Shifting Sands

Posted byPatricia Stoughton

Not a vast wind-blown desert of dunes but a sliver of sand on the Victoria Tower Gardens’ foreshore.

The Victoria TowerGardens’ foreshore and in the distance, Westminster Bridge.

Yet peering down through a zoom lens it’s possible to imagine a desert landscape below. And over the past three years I’ve captured a variety of its forms, forms that appeal to the imagination…

Landscape of rolling sand dunes.

With a Thames tidal range of up to seven metres, and a flow of five or more miles an hour scouring the shoreline, this small stretch of sand crowning a stony beach, is never quite the same. Rough or smooth, wet or dry, and sculpted in different sizes, the sand seems to mirror the shapes of water and at times reflects a sudden change in movement.

Shifting shapes reflecting changes in movement of water above.
A marked a change in movement of the water above the sand.

At other times patterns in the sand are more regular, echoing the rippling water above.

Wavelets in the sand: the sharper, shadowed, leeward side facing away from the current.
Shimmering sand.
Sand ripples.
Wave ripples left in wet sand by an ebbing tide.
As the tide ebbs, sand dries out.
Patterns changing as water evaporates.
Sand wavelets drying out.
Flood tide returns.

At other times the beach presents a clean, smooth surface with faint lines marking the ebbing tide…

Smooth sand with ebbing tideline marks.

…sometimes outlined by dark particles that have been floating in the river.

Receding tideline marked by small, dark particles.
Sand pockmarked by rain.
Sand waves pitted with rain spots.
Return of the flood tide, washing away rain marks.

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You may have noticed other central London Thames beaches, mostly small patches of sand, revealed at low tide. The best known and largest of these is the easily accessed Ernie’s Beach on the foreshore below Gabriel’s Wharf on the South Bank. It is a favourite place for sand sculptors.

A once famous but now vanished Thames beach, Tower Beach, was created on the foreshore below the Tower of London. It took more than 1,500 barge-loads of sand to fill the allotted space between St. Katherine Steps and the Tower. It was opened on 23 July, 1934, by the Lieutenant Governor of the Tower. King George V, actively promoting the project, decreed that the beach was to be used by the children of London, who should be given “free access forever”. Always closed at high tide and throughout the Second World War, Tower Beach was re-opened in 1946. However as levels of pollution gradually caused increasing concern, it was closed for good in 1971 and the sand long since swept away.

The sliver of sand on the Victoria Tower Gardens foreshore.

In troubled times dominated by actions of a few, when the hopes and aspirations of most of us count for little, such escapes into the natural world and its ever-changing patterns are balm for the soul.

Sources and further information
London’s Thames Beaches, see: The Londonist
See a general view of the Victoria tower Gardens’ shoreline here.
History of the Tower Hill Trust.
Discover the history of Tower Beach by ‘Exploring GB’ here.