Mudlarking the River Thames (A Very Strange Find!) - 2021

hi everyone well it's been a while and  look i've got shiny new boots with no   holes in and this is their first outing to the  mud so i absolutely want to share this moment   with you as i christen these boots and put them  in the mud there we are look isn't that great   no feeling of cold wet mud seeping through  into my feet delightful feeling and these ones   are lipstick pink the other ones didn't have  such a glossy finish so i feel rather proud and   rather noticeable they do stand out somewhat i'm  sure that they're going to have a long and happy   life so it's a beautiful low tide this morning and  i've come down to the river to see what i can find and depending on how i get on i'll  probably add a few finds from past   outings to this video so thank you for watching  let's go and see what the tides left out see what i can see over there could this be the first pipe that my  new boots have witnessed i think it is that's feeling hopeful or it was yeah we  might have a little stem on there let's see   oh let's give it a little pull  right are you ready for this? still coming it's still coming it's still coming that's lovely i'm very happy  with that very happy indeed   that's such a pretty bowl isn't it we  can keep the mud in there and when it   dries you never know there might  be a plug of tobacco at the bottom so pretty welcome to the world little pipe well i'm on the  low tide line here and there looks to be a couple   of interesting things here possibly i'm wondering  if that could be a bottle maybe but look it looks   like there's a little pot here look theres a pipe bowl over there let's have a look at this first   looks like a little stoneware ink yeah here  it is look at that lovely a little pork pie Victorian ink pot and there looks to be a  bottle here but i think it's i think it's   broken let's have a look it might not even be  a bottle actually no that's not even a bottle   but let's take a look at this pipe bowl oh I  can see a little R on it you know what that means   don't you it's going to be a royal antediluvian  order of buffaloes clay pipe bowl so here we are there we are look we've got the raob and  those buffalo horns sweeping round to the side but that's rather nice isn't it  it's nice that it's not broken and actually right here next to the little pork  pie i've just seen something else over here look   at that down there looks like some kind of  little tag it's exciting oh it's tiny gh ghpc i wonder who that was or who or what it's nice isn't it i do love these little tags well over there i've just seen a coin so it's very  possible that this is the first coin that my pink   boots are going to encounter it's just over there  i'm look gonna see what it is see it's just here   i think it's a coin it could be yeah it looks like  it doesn't it that's been there for a little while let's hope that we can identify it okay into my bag it goes for further investigation let's see if we can see  anything else here it's really nice low tide   and i don't think it's going to be going out a  great deal much further look there's a pipe stem   and it's just a stem oh look there's  a button here see it just there what's this it's one of my old favorites  it's a royal naval hospital button   i do love these i'm gonna add that to my collection it's another pipe stem let's have a look around here  see if we can see anything else   see if there's anything on this pottery this round thing just there can you see it just here what is it oh i hope it might be  a ring for a minute but no it's not a ring i've just seen another coin  over here it could possibly be   a lot more modern it's just down here but  there's also something round next to it   which might be a button see those two  things there what's this first of all oh i don't know what that is that  might be a coin as well actually uh i'm not sure i'll put it  in my bag and this one here   yeah it's a modern modern  coin but this this is weird i think that could also be a coin let's  pop it in the bag take a look later well these boots are getting a  really good taste of the mud today seems only appropriate that they should come  out on such a lovely low tide for the first time something a hexagonal down here what can that be oh that looks like some  form of offering doesn't it see if there's anything else over here let's see oh there's a bottle here and what bottle   what kind of bottle is this oh it's an old  fanta bottle look that's a really old one old fanta bottle there's a few coins oh no here's a an old coin it's not terribly old but we  don't have these in circulation anymore it's a more modern looking coin well that was a lot of fun and  now i'm going to take you back to   a few previous mud larking outings now just down here i've seen a little glimpse in  the mud and i know what it is already it's just   down here look and it is a spoon but i can see  the letters i think p l a on it so guess who that   is that is the port of london authority  and i can hear little footsteps behind   me i've got my friend coming hello hello  yes i found a spoon look i found a spoon i have oh you're all coming to have a look  now i found a spoon here and it's got PLA   oh no no no oh that's not a very nice thing to do  is it and somebody's gonna give you some food well   let me get my spoon first yes what do you think  of that guys well i'm not so sure. If you want something   you have to be nice right so anyway here's my  spoon i really love that that's the pla that's   the port of london authority and that's who you  need to get a permit from if you want to mud lark   on the thames anyway now i'm being surrounded  by yes what is it you want what is it you want   some wholemeal healthy bread okay i better  get the bread or i'm gonna get in trouble there we are that'll keep me busy now i can   get on with what i'm doing about being  snuck up on by swans and and crows i just saw this and i prodded it for  some reason i think it was a stone   and then i'm just realizing that it's not a stone   it looks like oh part of an arm it's a wait for  it part of an elaborate pipe bowl oh that's nice look there's a hand there   is that a hand this is rather special  isn't it let's give this a little rinse oh looks like a really nice pipe bowl design yeah that's a hand oh wow look at that it's  a hand that side i think it's a hand yeah   and that's the thumb and maybe the cuff of a  shirt or something oh i like that and the hand is   curling round and grasping the the pipe stem  well i have not seen one like that before   you can see how black that is  there where it's been in the mud   but that will fade very soon so  we've got this hand yep behind the sun i think wow we might be able  to see it sort of better later on   oh how lovely is that yet another  ingenious pipe bowl design i'm looking at that bag over there wondering what   it is that's sticking out of  it let's go and have a look oh my goodness now that is one big religious offering isn't it a  massive great religious offering in this bag   oh my goodness me look at this oh and  it's so heavy as well it's so heavy oh my gosh look at that now who is he and there's a pot here looks  like an ash tray or something well it's weird because it kind of looks  like rubbish but it also looks like   somebody's put it there well somebody  has put it there deliberately haven't they   it looks like a lamp that's really  strange isn't it look at this oh my so here he is a chinese warrior thrown into  the river thames but also thrown in with it   a very large plastic bag with lots of other stuff  in it and i'm going to take that plastic bag and   dispose of it properly and i'm also going to  take this religious offering because i want   to find out a bit more about it and explore  the reasons why people throw these offerings   in the river and here's my swan  friend coming to investigate   what'd you think of that then  mr swan it's not edible is it nope   i think that was the flap of  approval by the swan there hi everyone thank you very much for watching  welcome to my studio so that was an interesting   culmination of surreal events there with the  display of the swan and the chinese warrior you   just never know what's going to happen when you're  down on the Thames foreshore it's all very very dramatic   stuff and we'll find out a little bit more about  him shortly but first of all i just wanted to   say a big hello to everyone i've been away for  the last three weeks i haven't put a video out   which is all very strange but i've been making  good use of my time i've been making some glass   fish out of the glass that i collect along  the river and i'm building up a collection   so hopefully within about three weeks i should  have some on my etsy site so i'll make sure that   i tell you when i'm going to put some on there so  i'm going to do a roundup of the eclectic little   mixture of finds from the thames that featured on  today's video i'm going to start with the coins   it's always exciting finding coins especially when  you can't initially see what they are and there's   always that hope that you're going to clean it  off in the electrolysis bath or in some vinegar   and that this portrait is going to be revealed and  you're going to see a resplendent bust of a king   or a queen on the coin well unfortunately for  this first coin that i found this didn't happen   tide and time erased the evidence of any  portrait whatsoever and there's nothing on here   to show me who whose bust was on  there although i imagine it's probably   charles or george it's a copper coin i think so  we'll just have to leave that to our imagination   but luckily the tiny little coin here which i  initially thought was a button and it's so so thin   it's incredible that it's not completely dissolved  to be honest this is a king william iv fourpence   now luckily the date was on there so that's how i  was able to do my research and find out that the   very very ghostly bust on the other side is indeed  king william iv and as always it's nice to do a   little bit of investigating to find out a little  bit more about the king who is on the coin or the   queen um in this case a king so it's king william  iv and he was never expected to be king actually   but when he was 65 in 1830 he came to the throne  and he was only on the throne about six or seven   years he died in 1837. so he was known as the  sailor king because he loved anything to do with   naval life he was also known as silly billy and  his lifestyle was frowned upon by many people and   like i said he was never expected to be king so i  don't suppose he was really too worried about that   initially he fell deeply in love with an actress  called dorothea jordan who he saw in a play in   drury lane and that as well was frowned upon  greatly but he did live with her for 20 years and   they were very very much in love and they had 10  children she already had five before she met him   and they lived together and had a wonderful  domestic life apparently but then 20 years   after the beginning of their relationship and this  is where william iv goes down in my estimation   slightly he totally and utterly just dropped her  i think it's probably because he realized he he   needed um for public approval to go out and  find himself a very very suitable person who   he could marry because he never married Dorothea  Jordan and so for whatever reasons he dropped her   he did give her custody of the children and he  also gave her an allowance on the condition that   she didn't go back to acting now she was very  very upset about this as you would be very very   distraught really and also one of her son-in-laws  ran up a lot of debt so she went back to the stage   consequently william iv cut off her allowance  and threw her out of her house and the poor   girl ended up fleeing to france to get away from  her debtors and she died in poverty just five   years after they split up alone in  paris so i was very sad about that   um obviously there's a lot more to king william's  life than that one incident but i always like to   sort of delve into the slightly more juicy  lesser-known facts and so that's the story   of king william iv and dorothea jordan so  she died in poverty and he went on to marry   a woman who was a lot lot younger than him called  princess what was she called princess adelaide   she was a lot younger and despite being pregnant  several times she lost a lot of her children and   those that were born didn't survive very long  so they never actually had an heir or an heiress   and so it was his niece victoria who became  queen when he died so there we are that is the   information that i gleaned about the man who is  on this wafer thin coin found in the thames mud   and who dropped it whose pocket was it in i  love imagining that with every coin that i find   the last coin that i found is a lot more modern  it's a threepence from 1966 a queen elizabeth ii   threepence and here it is now it could well have  been used to buy the fanta bottle which i   have here adorned with barnacles this bottle  dates to the mid 20th century maybe 1950 1960   and uh it's a great opportunity to  bring out some of those cheesy old   adverts i do love those old ads and i found a few  nice old fanta ones i remember drinking fanta from   a glass bottle as a child actually and especially  down on the beach in cornwall on a hot day and   then near my friend would go round searching  for the glass bottles that people had discarded   and collect them all up and then take them back  to the little shop to see if we could get the   deposit so that we could go buy an ice cream so  i'm not sure if it was this style back then or   not this is probably a little bit earlier  but there we are a nice old fanta bottle   what else have we got here now i'll move on  to well i'll mention this royal naval hospital   button which is cleaned up really nicely  it sort of fits in with the sailor king   this is a 19th century button  from the royal naval hospital   and i have actually done a video not that long ago  where i talked quite a lot about the royal naval   hospital i've got quite a collection of these  buttons and so i'll show you a picture of all of   those and i'll put the link up to the video which  i did which goes into a lot more depth about them   we've got this little stoneware ink pot from  victorian times i wonder who used it to write   a letter or pen their novel so that's lovely and  it's completely intact not broken at all it's been   protected by the Thames mud really well we have  got here a lovely spoon with the pla on it you   can just imagine somebody on the pla boat making a  little cup of tea stirring it and then sitting on   the edge and then accidentally dropping his spoon  over the side of the boat and then many many years   later the mud has washed away and here it is and  i found it so that's nice and as i said the pla   port of london authority they are the people  who issue us our permits to go mud larking   along the tidal thames and you can find all  the information about that on their website pla.co.uk now there's this tiny token here it's really small  it's got the letters g h p c on it and a five on   the other side i have no idea of the significance  of those letters or what this was maybe some kind   of little token for playing a game or something  i don't know i don't know at all but i do like it   though it's got a little air of mystery about  it so there's that and i don't suppose that   we'll ever really know what the significance of  those letters are so now i'm going to move on to   my pipes and i'll start off with the first one  that i found which is a really lovely one here   it's probably mid 19th century around about  that time it's got real art deco look to it   hasn't it and guess what the little plug  of mud dried out very nicely and indeed   i pulled it out and there is very old  tobacco in there i mean almost 200 years old   and don't worry i wasn't planning on smoking  it or anything like that my smoking days are   well in the past but it's just quite fascinating  to see old tobacco in the bottom of these pipe   bowls that's been preserved for so long in  the mud despite all the swirling around the   river it's really quite incredible so i always  leave the mud in a pipe bowl when i find them   for that purpose so that i can just have a  look when it's all dried see if there's any   evidence of tobacco in the bottom and indeed  there is in this one so now i'm going to move   on to the two pipe bowls which i found i'll start  off with the raob pipe and if you watch my videos   regularly you will know everything there is  to know about the royal antediluvian order of   buffaloes organization which was founded in about  1820 a fraternal organisation and it still exists   um the the pipes are lovely they are great  they've got these buffalo horns sweeping around   to the side of the raob and so that is a very nice  example of an raob pipe bowl my favorite pipe bowl   find of the day is this hand one here and as you  can see now it's faded back to its original color   when it first came out of the mud it was very  very black where it had absorbed all the mud   but now it's faded and you can see clearly  that there is a hand gripping the pipe stem   and like the cuff here of the shirt or the suit  or whatever it is and then the tobacco would go in   here and it looks actually on closer examination  it looks as if the the hand is grasping the end   of a rifle i'll put a picture up and you can see  what you think but that's what it looks like to me   and so i'm very very pleased with that and again  it's just such a an example of how creative   these pipe makers were i can just imagine  them lying there in bed in the morning   thinking up what wonderful designs they were  going to try and bring into reality that day   so that's a very very good one and it's not the  only hand that i have found which features on a   pipe but i do have this one which is another very  nice hand grasping the bottom of the pipe bowl   so now i've got my two hand pipes so they  can give themselves a little fist bump   and i'm very happy with those and i'm  going to mention a very special pipe bowl   in a moment actually but first of all let's just  learn a little bit more about my friend here   who is an extremely heavy chinese warrior  whose name is guan yu and he was a   very revered chinese warrior i'm going to look  at my notes about him um guan yu he died in a.d   220 or 220 and he was known for his martial  prowess now i have no idea why he was thrown   over the wall into the thames mud and it's hard to  tell if somebody just was chucking their rubbish   over the wall or whether it was some kind of  half-hearted religious offering i don't know i   mean it's not very nice to throw plastic  bags full of stuff down onto the river   and luckily i was there to to find it and  recuperate this lovely chap i threw   the rest of the bag and its contents away and in  fact the next day i realized that i had left his   spear there and it was still in the in the bag  of rubbish so i went down again the following   morning back to the rubbish pin rifled around  and luckily i did find his spear and so now he   yeah there you go to pop his spear in like that  so now he's all prepared to protect my corridor   of my home and so yeah one of my more interesting  finds so a little bit about him he was known for   his martial prowess and after his death he became  a legend and a god and at some point he became   the god of war and he's also a revered figure  in many religions and that includes buddhism   chinese folk religion and taoism so he's a very  well-known character and some of you may know   a lot more about him and if you have any ideas as  to why he may have been thrown into the river then   please let me know i mean obviously i know a lot  of religious offerings are thrown into the river   thames but i've never found one like this before  um oh and i also found of course this hexagonal   piece of metal which also has some symbols on  it which would indicate that it's some kind of   offering too it's actually got a couple of  words on that which i looked up one of them is   dantalion and the other one is gaap and i looked  them up they seem to be some kind of demons   dantalion and garp and so i'm not too  sure of the significance of this hexagon   um maybe some of you could enlighten me as to  what significance this this has i don't know   there's a lot of mysterious things thrown  in the river thames as well sometimes   so i think that is all of the fines that i  found during that outing or the the few outings   on the river thames but i also want to share  something with you really really special and   it is pipe related and it is the most beautiful  beautiful pipe bowl and i had to share it with   you because it's just too wonderful not to be  shared i'm not the only person who has a real   passion for clay pipes there are quite a lot  of people but one in particular is my pipe pal   Germander Speedwell and you may remember that i  did do a little interview and a show round of   her cabinet of curiosities in a video last year  and if you haven't seen it do watch it because   she has some amazing clay pipes but last week  Germander posted on twitter this beautiful clay pipe   and it's a little dog she didn't know what it was  at first but then she realized when she turned   it around that it's actually a dog holding on to  the stem like a stick and it's hand painted it's   made by a french pipe maker called Dumeril from  St Omer in france and i have to say i was not   envious at all she said lying through her teeth  it's an absolutely beautiful find and so it's   just way too beautiful not to be shared around the  world so i wanted to show you a picture of this   pipe it's really just so lovely and so here it is Germander's pipe find of the year   so that's it now for all the finds and for  Germander's clay pipe find i hope that   you're all really well and keeping well i hope  you're making the most of the extra light that   we've got during the day now i know for me that  it just makes me feel so much sort of happier and   uplifted when we've got the lighter mornings  and the lighter evenings i'd like to thank   everybody who have who has donated to my  kofi account who have bought me cups of tea   um thank you very very much indeed and thank you  for your comments and your feedback on my videos   and i'm really looking forward to being back very  soon next sunday with another video and in the   meantime take care of yourselves keep safe and i'm  sending you lots of love from here in london bye

Channel: nicola white mudlark - Tideline Art

Views: 137,008

Rating: 4.9551268 out of 5

Keywords: mudlarking, mudlark, tidelineart, thames mudlarking, mudlarking the river thames, nicola white, nicola white mudlark, nicola white tidelineart, mudlarking videos, best mudlarking videos, best mudlarking youtube videos, mudlarking youtube videos

Id: eJeR1xQnSa8

Length: 39min 2sec (2342 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 11 2021