The River Thames - photos and stories

[Minnie_the_Minx]

It's a fav of mine Minnie, can you remember the book title?

Not offhand and all my books are bagged up at the moment whilst painting/decorating. I'm pretty sure it's in a book anyway, otherwise I've just seen it so many times on the internet, I just assume I have it

Actually, I've got a feeling I may know which one it is, but I've temporarily forgotten name. Will have to go into Amazon and see if I bought it there

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Ponyutd

Think it's this one

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0752452177?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00

 

[Ponyutd]

Thanks Minnie!

 

[Ponyutd]

Tiny shard/sherd of pottery, only inch and a half across.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Pottery, and hollow.
From the Thames Yesterday.

 

[RubyToogood]

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Pottery, and hollow.
From the Thames Yesterday.

Pilgrim flask? (Says she having googled and knowing nothing about it.)

 

[RoyReed]

Pilgrim flask? (Says she having googled and knowing nothing about it.)

Possibly, but I can't see any obvious religious iconography on it. I'd definitely take that to the Museum of London and let them have a look at it.

 

[Tankus]

Me too ...I knows squat .....but I like that !...worth a visit just to satisfy curiosity

 

[Epona]

Tiny shard/sherd of pottery, only inch and a half across.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Pottery, and hollow.
From the Thames Yesterday.

The first image is stoneware, probably salt glaze, I would guess 17thC, (as it looks like a date stamp on it late 17th Century so I'm not doing rocket science or anything!) and probably part of a beer jug or similar? - iirc beer jugs and the like were often stamped with a date, but it is not really my era so I can't be 100% certain on anything more certain about its origins. Certainly there was a lot of salt-glaze stoneware being produced around that era, in England (Staffordshire for example) and other places in Northern Europe.

 

[Ponyutd]

Thanks Epona, the date is 1603. Would have loved to have the rest of it!

 

[Epona]

Thanks Epona, the date is 1603. Would have loved to have the rest of it!

Ah OK, I was reading it as 1693

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Its not a river as it is tidal up until teddington. London should be called london on sea.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

i had a bit of a revelation after going on a boat party once...you head of out of London to the east and almost immediately the view of the riverbank is pretty much purely industrial...Greenwich provides a little break, but once you get past Greenwich its endlessly bleak - then eventually the boat turns around and you head back to London....the bleakness goes on and on and then just as you turn the the last bend, seemingly out of nowhere youre faced with this:

and that experience of coming in under Tower Bridge is like going through a front door into London proper - probably especially so when the bridge is drawn (looks a bit like a pair of opening doors even). Id always just thought of Tower Bridge as just another (over the top) London bridge, but in a way its Londons first bridge, and grand gate into London. In a way it even plays the defensive role of a door as it can stop any too large boats from coming in if not raised...

I've opened the bridge, and been in its counterweight rooms when it has opened. A bit frightening.

 

[ska invita]

Its not a river as it is tidal up until teddington. London should be called london on sea.

Peter Ackroyd's London A Biography is a fun book, but my favourite chapter is the opening one, where he paints a picture of London rising up from the sea... its a poetic idea but one i really like and think of on grey days

The whole first chapter is up here http://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/aug/29/firstchapters.highereducation

an extract:
"In the beginning was the sea. There was once a music-hall song entitled 'Why Can't We Have the Sea in London?', but the question is redundant; the site of the capital, fifty million years before, was covered by great waters.

The waters have not wholly departed, even yet, and there is evidence of their life in the weathered stones of London. The Portland stone of the Customs House and St Pancras Old Church has a diagonal bedding which reflects the currents of the ocean; there are ancient oyster shells within the texture of Mansion House and the British Museum. Seaweed can still be seen in the greyish marble of Waterloo Station, and the force of hurricanes may be detected in the 'chatter-marked' stone of pedestrian subways. In the fabric of Waterloo Bridge, the bed of the Upper Jurassic Sea can also be observed. The tides and storms are still all around us, therefore, and as Shelley wrote of London 'that great sea ... still howls on for more.'

 

[T & P]

Its not a river as it is tidal up until teddington. London should be called london on sea.

It's certainly not a sea either. Estuary perhaps, though it is a bit of a stretch to call it even that once you reach Greenwich.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

It's certainly not a sea either. Estuary perhaps, though it is a bit of a stretch to call it even that once you reach Greenwich.

Well it is technically an estuary because it is inland but still tidal up until teddington though there are some fresh water fish a little before then.

 

[Orang Utan]

Isn't an estuary part of a river?

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Well it is technically an estuary because it is inland but still tidal up until teddington though there are some fresh water fish a little before then.

There's fresh water fish much further down than Teddington, most are fine in brackish water. Staines used to be the highest tidal point until the canalisation of the Thames.

And OU is correct, an estuary is part of a river.

It is possible for a river to extend out in to the sea.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Isn't an estuary part of a river?

It's the transitional point of the river leading into the sea.
When a river becomes tidal and behaves like the sea but is still inland.

 

[Orang Utan]

It looks like a river, so it is a river

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Tiny shard/sherd of pottery, only inch and a half across.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Pottery, and hollow.
From the Thames Yesterday.

Could that be a clay pipe? Shitloads of them in the Thames.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

It's the transitional point of the river leading into the sea.
When a river becomes tidal and behaves like the sea but is still inland.

Technically it's a body of water that is subject to both maritime and riverine forces.

 

[Ponyutd]

No @Banhof Strasse, it's a small pot. I have a feeling it maybe an Asian offering to one of their gods.

 

[ska invita]

It's the transitional point of the river leading into the sea.
When a river becomes tidal and behaves like the sea but is still inland.

The London Delta (Blues)

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Technically it's a body of water that is subject to both maritime and riverine forces.

That's what I said diddle I?
Apart from I don't think it has to be anymore river-like beyond being inland. An estuary can be affected by river and sea but stops being an estuary when it stops being tidal, and when it stops being inland at the other end. It can stop being affected by the river end (as the thames does) long before it becomes the sea.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

That's what I said diddle I?
Apart from I don't think it has to be anymore river-like beyond being inland. An estuary can be affected by river and sea but stops being an estuary when it stops being tidal, and when it stops being inland at the other end. It can stop being affected by the river end (as the thames does) long before it becomes the sea.

No. The river affects it out to sea; look at it from the air and you'll see a brown slick heading out to sea, that's the river sediment which is a riverine effect.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

No. The river affects it out to sea; look at it from the air and you'll see a brown slick heading out to sea, that's the river sediment which is a riverine effect.

I will have to bow to your greater knowledge, as all I am only going on is what was told to me by the port of london (if I recall correctly) for a TV show (don't worry, that specific point was not in the show, just that it was tidal up until Teddington etc), though the definition of an estuary in general still stands.

 

[Onket]

No. The river affects it out to sea; look at it from the air and you'll see a brown slick heading out to sea, that's the river sediment which is a riverine effect.

It's a dirty old river, definitely!

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

It's a dirty old river, definitely!

Must it keep rolling though?

 

[MrSki]

It looks like a river, so it is a river

It certainly smells like a river.

 

[Bungle73]

It's a dirty old river, definitely!

It's not actually.