Author archives: Patricia Stoughton

One of my favourite descriptions of the Thames bridges comes from the Gentle Author on Spitalfields Life, where he writes of “a line of bridges, holding the north and south banks of London together tightly like laces on a boot.” It’s an image that’s particularly effective when you look at aerial pictures of the Thames […]

Twitter friends have kindly joined with me to share their views from some of the top vantage points along the river. Our journey begins with Ruth Wadey looking out across the river at Eel Pie Island through a pretty, Christmas card snow shower. If you live in the London area, or further afield, you might […]

Gone are the boom days of the early 1960s when the section of the tidal Thames upstream from Tower Bridge to Teddington lock used to be crowded with boats delivering all kinds of cargo. Vic Clarke remembers “The dry cargo tramp steamers tied up daily had to be seen to be believed, all unloaded and […]

Since the much quoted judgement by the Natural History Museum in 1957 that the Thames was “biologically dead” and incapable of supporting life, a lot has happened. The first changes began soon after that as a result of much discussion and soul-searching. In a long, wordy, and complex debate in the House of Lords on […]

Taken taken on February 2, 2009 these pictures are a reminder that until quite recently we used to have colder winters in London. Not as cold as the famous Frost Fairs in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the river was frozen over for several weeks at a time but definitely colder than most of […]