, fieldwork and volunteer opportunities. I look forward
to seeing you out on site this summer!
The dates and places of the fieldwork are as
follows:

Week 1: Charlton (17-21 May)

Week 2: Burrell’s Wharf (14-18 June)

Week 3: Tower of London (12-16 July)

Week 4: Greenwich Royal Palace (11-16

August)

Week 5: Kew/Strand-on-the-Green (23-29

August)

Week 6: Woolwich (9-14 September)

Week 7: Rotherhithe (25-29 September)

These sessions are open to any FROG

member who has completed Days 1 and 2 of
training; please email Eliott Wragg (Field Officer) at
e.wragg@thamesdiscovery.org to book.

For those of you who have not yet had the chance to complete
Day 2 training, the following weekend dates are available:
Greenwich Royal Palace: 14-15 August
Kew / Strand-on-the-Green: 28-29 August
Rotherhithe: 25-26 September

Nathalie Cohen, Team Leader

The Thames Discovery Programme is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund

and managed by the Thames Estuary Partnership with support from the Thames Explorer Trust
welcome
to the TDP newsletter - Spring 2010

A Visit to the Thames Tunnel

The first significant sub-aqueous tunnel Visiting the tunnel

in the world
I was one of those lucky
By Edna Wolfson enough to make the
visit and the experience
Over the weekend of 12th & 13th March will always remain with
2010, after being closed to the public for me as a very special
145 years, the Thames Tunnel reopened occasion. It made the
as a finale to London’s EAST festival 2010. story of the
Access to the Tunnel, described by achievement of one of
contemporaries as “the 8th wonder of the the greatest
world” was for two days only. It is now engineering triumphs of
closed permanently, and will be used for an the Brunel’s, father and
extension of the East London Railway. son, the building of the
Thames Tunnel, even
Public interest in this event was wildly more vivid. The first of
underestimated, and there were many an underground
disappointed applicants for tickets, which network of tunnels that
was a considerable loss of income. What a has transformed the life of London, the Tunnel eventually
missed opportunity and lack of imagination became part of the London Transport system which we have
by the controlling authority! This stems today. It was lit then, as now, by a string of lights running the
from an agreement between the Greater whole of its 1300 feet length (396.24 metres).
London Assembly and the site developers
that the public open days would only run How were the visits organised?
over two days. Here is a prime example of
what archaeologists often come up against, The tours through the Tunnel from Rotherhithe to Wapping and
when sites due for development are of back again were extremely well organised. They were timed,
public interest. Contrast this with 1852, with groups setting off at 15 minute intervals accompanied by a
when the Tunnel first opened; by the end of guide. With regular stops, our guide talked about specific points
the first week, more than half the of interest, and answered our questions. Walking conditions
population of London had paid to walk what overall were quite comfortable, despite a few damp patches, and
was then being described as “the shining the dry atmosphere was pleasantly surprising. Considering how
avenue of light to Wapping”. demanding it must have been to cope with non-stops tours of
visitors over the two days, the staff worked after us well and
were remarkably patient.

Partly because of the smoothness of the tour organisation, I

found it quite difficult at first to step back in time, to get a sense
of the enormity of the whole project, what was achieved and at
what cost in terms of human lives lost. In physical terms, the
closest I got was in examining and in contrasting those walls
and arches which remained plastered (ornamented with their
Doric columns) and those showing only the brickwork, where
you might imagine the physical toil in their construction.

The Thames Discovery Programme is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund

and managed by the Thames Estuary Partnership with support from the Thames Explorer Trust
welcome
to the TDP newsletter - Spring 2010
Ship Breaking on the Thames

The industry of ship breaking is as

old as that of ship building itself; as
vessels succumbed to the
cumulative pressures of hard use
and the effects of marine life and the
water they were either hulked,
broken up for re-use or even buried.
Ship breaking, however, has never
been as glamorous as building state
of the art modern vessels and has,
therefore, been little documented
and investigated. One of the most
obvious pieces of evidence of ship
breaking is Turner’s fantastic
painting of the Fighting Temeraire
from 1839. From the time of the
close of the Crimean War in 1856 however, we start to get
a little more documentary evidence. This was the great period of the transition from sail to steam. Also the
new explosive shells, used in naval battles were so destructive that there was a need for greater protection
for naval ships. Armour was added to some wooden ships, which were then known as the “Ironclads”, more
ships were built entirely of iron; the best known of these being HMS Warrior. Even before this it had
become increasingly difficult to source mature oak from Britain after the massive Napoleonic shipbuilding
programmes, and hardwood had been sourced from the Baltic and more exotic locations such as West
Africa and the Malabar coast of India.

The old wooden sailing ships became

surplus to requirements as the new
iron ships were introduced.  This
increased the demand for ship
breaking on the Thames, which
coincided with the drop in wooden
ship building. The switch to iron and
later steel vessels meant ships could
now built to hitherto unthinkable
sizes; the Thames shipyards were
not large enough to launch the
largest ships and equally it became
more economic to build iron and
steel ships in the north of England
with close proximity to iron and coal
deposits.

                                                            

Continued…..

The Thames Discovery Programme is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund

and managed by the Thames Estuary Partnership with support from the Thames Explorer Trust
 The Thames Discovery Programme is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund
and managed by the Thames Estuary Partnership with support from the Thames Explorer Trust
welcome
to the TDP newsletter - Spring 2010
Ship Breaking on the Thames Continued…

Ships due for breaking up were first drawn up onto the foreshore and secured. The ship would then rise and fall
with the tide, while its upper structure was dismantled. When the ship would no longer float, work could only be
undertaken at low tide.

There was a demand for the recycled metal fittings,

furniture and even sometimes the ships own crockery
plus of course the wood. The oak and teak from the
ships was seasoned and had many uses, for example:-

Building and repairing ships

Constructing buildings, eg warehouses

Wooden paving for roads, first used in Oxford Street in 1838

Interior furniture for houses                                                                   

Garden furniture                                                                                    

Figure heads, subsequently used outside many naval barracks

Wood for burning                                                                                   

Protection of the Thames river bank - old ships timbers still in use          

Libertys in fact built their new shop on Great

Marlborough Street in 1924 from ship’s timbers.
This dramatic design was constructed from the
timbers of HMS Impregnable and HMS
Hindustan. The main frontage is the same length
as the Hindustan. Old sailing ships were also
used as prisons, smallpox hospitals, naval
training establishments and floating churches.

The biggest ship breaker on the Thames was

Henry Castles & Sons, who were founded in
1861, at their peak they had yards at Charlton,
Woolwich, Rotherhithe and Vauxhall. Over the
years the yards closed, no doubt due to the
lack of wooden ships for breaking and the
problems they had in breaking up iron and
steel ships. The last yard at Woolwich closed
in 1938.

This article is based on some preliminary internet research into ship

breaking on the Thames in London. If you have any further information on Castles and ship
breaking, Eliott Wragg and I would be very glad to hear from you.

Hugh Dulley

The Thames Discovery Programme is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund

and managed by the Thames Estuary Partnership with support from the Thames Explorer Trust
 The Thames Discovery Programme is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund
and managed by the Thames Estuary Partnership with support from the Thames Explorer Trust
welcome
to the TDP newsletter - Spring 2010

SAVE THE DATE!

Events

"Along the Black Waterfront"

Riverpedia Seminar

26th April 2010 6pm – 7pm

Room 612 Institute of Archaeology,

UCL

Seminar on the history of the Black

community in London and the river
Thames, with author and researcher on
Black history, S. I Martin.

S. I Martin is the author of Britain's Slave

Trade, and three novels, Incomparable
World, Jupiter Williams, and Jupiter
Amidships.

To book a ticket, please either visit our

event booking website directly:

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/
610549169

call us on:

0207 566 0310

or email us at:

riverpedia@thamesdiscovery.org

Find out more about the Riverpedia

project on the Thames Discovery
Programme website:

www.thamesdiscovery.org/riverpedia

The Thames Discovery Programme is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund

and managed by the Thames Estuary Partnership with support from the Thames Explorer Trust
welcome
to the TDP newsletter - Spring 2010
An Alien Invader in the Thames. SAVE THE DATE!

Rose Baillie Memoryscape Walk in Greenwich

Man is not the only species making an impact on the Thames’ 1st May 2010 11am – 1pm
banks. I recently attended a joint meeting organised by the
National History Museum and the Linnean Society, at Burlington Meeting at Cutty Sark DLR
House, on the Chinese Mitten Crab in the Thames, and whether it
could be commercially fished. A TDP Guided Walk with a Difference!
This sound walk will be guided by your
The Chinese Mitten Crab (Eriocheir sinensis) is an invasive, mainly iPod, CD or Mp3 player (we can lend CD
fresh water species that has boomed in the Thames in recent players of you haven’t got one) and
years. It is tough, active, aggressive and an enthusiastic burrower
features the voices of people whose lives
into banks, often causing severe erosion. Eg. at Chiswick Eyot and
Syon Park. There are seasonal migrations up and down the have been entwined with the river
Thames by adults and larvae, to and from the spawning areas in Thames.
the Thames Estuary. At such times it can be so numerous that
they can block intakes to water treatment works and the like. It is This walk begins at maritime Greenwich,
called the Mitten Crab because the adults have curious, hairy one of the most historic areas of riverside
outgrowths on their main claws. FROGS in central London may in London. The walk explores the hidden
come across juveniles under rocks at low tide, or their discarded history of London's docks, once the
shells, that are shed periodically as they grow and moult. busiest docks in the world. The picture
postcard, tourist views of Greenwich are
quickly left behind to explore the strange
quaysides and deserted industrial
landscape of the Greenwich peninsula.
The walk is narrated by the people who
used to work in the docks and wharfs in
London. Their stories are taken from a
unique collection of 200 interviews
gathered when the docks fell into disuse,
which is now stored at the Museum in
Docklands.

The collection recalls the working life of a

port that once had a workforce of 100,000
Female Mitten Crab carrying eggs. © Paul Clark (Natural History Museum) people - a culture that has almost
completely disappeared in a living
They are considered a delicacy in many SE Asian countries and memory.
one means of control might be licensed fishing, as happens in
Holland. The meeting heard reports from researchers about the For tickets visit our event booking
possibility of Thames crabs carrying liver flukes, Vibio Sp bacteria website:
and various forms of industrial pollution. On the whole they look as
safe as any other shell-fish. The main problem is that the peak http://www.eventbrite.com/event/
season for trapping the sought-after migrating adult crabs 617691532
coincides with the season for migrating eels, whose slumping
population is causing grave concern. call
The Mitten Crab is not the only alien invader. In recent years the 0207 566 0310,
North American Signal Crayfish, (Pacifastacus leniusculu), another
enthusiastic bank burrower, has almost driven the native Crayfish or email
to extinction in most of England.
l.richardson@thamesdiscovery.org
The Thames Discovery Programme is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund
and managed by the Thames Estuary Partnership with support from the Thames Explorer Trust
welcome
to the TDP newsletter - Spring 2010

The Thames Discovery Programme is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund

and managed by the Thames Estuary Partnership with support from the Thames Explorer Trust
welcome
to the TDP newsletter - Spring 2010

The Thames Discovery Programme is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund

and managed by the Thames Estuary Partnership with support from the Thames Explorer Trust