A Tough Spot to Reach gives up some Wicked Treasures - Mudlarking with Nicola White (October 2022

hi everyone it's sunday morning you can hear the church bells in the distance there and guess who i'm out with today the one and only mud lover syfines. hi nick how you doing? great to see you down here what a coincidence what have you got? just a broken little ink pot there yeah sure sure we'll do better than that today we've got a fun packed field day today out on the boats going to some new locations can't wait to get stuck in here they come wave again. you on a bike sy? no not for me oh oh little crabs hello crab you always wanted a pet yeah i know i'm not a crab oh hang on a minute i've seen a little oh half a little plate what have you got? check it out got a pipe no way so you have i thought it was a shell or a ring but uh could be a pipe buried in the uh mud there well it makes a change somebody else finds it oh look look a little extraction we like a little pipe extraction oh it's only the bowl oh that's okay it's still a remarkable piece of history it is that's been sitting there for over a hundred years easily well done that boy first pipe bowl well done well do you know what if duncan doesn't find one today i'll give it to him there we go how's that sound you're so kind yeah oh look i can see a really nice stone ink just sitting there a little pork pie lovely just down there look just sitting there waiting to be picked up look at that oh wow that's remarkable i think that's been there just sitting there all those years yeah but look here si look we've got all this type set here see that loads of bits nick has done a fab job of finding loads of type lead type so we might spend a little bit of time here just picking a few of these lovely items up so lots of little lots of um modern coinage hassle commercial road i've got a nice little token here look no way yeah something fruit 60 oh that's a little fruit machine token oh is that what it is 20s 30s maybe something like that oh isn't that lovely that's cool we've hit a little hot spot here oh there's quite a few little coiny things here i'm gonna pick up some of these um bits of type set here at least i think it's time so yeah it is 20p we won't ruin the money now right well i'll come back and scoop some more of those up shortly but i'm going to go and have a look somewhere else oh look what's this oh here we have a what's that oh it's a two pound coin i haven't seen one of those for a while the good news is we can the good news isn't it we cannot get the good news is we can't get cut off because we've got our taxi down there waiting for us make up wardrobe i've just found another two pound coin second one yeah are they still valid oh very funny oh no no there's another one three two pound coins i was just doing a bit of scraping and uncovered this button oh yes that's a nice one there's definitely a maker on there fantastic i do love researching a good button as you know what's this that's a 1p 20p over there as well oh it's a tiny little um tiny little lead soldier that is so small without a head what a shame put him carefully in my bag oh there's a nice little bottle stopper here let's do the obligatory stopper in the sun shot now look there's something rather lovely here it's a little coat of arms and i can't quite read what it says on there at the moment i'm finding lots of two pound coins today i've also got another button here and a little black bead so i've got quite a nice spot here so i'm going to stay here for a while and they found his meal in his in the in the pot the lentil curry so the oldest food in london is a curry another nice button here i've just come over here for a little moment away from simon and duncan because they were very loud they're talking too loud i wanted to just show you what i've found i found this beautiful little pendant here be strong in the lord on the other side it's got saint peter or saint petrus with the two keys so that's so special i also just found this little tiny ring and it's very bent there and i found a nice few buttons i'll show you them later and some fragments of a pipe bowl in addition to the part of a pipe i found a little while back so i just wanted to give you a little update on that i didn't film it but it was a bit noisy at the time so here they are i'm going to go and see if i can find anything else i just flipped over this rock and i can see a bit of pottery here it looks really interesting it's got some lettering on it could be part of an old pot of medicine or some kind of food let's have a look something that we could research anyway yeah there's enough on there to be able to find out something alan and something oh something for nursing is entirely free blah blah blah than half of something for nursing oh it must be maybe it's baby milk that's nice oh i can't wait to look that up in my bag it's always worth lifting up stones to see what's going on underneath again i just moved this big stone out of the way and saw just down here sorry i'm in my shadow just get out of my shadow just down there i'm in it again never mind a nice button now what is that is that a general service button no that's a beautiful oh that's a really lovely button and i think i've got one very similar if not the same you see there's a ship on there isn't that stunning it's like a little galleon oh that's gorgeous wow i absolutely love that the tide is coming in so we're on a bit of a race against the tide so i'm going to keep searching and i'll show you what i found at the end i can't really lose any tide time any low tide time let me pop that in my safe little pouch see what and see what else we've got going on down here a bit of metal here i wonder if it might be a a label or something let's have a look okay i'm gonna need no i'm gonna need both hands for this oh no maybe not it's coming out it's coming out it looks like a very flattened spoon out it comes out it comes makes a change from a pipe extraction oh look at that lovely spoon totally flat rinse off in this handy little pool that spoon has been completely flattened it's rather nice don't you think let's have a quick look down here i've just seen a chain here nothing on it unfortunately just a little chain oh the tide's coming in there's like a mixture of modern rubbish here and victorian bits and pieces oh i can see another button down here i think oh i've had a real treat with buttons today i've definitely got a few names to research another one what's that i can see a little coin down here it could be modern oh no no it's not look look look it's not modern let's give it a rinse very noisy here oh it might be american actually let's have a look yeah i think that's a scent okay have a little examination of that later oh i can see another round bit poking out let's get it out oh look it's another american coin okay we've hit the american coin patch down there i can see a pipe stem but it looks like it could be an intriguing pipe stem and because i'm in a different area to where i usually am i may discover a pipe maker that i don't know yet ah yeah so this is andrews and he was a pipe maker in voxel walk well there you go i love a pipe stem with a maker on it it's so handy they used to put their names on one side and the place they made them on the other from around about the mid 19th century so it's perfect so now we're going to be able to look up a little bit about andrews let's get a bit deep guys can we get going in a minute right well here are the pies that i made for these boys and okay what's the verdict how are they they're not talking too much they must be right come inside name is back skip the sciences we've got to go back now now the mvs we're a voluntary charity organization former world navy we used to be the auxiliary service and now became the mvs maritime volunteer service in the 1990s and it really is a community of about 400 people 30 odd units and about 50 boats around the country and the idea is to keep the old dunkirk kind of supply skills alive but also to sort of this water has been used for a long time around here around the country and it hasn't been used for a very long time so this has reintroduced skills back to the water we do powerboat training safety boat training it's all a community project doesn't cost very much gently gently gently gently gently all right we're gonna go in a full circle keep it over there yep keep it keep it keep it there when i say bring up the power so bring the power up now max just gently creep it up gently creep it up keep it full over pull over pull over pull over pull over more power and you sort of encourage people that may not be that confident in life generally people that be sort of getting over certain personal issues and you're doing things to people that may not be quite solo and you can help provide a sort of you're giving back a little bit to um the wider community yeah a lot of our guys thank us because you know we took some guys out recently in the same sort of day like you and he said this is the first time in 15 years i went home at nine o'clock and fell asleep on my bed without taking drugs thank you very much indeed and it helped with his rehab so he was then pushed through the rehab and so on now he's a plumber and he's gone through it so it really really helps people's mental health we think yeah it's a very good process and also i think with the older people they kind of feel left out at 60 70 years old and we don't have any upper age limits so if you're 80 85 years old you know you've got some skills you've been a water coming teachers you know we want to know right you know it's teach us what you know about the water about what's going on here and the more experience in the old people are the better really because then you can really tell us what we're doing if you look up maritime volunteer service you'll find us very easily cutney mbs is on there as well we've got a little youtube thing starting now as well great just to sort of talk about the painting and the things that we do but if you want to just come down and play on the water or just have some fun with boats get some skills learn something new we're here every weekend and we've got four boats now and it's for anyone 18 upwards no upper age limit if you're 18 19 you want to come and join us come along it's for everybody brilliant thank you very much so frank and duncan how did you think my skippering was oh you're a natural nicola it was excellent and thank you for the 50 quid for that for saying so cheeky very very good indeed thank you thank you very much frank for kind of just making sure you know keeping your hand very close to the throttle there but i think what we'd like to learn is that it's kind of it's not that hard yeah you can do if you've got confidence and a bit of time and you don't rush yeah it's actually quite easy it's quite fun well yeah and you're both extremely good teachers so that helps a lot doesn't it thank you very much hi everyone how are you thank you very much for watching my video i hope you're all well wherever you are in the world is it getting cold where you are here on this side of the world it's actually getting quite nippy now and the other day i went out and i bought a hot water bottle it's a fluffy hot water bottle and i'd forgotten how cozy it is to sit there and snuggle up with a hot water bottle so i'm just putting it out there in case you want to try it as well i remember vaguely in childhood my mum getting me a hot water bottle and my sister mentioned it the other day she said she was going out to buy a hot water bottle she didn't really want to put her heating on yet i thought what a great idea and i did and it's absolutely lovely anyway we're not here to talk about hot water bottles we're here to talk about mudlarking on the river thames and some of the extraordinary historical artifacts that get washed out by the tide so i've got them all here in front of me so i'm going to talk about a few of them but firstly thank you again to duncan and frank and simon of course but duncan and frank from the maritime volunteer service they were absolutely great taking us out like that and we had a brilliant time and if you want to have a little look at what they get up to then do check out their website and particularly if you live in london you may want to get involved from age eight to age 80 and probably beyond that i should think everybody is welcome to learn how to drive a boat to get together to have a bit of a social time as well so do look them up right what shall we start with you know what i noticed today is that there is quite a lot of objects in this little hall of finds from the low tide related to vices such as alcohol gambling smoking and so let's start with alcohol with this little little well medallion here i suppose you could call it which is a piece of history related to the temperance movement which started in around about 1830 and who campaigned against the use of alcohol they believed that it led to poverty child neglect all sorts of social problems and so they started up this temperance movement to really try and encourage people not to drink alcohol so on this here it says st peter's church temperance guild be strong in the lord and there is the crossed keys there the keys of st peter and of course st peter owned the keys to heaven so that makes reference to that and so be strong in the lord and rely on the lord in other words and not on alcohol so this little medallion here could relate to the church of st peter's just over the river from where we were and if i just share my screen here a moment here it is yes st peter's church in voxel because they also had a temperance guild which is just here yeah there was a parochial temperance guild and from 1877 a branch of the guild of the holy sepulcher so certainly it could come from them but also they're not the only st peter's church that had a temperance guild i found one mentioned in the newspaper in 1894 18th of may and it is the st peter's church of eaton square also in london and they talk about a little fate that they were having the temperance fate on wit monday the st peter's eaton square church temperance guild ran their 17th annual excursion when by the kind permission of wd mckenzie esquire they spent a very enjoyable day in forley court park the excursion was open to all who agreed to abstain from intoxicating liquors during the day and 321 availed themselves of the trip it's my understanding that these guilds and in fact the temperance movement as a whole started to fade away a little bit after the second world war but here we have a reminder and i wonder who wore this medallion if they won it that may be a fate like the one mentioned in the newspaper article and if they managed to abstain from alcohol there we are it's in remarkably good condition so what next let's move on to another vice gambling with this bell fruit token with 6d on it which is i believe a sixpence and it is an early fruit machine token or if you're in the usa and in some other parts of the world it's called a slot machine and i'm thinking it probably dates to well probably mid-20th century maybe the 50s or the 60s now when i was looking up information about fruit machines and slot machines i fell down quite a good slot machine rabbit hole and i came across a um an episode an episode of the twilight zone called the fever i don't know if you've ever seen it do give it a watch it's a black and white film and i think some of those old black and white films are just brilliant very very evocative and atmospheric anyway it's this man who gets gambling fever and can't stop using a slot machine and then after that i stumbled upon a jack benny program from 1961 an american program some of you may be familiar with and in this program he was discovering um the the the the the slot machines basically he'd never seen one before and he was trying them out so i did record that little piece and it's here for you to watch now those machines all of those what are those things how do they work you mean those slot machines yeah yes i've never seen how do they work oh well come with me i'll show you come closer don't be afraid oh how does it how does it work well you put a nickel in here and you pull this handle wait a minute you put a nickel here and then you pull this handle that's right i see now if two cherries come up here you get five nickels back well that's fair and if three oranges come up here you get 11 nickels back oh that's wonderful now if three bells come up you get 18 nickels no kidding and if three bars come up you get the $50 jackpot $15 that's sensational wow now what happens if you put your nickel in there and none of those things that you mentioned come come up well in that case you well that's ridiculous i mean this thing will never catch on so what did you think of that i don't know about you but i have played on slot machines on occasions and i have never really won anything but it's definitely very tempting to keep on putting your money in because you always think you're just gonna get something that next time or the worst ones i think for children in the arcades are those um ones where there's loads of coins just hanging over the edge of something and you keep putting in your two p's thinking that they're all going to fall down and they never do they just they just never do um staying on the american theme actually as you noticed i did find quite a few american coins and they are dated to the 1970s so these objects they're all pretty much as we can see from the same kind of time like the mid 20th century by the looks of it although possibly the temperance guild medallion is slightly earlier and one place where one would definitely have found some fruit machines and slot machines is westcliff on sea and that is what is imprinted or stamped into this little badge or pin here it's got westcliff on sea along the bottom and then the coat of arms of westcliff on sea now westcliff on sea is actually in essex and there is a big beach there westcliff beach and a big kind of fairground area so exactly the sort of place that you would go with your 6d bell fruit machine token to see if you could win a few pennies so somebody has obviously been there and got this as a little souvenir and then somehow or other it ended up in the thames and who knows how or why um buttons as usual i did find quite a few buttons and some of them have got some makers on them there's one here which is from denman and goddard a tiny little button but denman and goddard and actually they still exist they are very very posh and bespoke tailors now this one is marked with eton and from the mid 1800s denman and goddard actually made the uniforms for eton college very very distinct uniforms that the boys and young men at eton college wear this little tiny ring is probably the kind of thing as well going back to fairgrounds that you could hope to win in a fair or an amusement arcade back in the early 1900s it's very very uh brittle i don't want to try and bend it back into shape because i know from experience that if i do it will probably snap so i will resist the temptation to do a very flattened spoon but there's something rather nice about it and i've got quite a few nice old spoons i'm going to put them in a frame eventually i keep talking about all these things i'm going to put in frames and i don't seem to get around to it time is uh very difficult to find sometimes but i am going to do it it's on my list um so anyway i do have a few little challenges for you if you want to do a little bit of research and see if you can find out some information about the following three items now one of them is another button it's this one here now on it is marked 53 ledenhall street jackson co now i have looked up this and i can't find anything that relates to a tailor to be honest so if you want to see if you can find anything related to jackson and co of ledenhall street i'd be very interested to know what you come up with um now this one here this is a piece of pottery very very nice very very tantalizing fragment with just enough information on for us to know that it does come from hanbury and was it hanbury and allen and they did manufacture all sorts of pharmaceutical goods they were a british pharmaceutical company which were founded in about 1715 and they made various things including infant food and i think that this has got something to do with that i did find a little bit of information and some posters or advertisements relating to infant food but i'd love to know what this pot would have been for in its entirety or what it would have looked like and i couldn't find an example so again if you want to have a go to see if you can find something that would be absolutely brilliant and then let me know in the comments below and the other one is this little pipe stem here which is marked with andrews on one side and voxhall street so it's obviously a pipe maker but i can't actually come up with any information about an andrews of voxhall street who made clay pipes now this i would imagine dates to the mid 19th century um and yeah i drew a blank really i mean i haven't spent a whole great deal of time on it but um yeah if you can find anything out about an andrews of voxhall street that would be excellent as i mentioned when i found it clay pipe makers used to mark their stems from about the mid 19th century with their name and where it was made on the other side so really useful and often when you have that information um you can find out quite a lot about them but this one cannot find out anything so here's a challenge see if you can find out something about andrews pipe maker of voxhall street what else have i got here oh this is a beautiful button this one here it has a ship on it and it has actually part of the coat of arms of the city of london on it so worn by a city of london employee in some capacity or other i'm not quite sure exactly what it's really pretty with that little galleon on there and of course i found rather a lot of lead type and when i got home actually i did start typing it out on paper and there are rather a lot of c's and o's and s's and p's and double f's as well but they're all very dainty and very pretty and in remarkably good printing condition considering they've been washing around in the tide for so long yeah great little outing and actually this outing took place last year so quite a while ago but i'm using up some of my old footage i've got so much footage in my files and i thought right i'm going to go back and use up what i haven't used and simon did a video simon bourne did a video about this outing last year so if you want to see what he found and find out even more about the maritime volunteer service then i'll put a link to his video so you can go back and see what he found as well so what else i will mention that if you are tempted to try mudlarking which would be totally understandable because it is an absolutely fascinating pastime can get quite addictive it's so interesting and very motivating when you find something to research the history the whole sort of thing of mudlarking is absolutely magical so lots of people want to try it but i just want to remind you that if you do want to try it you do need to get a permit from the port of london authority and you can find all the details about the permit on the website of the port of london authority if you just google mudlarking port of london authority you'll find out everything that you need to know apart from that if you're wondering who has made this rather beautiful necklace here with one of my favorite birds on it which is a cormorant it is of course my good friend wendy meister who makes beautiful jewelry inspired by the thames and mudlarking the nature the implements we use i've even got my wendy trowel earrings my mudlarking trout earrings and she made my ring i'm wearing actually i'm a real advocate for wendy's jewelry it really is just beautiful this is a butterfly which was made out of two rings which i also found in the river and when i couldn't find who owned them i decided to have them melted down and made into a butterfly which is one of my favorite insects i suppose you could call it butterfly couldn't you right so i think that's just about it let me check my notes was there anything else i was going to mention i don't think so so thanks again for watching um i hope you enjoyed that little outing along the river thames you never know what you're going to find do you and you just never know what you're going to learn about and in this case um a little bit about alcohol gambling and tobacco a little bit of everything there so thank you again to you all for your donations to my ko-fi site i really really appreciate it thank you for your comments thank you for being such a kind and engaging community you all absolutely rock and i can't wait to see you again very soon with more mudlarking adventures and in the meantime take care everyone sending you lots of love from london bye fanny you hit the super jackpot