Artifact Hunting In London

[ShadyW]

Since London is such a popular tourist destination, I thought I'd post a tip for all you artifact hunters out there.

The only place where it's legal to find and take artifacts is on the shores and mud flats of the Thames river at low tide. The banks of the Thames have been scavenged this way for as long as there's been a city - the child "mudlarks" of the 19th century survived by picking up individual lumps of coal that fell off the coal barges, for example.

[EDIT: actually, the legality isn't as simple as I'm making out - any major find would be subject to the complex British laws of Treasure Trove, which are completely beyond my comprehension, but basically involve the Queen owning all treasure until a coroner rules on the intentions of the original owner (!) as to whether they lost the object or hid it... or something]

In modern times the shores are covered in interesting artifacts, and since very few people still scavenge (you'll see a group of school kids with their history teacher occasionally) the finds are often impressive.

I only spent 10 minutes with my kids on the shore beside the Tate Modern Museum last year, and we came away with bags of broken clay tobacco pipes and shards of 18th century hand-painted Chinese porcelain. Coins (Roman through to the present day) are also common.

Here's our "Will Shakespeare" pipe. We found it just downriver from Shakespeare's favorite pub (still standing) and the stand has the initials WS!

[kauffy]

thats really interesting, great post and an neat find!

when i head over to the USA i will probaly do some artifact hunting, they just look so cool!

[worthy 55]

Love those pipes!!! Great find!!!! :Thumbs-up: :Thumbs-up:

[Guest Cris]

Very interesting! Got any pics of the roman coins? That's something I could get into collecting if there was a place to find them around here.