TDP Newsletter Winter 2014

8/13/2019 TDP Newsletter Winter 2014

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The TDP joined up with the Council for British Archaeology London (CBAL)

for the Bankside Archaeology Day. The day included a guided walk on theforeshore with the TDP, a walk with Amelia Fairman around some of the

Thameslink sites that Pre-Construct Archaeology have recently dug, a tour

around the remains of Winchester Palace with Becky Wallower (CBAL),

and a lecture by co-director of the famed Rose Theatre excavation, Julian

Bowsher (MOLA), at the Globe and Rose Theatre dig sites. A definite

highlight of the day was the trip up the belfry at Southwark Cathedral (right).

Though the walk up the narrow, dark and windy staircase was a bit terrifying,

the view was astounding! Unfortunately it was already high tide by the time

we made it up to the top. The CBAL group run events regularly, the majority

of which are open to the public. Visit them on their website to find out more.

archaeologyuk.org/cbalondon/eventsg

THAMES DISCOVERY PROGRAMME

WINTER2014

Written by The TDP Team

HAPPY NEW YEAR!Whats to come

Its 2014: a new year, a fresh start

and a whole lot more foreshore

archaeology on the way. Were

gearing up for a packed year of

fieldwork, workshops and lectures.

In this issue you can read about

upcoming events and news from

the autumn/ early winter. In linewith other 5th anniversary events

we redesigned our t-shirts (left),

which are available to order on our

websitein two colours! Also new

this year is our newsletter design.

Were very grateful for our friends

Audrey and Dawn who donated

their time to design it. The new year

has also brought a series of storms

that have caused flooding and tidal

surges up and down the coasts

of the UK, putting foreshore andintertidal archaeology in the news

all winter. The TDP regularly tweets

maritime archaeology news so if you

arent already, go on, follow us! gNew t-shirts for a new year

The view from the rooftopof Southwark Cathedral

Events 2FROG News 3

Feature 4Feature 5

Other News 6-8IN THIS ISSUE

Written by The TDP Team

BANKSIDE ARCHAEOLOGYFrom the Rose to the roof
http://www.archaeologyuk.org/cbalondon/eventshttp://www.thamesdiscovery.org/frog-blog/tdp-t-shirts-for-salehttps://twitter.com/ThamesDiscoveryhttps://twitter.com/ThamesDiscoveryhttp://www.thamesdiscovery.org/frog-blog/tdp-t-shirts-for-salehttp://www.archaeologyuk.org/cbalondon/events


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FROG NEWS

One of the aims of the Thames Discovery Programme is to reach out and connect

with other individuals and groups who are working in, or interested in working in,

intertidal contexts, so it was a bit of a no-brainer that we should link up with our

friends at City of London Archaeological Society (COLAS) for some foreshore work.

As announced at the TDPs annual Foreshore Forum, December saw a joint TDP/

COLAS weekend of recording structures and features on the foreshore at Swan

Wharf and Canon Street. More than one person asked me what I thought I was doingbooking fieldwork for the depths of mid-winter, but actually we were extremely

lucky with the weather and had two days of fine clear sunshine. With 18 people

participating over the two days, we managed to get the whole of the at risk section

of Swan Wharf recorded, as well as some other groups of timbers. In addition, a small

team worked on recording the Roman quern stone near Cousin Lane Stairs and, by

the good graces of the weather gods who sent a nice low tide, they even managed to

locate another two pieces of quern stone lower down on the foreshore. As theres

loads of recording to do at this site, well be planning return visits, again with FROGs

and COLAS members, so FROGS can look out on the Ning network for dates. g

In November we heard that we had been given Scheduled Monument Consent fromEnglish Heritage to monitor and record the area around the Tudor jetty at Greenwich

Palace. Its great that English Heritage recognises the importance of the work

that we do. We will be doing more over the next few years to try and get a better

understanding of this area.

The winter storms have caused a lot of erosion across the site, especially around the

medieval jetty, where two of the baseplates have now disappeared. Weve also had

more new features appear, including a causeway in front of the Naval College steps

and a very neat chalk bargebed. Weve also spent some time looking at an area with

a lot of clay pipes. Could they be waste from the pipe kilns on Crane Street? And

finally, as part of our ongoing quest to put the key sites in context we had a great walk

looking at the industrial remains on the foreshore from the Dome to the Anchor and

Hope pub in Charlton. g

CITY FROG

The Greenwich FROG recording the Tudor jetty

Photo: Helen Johnston

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CITY FROG

CITY FROGGREENWICH FROG

City FROG recording a quern stone

Photo: Solange LaRose


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FEATURE

In August last year the Thames Discovery Programme had the privilege of being

invited to explore and record the foreshore at Victoria Tower Gardens, adjacent

to the Palace of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament. A site as famous as

this provides a daunting task, but as ever a team of dedicated FROGs braved the

elements, with fascinating results.

A key find was a number of intricately detailed pieces of moulded stone (left),which are thought to relate to previous phases of the Palace of Westminster. James

Wright, Standing Buildings specialist from Museum of London Archaeology was on

hand to provide us with some tips and advice, and in total 72 fragments were drawn

and recorded. The results have now been digitized and James is working on further

analysis, but it is possible that some of these architectural fragments relate to the

phases of building before a fire destroyed the complex in 1834, and new buildings

were re-designed by architect Charles Barry and one Augustus W. N. Pugin.

Exciting developments are also afoot for the prehistorians amongst us, with samples

of bone being collected from rapidly eroding peat deposits on the foreshore. It has

not yet been possible to give these an absolute date, but other deposits in the areahave been dated to the early Bronze Age. Previously, part of a human skull had been

found on the site, but in August other fragments were also identified one a human

femur with wear patterns indicating long deposition in the water, and another sample

of burnt animal bone thought to be cattle, horse or red deer.

Noted too was an area of bomb damage on the river wall (above) which was also

recorded in August. Some detective work byTDP Director Gustav Milne has revealed

that the river police reported the damage on the 16th of March 1941. This provided

an excellent opportunity to combine documentary, photographic and archaeological

records. Research on the site is ongoing, and we hope to return in the future to

explore the archaeology further so watch this space! To see more photos visit

flickr.com/photos/thamesdiscovery g

Houses of Parliamentforeshore

Written by Jo Warren

TDP staff and volunteers in front of the 1941 WolrdWar II bomb damaged river wall

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Moulded stone from theforeshore
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thamesdiscoveryhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/thamesdiscovery


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FEATURE

The last week of summer season fieldwork saw the team working on two sites onthe south bank at Putney (FWW03 and FWW04) and on the north bank at Fulham

Palace (FHM07). At Putney we returned to an old stomping ground between Putney

Bridge and Putney Railway Bridge (FWW03) where we had previously recorded

part of the foundation of the 18th century Putney Bridge and a post-medieval box

drain and causeway. This year we concentrated on what Nathalie had previously

identified as a long hard thing, comprising a linear arrangement of large re-used

masonry including some very nicely carved and moulded stones, which lay directly in

front of the river wall and ran some 150m upstream from the Hurlingham Yacht Club.

While doing detailed recording of the more intricate masonry pieces we also had

a good think about the structures function by looking at how it related to the river

wall. The structure coincided with a stretch of low, slightly sloping, probably early-mid 19th century brick wall, which had been heightened with a much later concrete

addition, and it butted up against the rubble back fill within the walls construction

cut. It seems most likely that the weight of the later addition was causing the lower

brickwork to start to move and collapse and thus the large foreshore structure was

built to stabilise the lower wall. Each day towards the time of low tide we dashed

downstream to the next site along (FWW04) where Pamela Greenwood from

Wandsworth Historical Society has been recording prehistoric horizons and Saxon

fish traps for 40 years. We re-recorded one of the fish traps but also observed two

intact prehistoric horizons, greyish green sand overlying peat, out of which were

eroding a number of sherds of Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age pottery and a flint of

possibly earlier date.

At the weekend we crossed over the river to Fulham Palace (FHM07) to investigate

a possible wickerwork structure that we first observed whilst monitoring the site in

2012. Although very fragile, we were able to gently clean and record what turned

out to be a brushwood panel visible for about 7m in length and 1m in width which

appeared to lie on top of a similar greyish green sand layer recorded on the other

bank, suggesting a possible prehistoric date for the structure. Indeed a sherd of

prehistoric pottery was recovered from close by. While it seemed as though it could

possibly have been some sort of prehistoric causeway (albeit unlikely given that it

ran parallel to the river wall) or a platform for fishing, we were very unsure and so

brought in the big guns of Jon Cotton (ex Museum of London Prehistoric Curator)

and Professor Martin Bell (Professor of Archaeology, University of Reading) to seewhat they thought. Their verdict was that it was more likely to be a wicker hurdle

which had fallen over, possibly from an Anglo-Saxon fish trap; samples were taken for

Radiocarbon dating so watch this space for results! g

Fulham and Putney fieldworkreport

Written by Eliott Wragg

The possible wicker hurdle in detail

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FROGs at Fulham recordingthe possible wicker hurdle


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There are lots of other London

links to be made in Sydney too, for

example a number of the First Fleet

vessels were either built or ended

their lives on the Thames, while the

range of post-medieval and Victorianartefacts from waterside excavations

and now on display in places like the

Rocks Discovery Museum (therocks.

com/things-to-do/the-rocks-

discovery-museum.aspx) would be

familiar to any foreshore explorer!By Nathalie Cohen g

OTHER NEWS

TDP GOES GLOBAL

The plus side of the erosion on the

Thames foreshore is old material coming

to the surface after being buried for

centuries. The down side is some of

the historic structures revealed aredisappearing as the shore that kept

them in place erodes away. In 2013 we

saw substantial parts of two medieval

jetties, at Tower of London and at

Greenwich Palace, float away down the

Thames: gone forever. Fortunately the

TDP faithfully recorded, photographed

and measured the structures where

our ancestors once walked. Greenwich

was the centre of Tudor England and

accessed more by the river than theroad. A trickle of finds shows Roman

activity here. One wonders if the erosion

continues we will lose most of the

archaeology and be down to only the

prehistoric in a couple of years! We are

perhaps fortunate in the circumstances

to be involved in an interesting time of

discovery. What next? A Viking ship

from the siege of London, Anglo-Saxon

brooches, a Celtic bronze shield or two,

or where Caesar actually crossed the

Thames would not go amiss.By Christopher Gunstone g

FROG COMMENT

This Christmas, I was on holiday in Australia, and through the wonders of

Twitter, I had an invitation to speak at the Nicholson Museum, part of the

University of Sydney. The Nicholson Museum is home to the largest collection

of antiquities in both Australia and the southern Hemisphere. Founded in

1860, the collection spans the ancient world with primary collection areas

including Greece, Italy, Egypt, Cyprus, and the Near East. They also have a

collection of British artefacts, including these amazing fake, lead medieval

figurines (below). Charles Nicholson acquired them in the 1860s, via an

antiques dealer, from two Thames Mudlarks, William Smith and CharlesEaton (Billy and Charley), who variously claimed to have found them on the

foreshore in Shadwell, and on a church excavation near St Pancras. However,

it turned out that Billy and Charley were manufacturing artefacts by the

thousand at premises near the Tower of London! These artefacts form part

of the wonderful 50 Objects, 50 Stories exhibition at the museum. Also

currently on the display is the Lego Acropolis (sydney.edu.au/museums/

exhibitions-events/lego-acropolis.shtml) Lego Pompeii is coming next year!

On the 16th of December, over 100 Sydneysiders turned up to hear (a slightly

jetlagged!) talk all about the Thames Discovery Programme maybe we couldset up the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Survey in the future! The tidal range

is not anywhere as great as that on the river, but enough is exposed at low

tide that interesting features are visible for example at Cremorne Wharf

(above), where you can see the remains of mooring chains and other features.

Cremorne Wharf foreshorein Sydney Harbour

Fake medieval figurinesare part of the 50 Objects,50 Stories exhibition at the

Nicholson Museum in Sydney

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http://www.therocks.com/things-to-do/the-rocks-discovery-museum.aspxhttp://www.therocks.com/things-to-do/the-rocks-discovery-museum.aspxhttp://www.therocks.com/things-to-do/the-rocks-discovery-museum.aspxhttp://www.sydney.edu.au/museums/exhibitions-events/lego-acropolis.shtmlhttp://www.sydney.edu.au/museums/exhibitions-events/lego-acropolis.shtmlhttp://www.sydney.edu.au/museums/exhibitions-events/lego-acropolis.shtmlhttp://www.sydney.edu.au/museums/exhibitions-events/lego-acropolis.shtmlhttp://www.therocks.com/things-to-do/the-rocks-discovery-museum.aspxhttp://www.therocks.com/things-to-do/the-rocks-discovery-museum.aspxhttp://www.therocks.com/things-to-do/the-rocks-discovery-museum.aspx


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OTHER NEWS

Smashing up any misconceptions about prehistoric people as well as some large

lumps of rock was the order of the day at TPDs Riverpedia Workshop Flint! on

17 January. Archaeologist Jon Cotton presented an overview of flints utility at a

time when survival was regularly at stake. Flint is widespread across Britain and can

be broken predictably when struck knap is Dutch for snap to create a variety

of tools. But flints also offer evidence indicating aesthetic or spiritual aspects of

prehistoric cultures, for example, through the relationship seen between someobjects and the flint colour chosen, as in the case of leaf and barbed and tanged

arrowheads, which tend to be orange. Or my favourite, a small circular flint, roughly

knapped to leave a fossil shell at its centre, and serving no obvious purpose. It could

simply have been a souvenir from a prehistoric walk. The earliest evidence for

hominids in London comes from around 400,000 years ago, but evidence of earlier

peoples may have been lost or could still emerge. Importantly for FROGS finding

ancient foreshore timber, is to note that it can be possible to tell from the particular

signature that axes leave on a stump of wood, whether that axe was of metal or stone.

We dont actually know who it was who did the knapping men, women or children

or, as Jon thinks likely, everybody knapped flint to some extent. Excavations have

shown debitage waste from flint knapping mapped to the remains of hearths,suggesting the activity was communal.

Worked flint also has a history of re-use, for example, by Romans who thought they

were thunderbolts thrown by Jupiter and could ward off lightning if put in roofs, and

there have also been forgers such as Sir Jack Evans, a 19th century antiquarian who

also supplied a market in antique fakes. Nor is all worked flint ancient it was used

well into the 19th century for gun flint-lock making. So theres a lot to think about in

the wider history of flints. Flint is still knapped by hobbyists and archaeologists, and

in the afternoon James Dilley, an expert in ancient crafts, demonstrated the level of

skill and different techniques required by knapping. He produced two different types

of hand axes before letting us each have a go and, by our rather less successful

efforts, we also demonstrated the skill required. I found the whole day great fun and

informative and think it will help us better identify flints from the foreshore. To see

more photos visit flic.kr/s/aHsjQSA3Z7 g

Riverpedia Workshop: Flint!Review

Written by Claire Millington

The Riverpedia workshopand lecture series provides

learning opportunities forthe FROG volunteers and the

general public.

The FROGs after a day of knapping, with tutorsJon Cotton and James Dilley

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http://flic.kr/s/aHsjQSA3Z7http://flic.kr/s/aHsjQSA3Z7


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TDP Newsletter Winter 2014

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