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From the Crown Jewels on display at the Tower of London to the Magna Carta stowed away in the British Library, London boasts plenty of impressive treasures. But a new exhibition proves that some of the most important gems are hiding in plain sight, or perhaps, plain mud.
Next year, a new exhibition at the London Museum Docklands called ‘Secrets of The Thames: Mudlarking London’s Lost Treasures’ will showcase a collection of the capital's ‘lost treasures’ scavenged from the River Thames. The items on display include a Viking dagger and a Tudor-era wool-knitted hat.
If you’re still trying to figure out what exactly mudlarking is, we can help. It’s the practice of searching the mud or wet ground near rivers for valuable or interesting objects. Mudlarking in the Thames dates back to the Victoria era when poor families would search for scraps of any left behind material that they could make some money from.
Obviously mudlarking is done more as a hobby today, but if you’re thinking of going treasure hunting yourself, think again. You need a valid permit from the Port of London Authority to go mudlarking, and any item more than 300 years old must be reported to the London Museum.
It may be hard to believe that underneath that murky surface lies some hidden treasures but the River Thames is in fact a world-renowned archaeological site and the wet clay shore helps naturally preserve objects.
The London Museum’s mudlarking exhibition isn’t all daggers and knives, though. There is also, among other things, a pair of false teeth on show.
If you simply can’t wait, there’s a weekend dedicated to all things mudlarking at the Docklands Museum this month (September 28-29) ahead of next year’s exhibition. You can find out more about that here.
The exhibition will open to the public from April 4 2025 to March 1 2026. Tickets will go on sale in February 2025 and you can buy them on the museum’s official website here.
In more recent London Museum news, what do you think of the institution’s new name and logo?
What’s new in London?
Elsewhere in the city, the Design Museum is getting a huge exhibition on the filmmaker Wes Anderson next year and Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson is going to blur out all the advertising screens in Piccadilly Circus. You can also grab an OG copy of TfL’s tube map at this exhibition at The Map House.
Did you see that a replica 17th century warship has arrived in London?
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