Mudlarking

In Victorian times, a mudlark was someone who searched along the banks of the Thames for anything that had washed up and could be sold. The practice was usually taken up by children or widows with no income. They would be lucky if they made a penny a day selling what they found. Today, mudlarking is a popular pastime and people still search the shores of the Thames for the 'big find'. A licence costs £7.50 a day and finds can date back hundreds or even thousands of years to Roman times.

You don't have to live in London to go mudlarking though. It's possible to find artefacts dating back to Roman times on the shores of the Plym and many farmland areas used 'Dock Dung' which was a collection of all the rubbish from Plymouth including pottery, bottles, jars, clay pipes as well as more unsavoury produce such as horse droppings, night soil, offal etc. The latter was seen as perfect manure for farmer's fields and it could be bought for so much a ton. It would then be transported from Plymouth by barge up river to any farm that had access to the water. Special wooden jettys were built where the dung could be sorted. All the sharp items such as bottles, pipes, pottery etc was taken out by workers and thrown into the nearby marsh. The dung was then carried in wicker baskets to the nearby fields. It was quite a profitable exercise and the returning barges would carry back stone or farm produce. The sorted pottery and bottles etc have lain in the mud ever since and it's possible to find clay pipes, Codd bottles, clay ink wells, clay marmalade jars, the remnants of old Victorian shoes and , if you're lucky, even coins.

These jettys are found all over but have all rotted away over time. Part of the jetty still remains on the river bank at Church Town Farm near Saltash and there are thousands of pieces of pottery from the the turn of the 20th Century nearby. Other areas where there are finds in abundance are at Antony Passage, Forder, Ernesettle Creek and Tamerton Foliot Creek. Clay pipes from the 1600s have been found at Empacombe and many finds date back hundreds of years. It's an interesting pastime and there's all sorts to be found. Try not to upset the locals though!