Secrets below the Surface
7.00pm Thursday 25th June 2020
For our second Salon-line, we set out to wade through the mysterious world of vanished London water with urban explorer Tom Bolton and archaeologist Nathalie Cohen. The Salon will beheld online via the Zoom platform - you won't need wellies but bring your imagination - and your own refreshments!
Admission: £4.50 by Reservation HERE
Details of how to join will be emailed you before the event.
The Thames and its tributaries have changed dramatically through the ages. Wind, weather, time and tide have transformed their topography whilst human interventions and activities have radically redrawn their outlines. What was once strand is now street, what was once stream is now sewer. Archaeologist Nathalie Cohen takes us on a wander through time along the early Medieval Thames and reveals some of the archaeological evidence we have for activity along its banks during the 6th – 11th centuries. Nathalie will look in particular at fishing via the artefacts found on the foreshore and show how with imagination and close attention, we can still trace the vanished edge of the river in city streets from Isleworth to Greenwich.
Below the pavements, out of sight, a network of secret rivers pulses beneath the capital’s busy pavements, buried, hidden or mislaid across the city. Multiple watercourses have been culverted, placed in tunnels or diverted into the sewer system. But, although they may be now hidden from view, clues to their presence remain. Tom Bolton traces some of the routes, tracks and impressions left on the cityscape by some the best known such as the Fleet or the Walbrook, and some of the least-known such as the Cock and Pye Ditch that shaped Covent Garden, Tottenham’s Moselle River, the unsavoury sounding Black Ditch in the East End or the baffling network of west London streams that make up the Stamford Brook.
And Tom will talk about river routes that are recorded on no map as he strips back the layers to reveal London’s veins and arteries.
Nathalie Cohen is the Cathedral Archaeologist for Canterbury Cathedral. She led the Thames Discovery Programme, a community archaeology project exploring London’s inter-tidal foreshore, for ten years.
Tom Bolton is a writer, researcher and photographer. He is the author of five books: London’s Lost Rivers: A Walker’s Guide Volumes 1 and 2, Vanished City: London’s Lost Neighbourhoods, Camden Town: Dreams of Another London and Low Country: Brexit on the Essex Coast. He works in urban design and policy, and has a PhD from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, on London’s railway terminals. He leads walks, gives talks and has written for publications including Caught By The River, The Wellcome Collection website, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian https://tombolton.co.uk
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SALON FOR THE CITY is an ANTIQUE BEAT production