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"There are two things scarce matched in the universe. The sun in Heaven and the Thames on Earth" - Walter Raleigh.
"Has anybody tasted a swan?" - SELFS attendee, Old King's Head, off Borough High Street, London, 14th March 2019.
The Thames, it seems, really does attract both quotations and questions that range from the sublime to the ridiculous. It was a Thursday night in March and I was sat in the function room above The Old King's Head near London Bridge station for a SELFS talk, Myths & Mysteries of the Thames, that was being given by Robert Stephenson, a self described 'City guy' who works as a tour leader in both Brompton and Kensal Green cemeteries.
SELFS has been, perhaps, my find of the year. I regularly write of my adventures at London Skeptics, Greenwich Skeptics, and the London Fortean Society and, at these events, I'd regularly hear mention of SELFS. It stands for South East London Folklore Society and the host, George Nigel Hoyle, holds his events on the second Thursday of each month upstairs in The Old King's Head. A pub I'd, just last August, drunkenly celebrated my 50th birthday in and one, in the early noughties I'd attended, with my pal Richard Sanderson, my first ever London Skeptics event.
But, until January this year, I'd not got round to turning up for one of their evenings. Then, on David Bowie's birthday they hosted Is David Bowie a God? (anything other than an answer in the affirmative was sure to create a scene) and me and my mate Simon went along and stood at the back. On Valentine's Day I attended (solo - it's alright, don't cry for me) a talk about love tokens and rituals. Both were excellent but for reasons I won't bore you with, okay - I got too pissed, I didn't blog about them.
I was determined not to make that mistake with Myths & Mysteries of the Thames so, once I'd negotiated the packed downstairs of the pub (you could choose between Chelsea spanking Dynamo Kiev on two screens or live footage of the ongoing Brexit clusterfuck (just a couple of miles upstream)) on a smaller TV, I grabbed myself a Doom Bar and headed to an equally packed upstairs. They were turning people away.
It's only right and proper that Londoners should be interested in learning about the Thames. It provides them, and many others (the tributaries cover five thousand square miles), with their energy, their (relative) prosperity, and it's their gateway to the world. Not only was London, not so long ago, the world's biggest city - it was also the world's biggest port, and as such the history of it, let alone the mythology surrounding it, has became far more vast than the river's comparatively modest length would suggest.
One or two topics cropped up that covered similar territory to Nathalie Cohen's 2016 talk at the London Fortean Society, Religion and Ritual by the River:Archaeology in the Inter-Tidal Zone but (a) that was back in November 2016 so a refresher wouldn't hurt and (b) they didn't double up as much as they could have so I wasn't concerned. Robert started with that Walter Raleigh quote, now etched into the wall abutting the river just a few hundred yards away, and told of Raleigh bringing potatoes and tobacco into Britain via the Thames so that we could have chips'n'fags. But he soon took us back a lot further still.
Back to a time when the Thames was much wider and much shallower and each bank was dotted with numerous islands. One of these islands, Thorney Island, is where the Houses of Parliament now stand, in an area described by 8c Mercian king Offa (he of the famous dyke) as a 'locus terribilis' (which shouldn't need much translating). Legend says the mythical 2c British king Lucius built a church there and that five hundred years later it received no less a visitor than Saint Peter himself (even though he'd been dead more than half a millennium by then).
Perhaps those five hundred years of stony sleep had upset Peter's internal GPS because when he arrived in London he found himself in Lambeth on the wrong side of the river and had to be rowed across the Thames by a local fisherman ("'ere', you'll never guess who I had in the back of me boat last night?"). This event is still marked with an annual presentation of fish in Westminster.
Stories abound of Arthurian legend in Westminster, of Camelot myths, of Tennyson's Lady of Shalott, and of Guinevere's 'honour' being preserved by Lancelot swimming across the Thames still on his horse but, outside the realms of myth, the first reported events on Thorney Island/Westminster are the building of a major religious house there in the tenth century and Edward the Confessor stationing himself there when he succeeded Harthacnut to the throne in 1042.
Less than fifty years later William the Conqueror (or William I to those who live within the square mile, he never conquered the City apparently) began work on what would become the Tower of London a few miles downstream and, of course, a mythology surrounds that building also.
There was (you may disagree) a legendary Pembrokeshire king, Bran the Blessed (not to be confused with Brian Blessed), who somehow managed to live for eighty years after having his head cut off. When Bran finally died his giant head (oh, he was a giant too, as well as a king) was carried to London and buried in the Bryn Gwyn where the Tower of London now stands. He was buried with his head facing France to guard against invasion but when King Arthur exhumed Bran's head and lobbed it into the Thames, England became (it is believed, but probably not by many) vulnerable again.
As a spooky little aside the name Bran is usually translated from Welsh into raven and we all know who the Tower of London's most famous residents are now.
Bran's is not the only skull found in the Thames. It's operated as a watery resting place for many people for many hundreds of years. Robert touched on theories of Celtic head cults and simple riverside burials but this talk was flowing as fast as the river on a stormy day and we didn't have time to admire the view before we were hearing about all the swords, daggers, and axes (made from bronze, iron, and even stone - showing just how long this river has been fought over) that have been pulled from the Thames. Votive offerings like the Battersea Shield too.
Skulls weren't just in the river. They 'welcomed' you to it too. The south side of London Bridge would, for over three hundred years, regularly display the heads of around thirty traitors (or others deemed to have done something equally unsavoury) skewered on to spikes, or pikes, for all to see. The first person to get this treatment was Scottish independence leader William Wallace in 1305 and the last, in 1678, was one William Staley, who it is now believed was the victim of a papish plot.
For hundreds of years London Bridge was the only bridge across the Thames in London (hence it's name). It was the nearest place to the estuary that was able, at that point, to be bridged and its location was what dictated the position of London. The first London Bridge, completed in 1209, was only twelve feet wide and had a chapel halfway across it that could accommodate both horse riders and pedestrians on the bridge and boatmen beneath it. The chapel was dedicated to Thomas Becket so it became a suitable, and soon a popular, place for pilgrims to begin their journeys to Canterbury.
By the time, the Thames reaches London Bridge it's the wide, expansive river we know and love today but the Thames doesn't manage this all of its own accord. It relies on about fifty tributaries (many of them with their own tributaries and many of them with their own tributaries and so on and so on) along its course. When the Cherwell flows into the Thames at Oxford it increases the size of the river by a third.
Rivers like the Peck (Peckham), the Wandle (Wandsworth), and the Brent (Brentford) have given parts of London their names but many of the tributaries in London are now underground. Butchers were throwing their waste in and people using them as toilets and they started to really honk so they were covered up.
At one point people used to scavenge in these underground rivers. They were really nothing more than sewers (which was a great shame as some had once been spectacular, The Fleet for example once had a Bridge of Sighs built by Christopher Wren over it) and that's perhaps how the stories of sewer pigs took hold. The belief being that a pregnant sow had somehow managed to get herself stuck in the Fleet somewhere near Hampstead and that her piglets had grown feral in the underground river. Though, how a pig living in an underground river would be anything other than feral it's hard to gauge. Civilisation can't have been an option, really.
When a map was made of all London ghost sightings some time ago it seemed to have a remarkable correspondence with the course of the underground rivers of London (the reason for this, a helpful Brockley man piped up during the Q&A, was probably due to the distant rumbling sound of the still flowing rivers and the miasmas that can often be seen early in the morning through grilles over these waterways).
The confluence of the Lea and the Thames is the site of London's only lighthouse, the Trinity Buoy Wharf lighthouse. Strictly speaking it is, or at least was, a centre built in 1864 for testing lighthouses.
It's far from the only architectural peculiarity that flanks the Thames as it flows through the UK capital. Cleopatra's Needle was first erected in 1500BC in Heliopolis before moving to Alexandria (both in Egypt) and, finally, to London in 1819. Six sailors died getting it to London and when it finally arrived it was discovered that its planned location, Parliament Square, was too boggy for it to be installed safely.
It eventually found its permanent home on the Embankment and a time capsule was planted at its base containing a bizarre assortment of items that'll make you wonder about the workings of the Victorian mind. There was a picture of Queen Victoria, pictures of the twelve most beautiful ladies of the time (Vicky obviously didn't make the cut), cigars, coins, a map, and, er, a hydraulic jack!
Soon this new exciting London landmark took on a practical use that many others before and since have. It became a popular suicide spot. But then the Thames is, of course, full of death. That's the main point of the talk. If it's not suicide, it's murder. If it's not murder, it's some horrible accident.
In the past, bodies fished from the river were taken to Dead Man's Hole under Tower Bridge. These days they're taken to Wapping. Which seems apt as Wapping's got a long, and bloody, history when it comes to watery deaths.
Execution Dock in Wapping was used for over four centuries to execute pirates, smugglers, and mutineers. It was the Admiralty's place of execution and the Admiralty had jurisdiction over any British merchant ship in any waters anywhere in the World. Commit a crime on the high seas in the Caribbean or in the South Seas and you could be brought back to Wapping for a gibbeting.
Which consisted of being strung up and chained to a stake for three tides to die of either drowning, thirst, or starvation. You didn't get a funeral (that was part of your punishment) but you did get a decent crowd out to watch you die. At one point Wapping High Street had thirty-six pubs ensuring a loud, raucous, and drunken crowd could witness your death.
Captain Kidd, who'd been deemed guilty of piracy in the late 17c, had a particularly gruesome end in 1701. He was gutted, tarred, put in an iron frame, and left to disintegrate. Presumably as a warning to other potential lawbreakers. The area now still has a pub named after him and if you're prepared to look carefully you can even find a gibbet standing (thankfully no longer in use).
Gibbeting was made illegal in 1834 but forty-two years later, in 1878, the Thames saw one of the most deadliest incidents in its history. The Princess Alice paddle steamer was returning from Gravesend full of holiday makers. Attempting to cut a corner on the river in Woolwich, the Alice hit a coal ship and, being made of wood, pretty much fell apart. 75,000,000 gallons of sewage had just been allowed to be released down the river and this met with the people who'd not long earlier been safe aboard a paddle steamer. Over 600 died. Nobody's sure of the exact number. Nobody had checked anybody on to the boat.
One hundred years later in 1978 a Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov, came to an altogether more sinister end on Waterloo Bridge when he was stabbed with a ricin poisoned umbrella and the next bridge along, Blackfriars, was where the body of Robert Calvi, God's banker was found hanging with thousands of pounds stuffed in his pockets four years later. Coincidentally enough (or perhaps not, this is widely believed to have been a Mafia hit), Calvi had previously belonged to the 'frati neri' illegal masonic lodge in Italy. Frati neri being the Italian for Blackfriars.
I was enjoying all these tales of death and disaster a bit too much so, perhaps, it was time for some light relief. With the tale of The Lord Noel-Buxton, Robert Stephenson did not disappoint. The Member for Agriculture and Fisheries, after learning of stories that Julius Caesar had once forded the Thames, set about trying to prove that this ford had been near Westminster. By trying to walk across it.
He was a tall man - so that helped - but if his quest was already inadvisable it was made more so by attempting the feat in his ordinary, considerably less than waterproof, clothes. He got about forty yards out into the river before falling into a dredging channel. Luckily for him, he was able to swim to safety. It's probably best to assume, now, you can't walk across the Thames near Westminster even if London is believed to be ascending an average of a foot a century!
The best way of getting about (on the river) is getting a boat and paintings by Canaletto show the Lord Mayor's Show which began on the water in the fifteenth century. Over the years many of the livery companies relinquished their barges and the pomp and ceremony now takes place on the streets and lanes (but never roads, the word road is said to be so (relatively) new it's not used in the City) of the Square Mile.
One person who's not relinquished her barge is the Queen. In fact she's recently had a second one made for her proving, once again, that when it comes to austerity we're absolutely not all in it together. Contrary to popular belief, the Queen does not own ALL the swans on the Thames. Just most of them (though she does own all the sturgeon). The unmarked ones. Two livery companies (the vintners and the dyers) have possession over the others and so they know which are theirs and which belong to the House of Windsor they make nicks on their beaks, or mark them. It's apparently painless to the swans and they get a free health check as well as being weighed at the same time! Oh, and they use rings now instead of marked beaks.
The swans used to stretch from Henley-on-Thames to London Bridge but now, according to our speaker, can only be found between Windsor and Pangbourne. That's something that, like his odd use of fonts and graphic design that could come from the day the Internet was invented, could be in need of a little updating. Maybe I'll do some research. Any excuse for a walk!
I'd quite like to walk up to the Thames Barrier which is something, remarkably, I've not done yet. The barrier was opened in 1984 (and immortalised in Alexei Sayle's novelty hit 'Ullo John! Got a New Motor?') and it's believed that if it were to fail at high tide central London, or at least parts of it, would be engulfed in a tidal wave. With climate change and rising sea levels it seems inevitable that at some point in the reasonably near future there will have to be a new, and bigger, barrier built further out towards the estuary.
I'd be sad if London was to disappear underwater but I don't think it's going to happen just yet. So for now I'm going to continue enjoying walking along the river and, hopefully, continue enjoying talks about it. Towards the end of his hour, Mr Stephenson passed round a bottle of Thames water for people to either drink neat or pour into their beer.
I declined (many did not) but I certainly did raise my glass, along with everybody else in the room, when he proposed a toast to Old Father Thames himself. It had been an absolutely fascinating talk and I've not even had room to tell you about the nineteenth century obelisks of Southend, Richard the Lionheart's connection with Staines, how the palisades of Brentford gave that town an edge when it competed with Uxbridge for the status of Middlesex's county town, or how Spanish and Portuguese sailors used to carry out a ceremony called 'Flogging Judas' in the mid eighteenth century.
I had, however, learnt that Teddington's name simply means 'tide in town' (there are tidal markers along the footpath in Teddington that show where the Thames starts to become tidal), how George V had imported sand to the banks of the river near Tower Bridge to create King's Reach (an inner city beach that saw people swimming and building sandcastles), and, perhaps best of all, how the balustrades of Westminster Bridge, at the right time of the day, create a shadowy line of cocks along the pavement all the way to the Houses of Parliament. A comment on Boris Johnson I like to think.
The Q&A afterwards was equally fascinating and I've incorporated the most salient points into the above text. Parish notices informed us about upcoming events at Crossbones graveyard and David V Barrett of the London Fortean Society spoke about future events his group are running. I'll be trying to get along to as many of them as possible, I also hope to see Robert Stephenson speaking again (he's got upcoming talks on bodysnatching, crypts, and the coronation), but I shall definitely be at SELFS on the second Thursday in April for their talk on the lost Gods of London. I've been three times so far and each one has been absolutely wonderful.
Oh, and nobody there had eaten a swan. Even if one punter seemed assured that the cygnets definitely tasted better than the adult swans.
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