Quilting the Thames Part Five: Nelson’s final journey from Greenwich Reach

Nelson’s final journey from Greenwich Reach: “O greatest sailor”

I have now reached Greenwich on my trip down the river for my Thames Quilt. For this panel, I am rekindling my interest in Lord Nelson, who has inspired a number of my past projects, including the Nelson Quilt.

I became fascinated by Nelson when researching a silent film biography made in 1918 by British director Maurice Elvey. One of many people involved in this film was Admiral Sir Mark Kerr, an expert on Nelson, who advised on the scenario. After many months of shooting and editing, Kerr was happy that Elvey’s film was right and, on January 30 1919, the cinema trade magazine The Bioscope reported that Kerr had said that as “a devoted student of Nelsonalia …. he was especially happy to be able to say that he could find absolutely nothing to criticise in the film.”

In 1932, Admiral Kerr published a book – The Sailor’s Nelson – which includes a long poem about the death of Nelson. This is a short extract:

The Embodiment of Duty and Britain’s Naval Strength, / The Victor of a hundred fights, his hour had come at length. / And fitly ‘mid victorious cheers and sounds of ebbing strife / He placed the Crown Immortal on his glorious suffering life. / O greatest sailor since the sea was named, / O truest patriot that the land has known. / Beyond all other Sea Kings loved and famed, / Rising alike to Fortune’s smile and frown. / Where lay thy power? What thy mystic charm?

I quilted a phrase from this poem – O greatest sailor – on the Greenwich Reach panel, not because I particularly like the poem (in fact it isn’t really to my taste being highly patriotic and heroic in tone) but because I wanted to mark Admiral Kerr’s contribution to Elvey’s Nelson film.

The Symmetry of Greenwich

Greenwich has played a significant role in building the myth of Nelson. It was to Greenwich, on December 23 1805, that Nelson’s body was brought after his death almost three months earlier at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Nelson’s death was followed by an outpouring of public grief, culminating in an extensive funeral. On January 4 1806, dignitaries viewed Nelson’s body lying in state in the Painted Hall of the Old Royal Naval College. On January 5, 6 and 7 thousands of members of the public visited the Painted Hall to pay their respects. And on January 8 and 9 Nelson was taken on his last journey from Greenwich to his tomb in St Paul’s Cathedral.

The Painted Hall at Greenwich

On January 8, Nelson’s body was taken by river up the Thames from Greenwich to Whitehall in a two-mile long, carefully planned River Procession. The formal order was published in The Times that day as follows:

Capt Ludlam, Harbour Master
Capt Wood, Harbour Master
Water Bailiff
Rulers of the Company of Watermen &c
Chaplain and Staff of River Fencibles
Boat with drums muffled
Officer commanding gun-boats (10 gun boats in all)
Row boat with Officer
Row boat with Officer

PROCESSION OF STATE BARGES

Barge with Herald’s Standards
Barge with Herald’s Standards
Barge with the Body
Barge with the Chief Mourner
His Majesty’s Barges
Barge with the Lords Commissioners for executing the Office of Lord High Admiral
The Right Hon the Lord Mayor’s Barge
Barge with the Committee specially appointed by the Corporation of London on the occasion of Lord Nelson’s Funeral
Barge with the Committee of the Corporation for improving the Navigation of the River Thames
Barge of the Drapers’ Company
Barge of the Fishmongers’ Company
Barge of the Goldsmith’s Company
Barge of the Skinners’ Company
Barge of the Merchant Taylors’ Company
Barge of the Ironmongers’ Company
Barge of the Stationers’ Company
Barge of the Apothecaries’ Company

According to the Bury and Norwich Post (January 15 1806) the Barge with the Body was covered with black velvet, and surmounted with black feathers. In the centre was a Viscount’s coronet, and three bannerolls were affixed to the outside of the barge. In the steerage were six trumpets and six Lieutenants of the Royal Navy. The other barges were rowed by picked men from the Greenwich Pensioners. They had all their flags hoisted half staff high. As the Procession moved from Greenwich, minute guns were fired. Not a vessel was suffered to disturb the Procession. The decks, yards, and rigging of the numerous ships on the river were all crowded with spectators; the number of ladies was immense.

Thousands of people lined the banks of the Thames to see the Procession. Such was the commercial value of good viewing places that The Times carried numerous advertisements such as these from January 6: A good view of the Grand Procession of Lord Nelson, at the Sign of the Turk’s Head, Union Stairs, Wapping or Those ladies and gentlemen who are desirous of seeing to advantage the grand and solemn procession by water of the late lord Nelson, may be accommodated with seats in a spacious loft, fitted up for the occasion. For particulars enquire at the Angel, Upper-ground-street, Surrey-side of Blackfriars Bridge, where tickets may be had at 5s each.

Nelson’s coat at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich – one of the Nelson relics

When the procession arrived at Whitehall Steps at 3.00pm, Handel’s Dead March (from Saul) was played, and Nelson’s body was taken on to land. At this moment the sunshine disappeared – Dark and heavy clouds came on, and instantly succeeded a tempestuous hail storm, which fell until the Body was landed, when the hemisphere again was clear. (Bury and Norwich Post, January 15 1806)

Nelson’s body lay at the Admiralty until the following day. Then, on January 9 1806, a solemn procession led by the Duke of York and closed by a party of sailors bearing the three flags of HMS Victory went from the Admiralty to St Paul’s Cathedral where Nelson was buried with great ceremony.

My Nelson Quilt, July 2015

Nelson’s funeral procession on the Thames* must have been one of the largest events ever to take place on the River, and I wanted to include it in my Thames Quilt. Nelson has been such an inspiration to my quilting work over the last two years and I am pleased I have been able to commemorate him once again in stitch.

* Many items relating to Nelson’s funeral can be found in the collection of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Funeral directors, A France and Son provided the state coffin, and their office at 45 Lamb’s Conduit Street, London WC1, still features a window display dedicated to Nelson’s funeral (and my thanks to Ken the Old Map Man, of London Trails, for bringing this to my attention).

Quilting the Thames Part Four: “She Moves!” at Deptford Reach

Brunel’s Great Eastern launching sideways at Deptford Reach: Thames Quilt Section Four

According to many maps of the Thames, Greenwich Reach follows straight on from Limehouse Reach. My trusty 1890 Dickens’s Dictionary of the Thames, however, informs me that there is another distinct section of the River in between. Deptford Reach is “about a mile long, from the end of Limehouse Reach to Greenwich Ferry,” and here, I found traces of one of the most celebrated engineers of the 19th Century – Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

The legacy of Isambard Kingdom Brunel – that great builder of bridges, railways, tunnels, ships and dockyards – can be found all over London. The Three Bridges of the Grand Junction Canal, Great Western and Brentford Railway, and Windmill Lane all crossing each other in Hanwell; the Wharncliffe Viaduct; the spans of Paddington Station – these are all part of Brunel’s Great Western Railway. There is a Brunel Museum, by the river in Rotherhithe, which is well worth a visit. The museum concentrates on two of Brunel’s projects – the Thames Tunnel and the SS Great Eastern.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel keeping an eye on Paddington Station

And a shade of the SS Great Eastern can be found at Deptford Reach. Along the Thames path, there is a strange wooden construction: the launch site of Brunel’s SS Great Eastern – or the Great Babe, as he nicknamed her.

In 1857 when she was built, the SS Great Eastern was the largest ship in the world – so big at 692 feet long that the River Thames was not wide enough to accommodate her unless she was launched sideways. And on 3 November 1857, thousands of spectators flocked to Deptford Reach to see this sideways launch, much to Brunel’s dismay. He had wanted to keep it low-key. And the launch failed – the winches and capstans that were supposed to haul the great ship towards the river were simply not strong enough.

Deptford Directions

On 4 November, the London Daily News reported:

We regret to announce that the first attempt to launch this great Leviathan has been a failure … Every available spot on both sides of the river where a glimpse of the ship could be caught was filled with expectant spectators. About 1 o’clock the excitement of all was raised to the highest pitch … The shout is heard, “She moves!” and so she does – the aft part faster, however, than the fore. Her speed is instantly checked, and she is still.

NPG P663; Isambard Kingdom Brunel preparing the launch of 'The Great Eastern' by Robert Howlett

Isambard Kingdom Brunel preparing the launch of the Great Eastern by Robert Howlett, albumen print, arched top, 1857 *

A further (unsuccessful) launch was attempted on 19 November, and reported by the Sligo Champion on 21 November 1857. The Champion’s description of Brunel is wonderful; his bulging pockets indicate a man more concerned with his work than with creating a public show:

A short man of five-and-forty, who must surely be a carpenter in his second-best suit, with a shocking bad hat, which he wears … with the slouch, as if the functions of a hat were to cover the nape of the neck. Our friend wears an invisible green coat, square and wide at the skirts, with two or three outside pockets, in one of which he doubtless carries a carpenter’s rule, and in the other bit of glue.

The River Thames at Deptford where the SS Great Eastern was launched sideways on 31 January 1858

After another failed launch on 28 November, finally, on 31 January 1858, a successful sideways launch took place. This time, “She floats!” and she stayed afloat. But her first voyage in 1859 was beset with difficulties. In September, once the ship had left the Thames and was in the English Channel, a huge explosion led to the destruction of one of her funnels. Five stokers were killed, four or five others were badly injured, and one was lost overboard. Brunel suffered a stroke after his final inspection visit to the Great Eastern on 5 September 1859 and died shortly afterwards on 15 September 1859. He was just 53.

Thames Quilt - Deptford Shadows

As for the SS Great Eastern, she was broken up in 1889-90 at New Ferry on the River Mersey. Such was the strength of her construction, it took two hundred men took two years to complete the task.

Commercial difficulties, costly repairs, and bankruptcies seem to mean that the Great Eastern somehow represent Brunel’s moment of hubris. But I like to think of that first launch as a moment of hope and ambition – and tenacity. The excited cry of “She floats!” and the determination to try and try again were very much in my mind as I sewed Deptford Reach.

The Thames Quilt getting too long and leading me down the garden path….

* Photograph of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, NPG P663, reproduced courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery under the terms of the Creative Commons Licence

Quilting the Thames Part Three: The Greenland Lads at Limehouse Reach

Greenland Lads on a ship full of oil at Limehouse Reach: Thames Quilt Section Three

Travelling further down the River Thames to Limehouse Reach, I found myself at a loss. What should go into the Thames Quilt here?

I considered the E A Dupont 1929 Silent Film Piccadilly with its Limehouse scenes as a starting point. It didn’t work. Much as I love that film, it isn’t really a story of the river. I flirted with Sherlock Holmes and the silent films directed by Maurice Elvey starring Eille Norwood as Holmes, but that didn’t work either. I re-read Great Expectations to check whether Magwitch hides in Limehouse (he does, in a house with a “bow-window where he can see the ships sail up and down the river,” and watch Pip and Herbert Pocket rowing on the river in preparation for his escape) but I didn’t feel it was the right choice.

Low Tide at Limehouse Reach

Then I remembered a visit to the Museum of London, Docklands, where I had seen a great big pot, a remnant of a trade that perhaps we would rather forget today – a pot used in whaling. I do not condone or support whaling in any way, but I’ve always been fascinated by the Thames as a working river, and whaling is undeniably part of its working history. I was fascinated to discover that, if you make your way to Limehouse Reach and cut behind the river into Greenland Dock, you are walking in the footsteps of the Thames whalers. *

Greenland Dock

And it was with the whalers that I found the theme for the Limehouse Reach section of the Thames Quilt. I have a long-standing interest in sea songs and shanties. Some of these songs are whaling songs – songs like The Greenland Whale Fishers (And when we reached that whale my boys / He lashed out with his tail / And we lost a boat and seven good men / And we never caught that whale), and Reuben Ranzo (O! Ranzo was no sailor – Ranzo me boys, Ranzo / He shipped aboard a whaler – Ranzo boys, Ranzo!).

The Whale from Sea Songs and Shanties, collected by W B Whall, Master Mariner, 1920

One of my favourite sea shanties is The Bonnie Ship The Diamond. The final verse of the song looks forward to the whalers returning home:

It’ll be bright both day and night when the Greenland lads come home / With a ship that’s full of oil me boys, and money to our name / Here’s a health unto the Diamond bright, the skipper and the crew / Here’s a health to every bonnie lass that has a heart so true.

I used this verse as inspiration for the Limehouse Reach section of the quilt, but I must confess to geographically repurposing the song: I believe the real Diamond sailed out of Aberdeen rather than London. However, I wanted to make reference to Greenland Dock, so I used the Greenland lads to make a connection. You can see a rousing rendition of The Bonnie Ship The Diamond by the Storm Weather Shanty Choir here.

A murky day on the River at the entrance to Limehouse Reach

The entrance to Greenland Dock from the River on a grey April day

Visitors to Greenland Dock today see a lovely stretch of water without the smell, mess and sound of London’s filthy whaling trade. But two and a half centuries ago, a day out to see a whale carcass was a great treat. On February 9 1762, The Derby Mercury reported that on Sunday an innumerable concourse of people repair’d to Greenland Dock to see the Whale lately brought there. The road was lined with coaches, chariots, post-chaises, horsemen and footmen, from morning till evening, like a fair. It is computed that there were not less than 50,000 persons of both sexes continually passing and repassing. Their journey, however, proved unsavoury at the end, for the whale stank abominably.

The return of the Thames Whalers? The empty stage at the end of Moby Dick Unabridged

In October 2015, whaling returned to the Thames when the Southbank Centre staged Moby Dick Unabridged – a four-day live rendition of Herman Melville’s novel. An impressive reading relay was enhanced by art installations, sea shanties and dance performances. It is a matter of lasting regret that I didn’t experience the whole thing; I was only able to get along to the final afternoon when I became so wrapped up with Captain Ahab that I stayed, spellbound, until the end.

More recently, I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Moby Dick while sewing the Thames Quilt. There is a description of the whaling town of New Bedford near the beginning. In my head, I see not New Bedford but Greenland Dock:

Huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were piled up upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wandering whale ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new cruises were on the start; that one more perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye.

Limehouse Reach: Thames Quilt detail

* I was lucky enough to be shown around Greenland Dock by Ken, the Old Map Man, who has developed a great walk about the docks in Rotherhithe – including the magical remains of Russia Dock. Find out more here and take a walk by the river.

Quilting the Thames Part Two: Samuel Pepys at the Lower Pool

Lower Pool – Thames Quilt Section Two

My quilted journey down the Thames continues at the Lower Pool, which runs from the Cherry Garden Pier to Limekiln Creek. And at the Lower Pool I am joined by celebrated Seventeenth Century diarist, Mr Samuel Pepys.

NPG D30958; Samuel Pepys by Robert White, after Sir Godfrey Kneller, Bt

Samuel Pepys by Robert White, after Sir Godfrey Kneller, Bt, line engraving, published 1690, National Portrait Gallery *

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) lived through turbulent times – the Civil War, the execution of one king (Charles I), and the coronation of another (Pepys was on the ship that brought Charles II home from exile in the Netherlands). He wrote his daily observations in diaries that lasted through the 1660s. Pepys wrote of events of great national import such as the Great Fire of London, the Plague, and the Anglo-Dutch war; and wrote more intimately of his career as a naval administrator, of his wife Elisabeth and his many extra-marital philanderings, his household servants, of concerts and the theatre, of playing the flageolet at home, and of being jealous of his wife’s dancing master.

Everybody's Pepys

The Diary of Samuel Pepys

As a London resident and employee of the Navy Board, Pepys naturally wrote about the Thames in his diaries – and of his working life around Greenwich, Woolwich, Tilbury, Deptford, and Rotherhithe, or, as he knew it, Redriffe or Redriff, which had been a centre of shipbuilding since Elizabethan times. He often travelled between different places on the Thames during the course of the day – taking boats up and down the river, or walking through the fields between the shipyards of Redriffe and Deptford. For example, on September 5 1662, he started his working day at 5.00am and travelled by boat to Woolwich: Here I staid and mustered the yard and looked into the storehouses; and so walked all alone to Greenwich, and thence by water to Deptford, and there examined some stores, and did some of my own business in hastening my work there, and so walked to Redriffe, being by this time pretty weary and all in a sweat; took boat there for the Tower, which made me a little fearful, it being a cold, windy morning.

A glimpse of Redriff in Rotherhithe

Travelling by river in the 1660s was just part of life – often the only way of getting around London and the surrounding areas. Pepys usually simply notes his journeys, if he mentions them at all. But occasionally there were difficulties. On December 27 1665, Pepys dined with Sir W Warren at the Pope’s Head … and thence to the goldsmiths, I to examine the state of my matters there too, and so with him to my house, but my wife was gone abroad to Mrs Mercer’s, so we took boat, and it being darke and the thaw having broke the ice, but not carried it quite away, the boat did pass through so much of it all along, and that with the crackling and noise that it made me fearfull indeed. So I forced the watermen to land us on the Redriffe side, and so walked together till Sir W Warren and I parted near his house and thence I walked quite over the fields home by light of linke, one of my watermen carrying it, and I reading by the light of it, it being a very fine, clear, dry night.

Looking up towards Lower Pool and the Redriff Mud from Nelson Wharf

According to Pepys’s London: Everyday Life in London 1650-1703 by Stephen Porter, in very cold winters the Thames above London Bridge froze over. The gaps between the bridge piers, or starlings, were so narrow that they restricted the flow of water through them, creating relatively still water upstream … The river above the bridge froze over in six winters during the second half of the century. When it froze really hard fairs were held on the ice, such as during the severe winter of 1684, the worst of the century, when the Thames could be crossed by pedestrians for seven weeks between 2 January and 20 February.

Pepys’ crossing point below London Bridge was not frozen solid, but on that December evening the sound of the ice cracking at Rotherhithe was sufficiently frightening to make him want to get off the river as quickly as possible.

Lower Pool section, work in progress on the Thames Quilt, March 2016

The pictures of ice and darkness conjured by Pepys are very vivid – you can almost hear the ice cracking as you read his diary – and when I came to the Lower Pool in my quilt, I knew his experience had to be included. I quilted him in with the words Pepys took boat but was afeared of the cracking ice at Redriffe.

I like to think of him reaching the Rotherhithe shore in relief, then reading his book by the glow of a waterman’s light as he walked for the rest of his journey on a freezing cold night.

* Picture of Samuel Pepys, NPG D30958 reproduced courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery under the terms of the Creative Commons Licence

Quilting the Thames Part One: Merchants at the Upper Pool

Upper Pool – Thames Quilt Section One

The sewing of my Thames Quilt project has commenced. My quilted journey down the Thames begins at the Pool of London with five Fourteenth Century merchants.

Charles Dickens Jnr’s Dictionary of the Thames 1890 advises that the Pool of London is divided into the Upper and the Lower Pool, the point of division being the headquarter station of the Thames Police at Wapping. The Upper Pool stretches from London Bridge to Wapping or (on the other side) Cherry Garden Pier, Bermondsey.

Looking under Tower Bridge at the Upper Pool

I associate the Upper Pool with trade, largely because of reading historical novels by Cynthia Harnett (1893-1981) when I was growing up. Harnett’s novels always felt slightly radical because they were about merchants and traders – people who seemed ordinary, familiar – rather than about royalty or grand people at court. Her protagonists were merchants’ sons who were learning their trade as apprentices; they would happen upon a mystery, and be sharp enough to expose miscreants engaged in wrongdoing.

Harnett wove lots of social history into her plots. In The Woolpack (1951) she explained how cloth was made in 1493 – from sheep shearing to sale – as part of the story of Nicholas and his determination to discover the identity of the thief who was tampering with his father’s wool exports. Much of the action of The Load of Unicorn (1959) took place around the Thames of 1482, when Benedict discovered why paper intended for William Caxton’s printing press was being stolen. Along with Benedict, the reader is told how to set a page of type and is advised that the King’s Customs cannot protect the Thames: Did you know that London Customs have charge only for a few miles down the river? Beyond Gravesend it is the duty of Sandwich. And likewise on the north bank from Tilbury onwards it belongs to Ipswich… Have you ever sailed the coast of Essex, my masters? The inlets are like weevil runs in a cheese – from Pennyhole Bay right round to Mucking Creek.

Ring Out Bow Bells! (1953) is set in 1415 and is very much a novel of the Thames. Nan, Adam and Dickon spend their time by a river that looks like a big lake shut in on three sides by banks of houses. On the north side the buildings … crowded down to the water’s edge, ending in a broken line of wharfs and warehouses and a jumble of roofs. Opposite on the south bank, there were gardens among the houses and a background of tree-tops to mark the open country.

“The Tower from the river looked far more imposing than it did from the land. Dickon shaded his eyes and stared at it.” (Ring Out Bow Bells!)

Cynthia Harnett habitually added a postscript to her novels in which she explained which characters were purely fictional and which were based on real people; which plot elements came from historical records; and where the reader might be able to see an item featured in the novel (in the Victoria and Albert Museum for example) or visit a location. For Ring Out Bow Bells! she described a walk from Cannon Street Station to find the London of Nan, Adam and Dickon. This is doubly interesting today; Harnett was looking for Fifteenth Century locations in 1953 when London still had much visible bomb damage – so the reader of 2016 can find layer upon layer of historical meaning in the walk she describes. (There was a bomb crater just in front of me, and as I poked about I caught sight of some squared stones which had probably been part of the very house which was to be the centre of my story – for you see Grantham’s Inn was a real house.)

I suppose Harnett’s novels might come across as being a bit worthy and education-heavy but I always liked them. Looking back, I suspect they awakened my interest in historical research – and the idea that there might be more to a story than meets the eye.

Why is this relevant to my Thames Quilt? Well, I wanted to include “real people” in the quilt so I was very excited to find the name of five merchants from the early Fourteenth Century who traded at the Pool of London in the Calendar of Letter-Books of the City of London, 1309-1314*.

Benedict de Burgo, Henry de Banneberi and Arnald Picard

The Calendar includes the rules of trade at the Pool of London (la Pole):

That no broker in future presume to go to la Pole or elsewhere by land or by water to buy or attempt [to buy] any wines or other goods before they come to land and are exposed for sale, under penalty aforesaid. Also every broker shall tender good advice, that honest men of the trade in which he is a broker may sell their wares to trustworthy and sufficient buyers who have the wherewithal to satisfy their creditors: and if he shall put forward any insufficient purchaser to trustworthy men of the City or other merchants to purchase their wares, so that by reason of the fraud of such broker the purchaser (emptor) lose his wares, the broker shall answer therefor, if he have the wherewithal, and if he have not the wherewithal shall be committed to prison until, &c., and he shall no longer be a broker.

It also lists five men who had the necessary permission to act as brokers:

Arnald Picard admitted broker of wine before the Mayor and Aldermen
John de Rokesle admitted broker of woad before the Mayor and good men of that trade
Henry de Banneberi and Benedict de Burgo elected brokers of peltry by good men of the trade, and presented before John de Gysors, the Mayor, and Aldermen
Andrew de Salop elected loco the above Benedict, deceased, and sworn before Nicholas de Farendone, the Mayor, and Aldermen

Andrew de Salop and John de Roksele

If I were a novelist like Cynthia Harnett, I would have been able to weave a story around these men who were brokers at the Upper Pool. Instead, I sewed them into my Thames Quilt.

* Folios ci – cx’, in Calendar of Letter-Books of the City of London: D, 1309-1314, ed. Reginald R Sharpe (London, 1902), pp. 218-238 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/london-letter-books/vold/pp218-238

Quilting the Thames

High Tide on the Thames

Along with my habit of listening to the Shipping Forecast, which I don’t understand and can’t interpret, I have a fascination with nautical charts, which, again, I don’t understand and can’t interpret. I just like the words they contain and the sounds and the images they conjure up. I like to unfold Imray navigation charts, and pore over the names of unknown waterways: Mouse Channel, Kentish Knock, Sledway, Shipway, Shipwash…. Even the feel of the waterproof paper on which they are printed promises adventure.

A couple of years ago, I saw Thames Film (1986) by the artist William Raban, which traces the Thames all the way along the Estuary out to the Maunsell Sea Forts, with John Hurt reading from Thomas Pennant’s 1787 Journey from London to Dover. With its mixture of archive and contemporary film, paintings, poetry, place-names and stories, this 66-minute film is one I can watch again and again.*

The working Thames at Tilbury

Seeing Thames Film opened my eyes to the mysteries of the Thames Estuary. William Raban’s film journey goes as far as the Red Sands Fort, out in the sea near Whitstable, and seeing the towers for myself became an obsession. So, in September 2014, I went down the Thames on PS Waverley from Tower Pier to the sea forts. It was a misty day, and, past Southend, it became harder and harder to see the shore, but once out at sea, the mist cleared and I saw the towers appearing, beautiful and alien, like nothing I had seen before.

Sea Forts, September 2014

When I look back at my quilting notebooks for the last couple of years, the idea of a quilt based on the Thames comes up again and again, but only as a vague thought. Things finally fell into place at the end of December 2015. I was on a walk around Rotherhithe with Ken, the Old Map Man. Ken has created a great series of London walks which are based on old maps (and you can find out more here). Walkers are shown how an area was set out in – say – the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries, how some things have changed and some have stayed the same. Over in Rotherhithe, Ken showed me King Edward III’s Manor House, a Norwegian church, tunnels under the river, and – most excitingly of all – church furniture made from wood that saw action at the Battle of Trafalgar. As the walk ended, I was talking to Ken about the names of the various Watermen’s Stairs down to the Thames (Fountain, Cherry Garden, Three Mariners, Pickle Herring, Elephant, Swan….) when I realised how the quilt project could work.

Thames Quilt Fabric – new and uncut

It struck me that the names of parts of the Thames are like poetry: like the Shipping Forecast, they create their own rhythm. And different things happen in different parts of the river at different times. Some are true, some imaginary, and some a mixture of myth and reality.

Think of Samuel Pepys writing in his diary about the frozen river and the recreation of a frost fair in Sally Potter’s film Orlando. Recall the river trade: legal or illicit – or a bit of both, like the cargo of paper brought in by Benedict and Peterkin in Cynthia Harnettt’s excellent children’s book, The Load of Unicorn. Thomas Cromwell listens to and learns from the talk of the boatmen in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall to the disquiet of his companions (“Master Wriothesley’s face is a study. He does not understand how much you can learn from boatmen, their argot blasphemous and rapid.”). Sally Lockhart finds a Ruby in the Smoke in Wapping thanks to Philip Pullman. Queen Elizabeth I inspires courage at Tilbury. Isambard Kingdom Brunel launches the SS Great Eastern on the Isle of Dogs.

Launch site of the SS Great Eastern

Then there’s Dickens – Our Mutual Friend and Great Expectations are overdue for a re-read. And I was delighted to discover that his son, Charles Dickens, Jr, wrote a Dictionary of the Thames in 1879, which was updated and reprinted every year from 1880 to 1896.

I’m not a historian of London or of the Thames, which gives me the freedom to stitch my impressions as I discover books, people, places and myths. I’m planning and researching as I go, so I’m not sure what I will learn – or sew – as the Thames Quilt develops. It is hugely exciting to have such an involving project underway.

* If you want to experience William Raban’s wonderful, haunting Thames Film, it is available on DVD from the British Film Institute shop.

is there room for me to sew?

Quilting, Reading, and Keeping the Needles Sharp

Thames Quilt