Our Second Birthday!

Not sure where the last year has gone – the project is now approaching its SECOND birthday and the TDP team would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has participated in making this another hugely successful year!

Fieldwork

Just to sum up what you have achieved – by the end of the year, there will be over 260 trained FROG members and this year we have been working with the FROG at ten different sites across London.

TDP team at Oliver’s Ait

We’ve recorded eroding bargebeds and the remains of river stairs at Trig Lane and Bankside, revisited the warship timbers at the Castle’s Breakers Yard in Charlton, invoked the spirit of IK Brunel at Burrell’s Wharf, investigated the rarely visited royal beach and historic riverside walls at the Tower of London, made some exciting new discoveries at Greenwich, unpicked the property boundaries and river crossing at Strand on the Green in West London – including a trip to Oliver’s Ait (huge thanks to the Maritime Volunteer Service)- and cleaned and recorded the hulked vessels on the foreshore at Tripcockness, our muddiest site ever! At the end of this month we move to Rotherhithe, where we have more ships timbers to record and structures associated with waterfront activity, including the Mayflower PH.

Events

We’ve run events throughout the year with lots of different organisations including the Environment Trust for Richmond-on-Thames, Hermitage Community Moorings, University College London, Historic Royal Palaces, the City of London Archaeological Society, RSPB Rainham, Hall Place, the Thames Explorer Trust, the Thames Estuary Partnership, the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre, the Bermondsey & Rotherhithe Carnival, the Museum of London, Docklands Settlement, Museum of London Archaeology, the Isleworth Society, the University of East London, the Pumphouse Museum and Discover Greenwich, including the fantastic FROG photo project The Thames in Focus: London’s River through a Lens.

None of this could have been achieved without the input and enthusiasm of the FROG members and all of your help with manning information stalls and attending events. We’re already planning ahead for the final year’s field work and public outreach programme, including a final round of FROG training.

Press and Publicity!

Team members have given lectures to Richmond Archaeological Society, Kingston Archaeology Society, the Theoretical Archaeology Group conference, London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, Chiswick Pier Trust, the Chelsea Society, Twickenham Local History Society, Bristol University, Birkbeck University, University College London, the Friends of Bushey Park, Greenwich Heritage Centre, the Kingston Association of Wrens, Wandsworth Historical Society, West Essex Archaeological Group and the Thames and Field Metal Detecting Society. There are plenty more coming up – so keep an eye on the website for further information.

BBC’s Digging for Britain at Greenwich

We’ve also been in the news with articles in London Archaeologist, British Archaeology, Talk of the Thames and Current Archaeology, reports on two BBC programmes (Inside Out and Digging for Britain), a film in the Museum of London’s new Archaeology in Action gallery, and of course winning the BAA prize.

Forthcoming Foreshore Forum

Looking ahead, we have the next Foreshore Forum coming up on 11 December (save the date!); we’ll be focusing on the Thames at War, following up on our Riverpedia event in May and the day will also include a round up of this year’s fieldwork and information about our future plans as we move into the final year of the project….

Hugh and Courtney at the Thames at War workshop

Phew! Thank you to everyone once again – this is such a brilliant project (amazing archaeology and fantastic volunteers!) and I’m very excited about what we might discover next year, especially when we return to some of our very first sites to roll out the Monitoring Programme (at Custom House, Isleworth, Alderman Stairs, Putney, Fulham……..)