Surprising Treasures found in the River Thames- Mudlarking with Nicola White

now the last time this pipe was in the world so to speak it wouldn't have been looking at anything quite like viking venus oh no it would have been more galleons wooden sailing boats so there you are look pipe see how the world has changed since the last person who was holding you was alive yep it's changed hasn't it a lot a lot it probably wants to go back in the mud so down here i just prized out a piece of pottery and actually it's really pretty it's got a lovely design on it we'll go and wash it off but i think it's a man with a horse further investigation is required looks like he's feeding something maybe not a horse now i can see what looks like a blade down here poking out the mud the question is is there going to be a handle on the end now there's the blade the unmistakable shape of a knife blade now what have we got under here you know we might be we might be lucky oh yes we are lucky look at that that is in remarkably good condition it's either got a bone probably bone i think yeah it's not wood look at that an entire knife i'm not sure on the age but i know a man who will know i'll be consulting graham who has donated lots and lots of his found knives to the cutler's hall wow great fine let's give it a little wash oh this is lovely i've got a beautiful knife at home with some initials in it doesn't look like this one's got initials but it's in remarkably good condition look at that that's beautiful lovely if we're lucky there might be a maker on there now look at these i'm not going to take them but it's interesting isn't it these must have been thrown in as some kind of ritual i suspect candles tied together with some sort of reed type things but what ritual i don't know there are so many votive offerings thrown into the river by so many different religions so finding things like that isn't at all surprising look now here's a heartbreaking bottle a lovely flask with a cork in it but completely broken what a shame but was there a name on the other side maybe should we take a look and see anyway let's have a look turn it over no no there isn't so at least there's that consolation but it would have been nice to find that hole wouldn't it right well i'm here with my friend kathy and honestly i am kind of green with envy because she has just pulled out of the mud this absolutely stunning pot hot look at that don't drop it please don't drop it how did you feel when you when you found that and what did you see first of all it was just the little ducks poking out the mud and i thought oh that must be a bit of plate or something i nearly left it i just thought it was a bit of pottery and who is on there so it's james b palmer what's that eight and nine lower old kent road that is absolutely stunning i guess it was for a jam or i'm not sure possibly been in it but that's absolutely beautiful that's the absolutely i mean the adrenaline how exciting oh absolutely brilliant i'm so pleased you must be so pleased oh absolutely yes well done kathy well done kathy that's that's really stunning so i always check little bits of plain pottery sticking out of the mud that is the moral of the story i'll be doing that in future thanks very much for sharing that find with us you're welcome all right come along and see what i've just spotted down here which could be absolutely nothing can you see what i'm looking at down there i'm actually looking at this because it just looks doesn't it a little bit like the of a ring which would be absolutely fabulous if it was but it could equally be part of a light bulb or something so i'm going to take you along with me for the discovery what do you think it's definitely not a ring oh look it is part of a light bulb darn it's wood down here this bit it just uh piqued my curiosity i'll turn the camera off while i'm extracting it and i'll come back and show you if it's anything interesting okay so as it happens it does look quite interesting it looks like it might have something to do with a sheave some kind of pulley system you can see that rounded edge there which i think might be a sheave maybe there's one on the other side as well there you see so um yeah that's what i think it is i'll see if i can clean it up a little bit so we can um see a little bit more exactly what we're looking at well look here it's a little cleaner already and what i think we're looking at are definitely sheaves from a boat and these bits here are probably made from lignum vitae or some kind of different wood than the usual wood or the wood that's in the middle here i like that i do like that and look what i've also just pulled out of the mud there was just the tiniest bit of metal poking out so i gave it a little tug and out came a hook now that is also rather nice that is a resplendent hook i see the honker there they are now look what i've seen down here now it looks like it could be a watch strap see if there's anything on the end of it oh look there is there is you know look at that it's not working it's definitely all there let's give it a little rinse rolex on it but i can't believe that would be kind of too good to be true my hands full well well there's a find it would be amazing if it was real but i suspect that it's probably further investigation is needed look down here i thought at first this could be a ring but it isn't look it looks like a little lens the end of something the lens in it some kind of maritime um instrument perhaps oh here we go look if you don't like pipes you're not gonna like this segment of the video it's a whole one well it's not whole the stem would have been longer not long washed out of the mud i suspect and a few more tides dashing against these rocks it would soon break up into pieces it's funny isn't it the people who smoked those pipes years and years ago would never have imagined that some strange lady would be walking along picking them up centuries later but i suppose who knows what people are going to be picking up of ours in centuries time and getting excited about it who knows we will never know will we that's a nice brick isn't it now i've just come across what looks like a lovely piece of copper sheathing here which used to be put onto the hulls of ships from the mid 18th century to protect them from shipworm barnacles salt and all sorts so i always take this i absolutely love it um i'm gonna wash that off oh i can see a hook here such a clean foreshore such a clean foreshore this evening lovely ship's nail here getting some beautiful nails as well okay and as the tides are coming in i'm not gonna hang around and wash it too thoroughly because i want to see what else there is okay i will wash that though yeah that's really nice it's often made of copper and that's where the saying copper bottomed comes from because when the ships were or when the hulls were coated with this they were reliable and trustworthy and so when you enter into a deal with someone and somebody says oh it's copper copper bottomed that's where it comes from that's a lovely piece of sheathing there oh now look over here we've got a slightly more ornate pipe so a lot later than these previous ones now this is a victorian pipe probably mid 19th century and it's a rose and thistle design there's the thistle and there's the rose and it's got that foliate design there of the seam and it has a maker's mark there's a w and what looks like a c and you can see where it's been smoked look it's all charred around the edge and as always i'll keep the mud in there because you never know there may be a little dottle of tobacco at the bottom we really have got some really nice pipe specimens spanning all through the ages from early 18th to mid 19th here we have a very wet bedraggled little bird it's okay little bird you can come home with me and there goes the sun come back come back son hi everyone thank you very much for watching my video i hope wherever you are in the world you're in good spirits and good health and that your weekend or your week is going as it should do which is really well i hope so here i have in and so let's take a look at them and let's start with the one which i'm sure you're all wondering about and it is this rather garish watch here which of course and i'm sure most of you will probably have guessed it is not a real rolex as much as i might wish that it was it isn't and you can tell by many reasons there's no serial number on the back it's not working and if it was a real one it would still be working it would be watertight the paint is kind of bubbling off and so although initially i thought oh maybe it could be real it isn't it wasn't working when i picked it up when i actually got it home and started to wind it it did start working for a while let's see if we can do it again see if we can get that little second hand going no it's not gonna play so anyway it's not real so um who knows why it was thrown over the wall maybe somebody was given it as a present and then were very very disappointed when they realized that it wasn't real or maybe it was stolen or i don't know maybe it was an offering who knows but now i've got it here and i'm sure i'll find something to do with it i'll probably make a little assemblage with it and put it in a frame do something arty with it so that's the watch the fake rolex it was still quite exciting finding it though and for one moment there i thought oh a rolex maybe you can help me with this find here it's a lovely piece of pottery which has on it a little scene now it does look like a person feeding a griffin or an eagle i'm not terribly sure what it signifies maybe it's a god feeding another god and i haven't had a great deal of time to look it up to be honest so if anybody out there knows what this scene signifies or who these people are or what this would have been in its entirety looks like a little cup or a vase then please let me know i'd love to hear from you in the comments below sometimes it's more intriguing to find a piece of something a piece of pottery because then you have that sort of challenge to try and put it together and work out what it really was rather than if you find something which is already whole and there's no challenge there's no mystery there's no intrigue so here's a little pottery challenge i have here in front of me lots of bits of ship so which bit should we start with here is some copper sheathing lots of holes in it and this would have been nailed onto the hull of the ship in the mid 18th century the admiralty copper bottomed their fleet for a variety of reasons but one of them or most of them rather are things that would destroy the wood of the ship like ship rot shipworm salt corrosion and also barnacles barnacles could not cling on to this this copper bottom and also it used to make the ship a lot more streamlined and go faster through the water and i've said it before i think in a previous video that that is where the saying comes from something that is copper bottomed being trustworthy and reliable i do have a few pieces of copper sheathing i'll soon have enough to copper bottom my own boat because actually i'm getting so many bits of boat here i'll soon have enough to make my own boat i've got this which you saw me extract from the mud which is part of a wooden block pulley got the wood in the middle here there would have been wood on either side and then we've got the sheaves which i believe are made out of lignum vitae and we also have a hook to go with it there's the hook and it would have been underneath here with the rope coming down attaching the hook so part of an old ship certainly 19th century i'd say there's some of my favorite types of finds to be honest these finds these um from maritime history i just absolutely love it recently and i didn't have my camera at the time unfortunately recently i found a big deadeye here which would also been part of a ship's rigging i've got my little pipe bowl which features the rose and the thistle it's quite a common design i've actually got quite a lot of rose and thistle pipe bowls but as i was getting them all together to have a look at them i realized how different many of them are always a pleasure to find these fancy clay pipes the clay pipe makers back in victorian times were real artists i think with the designs that they used to come up with now kathy as you will have seen found a beautiful pot which i had thought was a a jam pot or a marmalade pot but when i looked up jb palmer it's actually a james barrow palmer and he was a salt merchant in 1842 in lower thames street and in old kent road and actually when i started to look him up i came across a court case which was from the old bailey back in the 19th century and i will just read you a little bit of it it's somebody who was accused of stealing salt from him so james barrow palmer who was actually giving a statement says i am a prisoner was a servant of mr worthington who contracted to do my work on the 21st of november he and his henry jones was entrusted with several parcels of salt to take to different customers and until the night before last i believed it was one of those parcels that was stolen but i find that to be a mistake the salt found upon him was not to be delivered to anyone it was put into the cart without my knowledge i only know this from his having it in my cart and having no other property in the cart but what was mine it is impossible to swear to salt so all that sounds extremely complicated and actually in the end henry jones was found to be innocent or not guilty maybe he wasn't innocent but anyway he was found not guilty i also came across a little piece in a newspaper of the 19th century about james palmer and his venture into the production of vinegar as well so i'll also put that up on the screen for you to have a look at it's always fun looking up these people on the shards that we find it sort of brings their stories to life and so there we are james barrow palmer and kathy well done on that find absolutely superb and intact beautiful pot like that so yeah as we said in the video always check those little bits of pottery poking out of the mud and i'll put kathy's instagram site on here as well up in the corner kathy's actually a guernsey mudlark from the channel islands and so if you want to have a look and see what they're finding out there in guernsey then take a look at kathy's instagram site and give it a follow last but not least i want to tell you about the beautiful knife which came out of the mud and a big thank you to veteran mudlarks graham duwam and also simon moore for identifying it for me now graham cleaned up the knife and it came out absolutely beautiful as you'll see from this photograph and it was also identified by graham and simon as being from the late 17th century which is amazing because i thought that it was a lot later than that so to find something so old and now to have had it cleaned and in such superb condition it's really very special i'm going to be doing a video actually with graham at some point in the not too distant future and he has found some amazing objects old tudor keys knives and spoons padlocks full bellamine jars and he's also as i mentioned briefly when i found that knife he's also donated this beautiful collection of knives to the cutler's hall in london and so it's going to be very very exciting to interview graham about his mudlarking career and about some of his finds so i think that that is about it apart from the little little burb which is here and who has been through the washing machine so his little little top knot is looking a little bit better than it was when i picked him out of the mud and he joins the big array of tideline art orphans on the orphanage shelf of my studio and he's very happy because there's lots of other little the draggled birds and animals up there so that is it for today um it's been a strange week this week as you can imagine with the death of the queen announced it's been very sad bit of a somber mood but at the same time it's been lovely to see so many people coming together united in the grief for the the queen and i actually went into london with my parents this week and laid some flowers in green park very close to buckingham palace and it was really moving to go around and read the tributes to the queen and see the cards and the pictures and see all these people together um thinking about her remarkable life because whatever you may think about the the monarchy i mean she did such an amazing job and it's quite a historical moment really because what being down there seeing all these people and seeing the flowers and talking to people about her because there's not going to be another monarch for a very long time who has reigned for such a long time i forget exactly what it is right now but yeah quite quite a quite a um appointment week and i am going to travel into london on monday i may walk in i think um along the thames path i'm going to walk in and go and see if i can see some of the funeral procession and i'll film as much of it as i can and then perhaps i can share that with you in a an upcoming video so thank you so much everybody for watching and also for all your comments your suggestions your feedback thank you so much too for the donations which many of you have made to my ko-fi account i really really appreciate it and thank you for all being you that is the most important thing i wish you an excellent week ahead and i'm very much looking forward to seeing you again very soon and i'm sending you lots of love from here in london thank you bye