The first thing to say is that I am a mudlark, licensed by the Port of London Authority to comb the foreshores of the Thames at low tide, searching for trash and treasure. Very often my finds fall into both of these camps: broken clay pipes and pot shards are as exciting to me as medieval spurs (I haven’t actually found one of these yet and it’s second from top on my wish list) and Roman rings (I have found one of these. Well, the top of one.)
Mudlarking is about history and the challenge of uncovering what the mud and water have been camouflaging for hundreds of years, not about money. Having said that, some mudlarks do make spectacular finds, of course: Roman statues, bishops’ rings, amethyst seals, intact Bellarmine jugs and even a complete ball and chain are just a small sample of the treasures pulled from the mud in recent years.
There is an awful lot to find. Think about it: for millennia, people have been discarding their belongings into the waters of the Thames, sometimes wittingly, sometimes not. Amphorae have been lost from Roman ships; medieval sinners seeking atonement have lost their pilgrim badges in its concealing waters; seventeenth century Dutch and German sailors have flung empty wine jars bedecked with images of bearded men from the decks of their ships; Victorian revellers have knocked back their pints and smoked their complementary clay pipeful of tobacco and then simply lobbed the pipe into the river—the equivalent of a modern-day dog end. And every day, the obliging tide reveals objects hidden for hundreds of years and clears others away. Quite literally, you never know what you will find.
The next thing is that I am also a writer of children’s books. My Gangster School series is published in the UK, the Netherlands and Germany and is currently being translated into Turkish for a 2020 release. I’m also working on a new series based around the adventures of a pair of Victorian orphans who try to support themselves by mudlarking. I’m really enjoying writing these and consider myself very fortunate to be able to combine my two passions of writing and mudlarking.
Like most children’s authors, I love to visit schools, and while I find that my Gangster School series lends itself well to creative workshops with younger children (design a villain; use creative language to describe her/him; write a report for a new student after his first year at Gangster School; what lesson would you introduce to a school for evil geniuses?) I wanted to be able to offer stimulating and creative workshops to older learners, too.
This is where my strange array of mudlarking finds, regarded with confusion at best and with scorn at worst by friends who fail to see their magic, come into play. This is how the workshops operate.