The River Thames is famous throughout the World for its history, its culture and its amazing variety of wildlife, archaeology and scenery. Based upon its size alone, a mere 215 miles long from its source in the Cotswolds through to the estuary at South end on Sea, it should hardly evoke such great passions.
But if you ask a Londoner what is the City’s greatest asset - or one of the thousands of boaters in punts or cruisers up and down the river, or people from rural Oxfordshire what they think of when the River Thames springs into their minds - they will each come up with a whole host of reasons to spend time by the River Thames.
"About The River Thames" seeks to list in historical and chronological order the story of the river, and also to highlight just a few of the reasons why we confidently state that the River Thames is such a wonderful treasure chest of delights, and why we are so lucky to be blessed by its presence.

UPPER RIVER THAMAS
The River Thames has something for everyone.  If you enjoy peace and natural beauty, then the gentle and remote stretches of the Upper Thames from its source to Lechlade will suit you. From Lechlade to Eynsford the river is full of such unexpected sights and delights, like kingfishers and otters, or families of ducks having their first swimming lesson across the river, or the sight of cows standing in the river water, their tails gently swishing away.
At the river seems to spring into a faster pace.  Here you can take a cruise, hire a punt or motor launch, or just sit at one of the many riverside pubs and watch the scullers from the world-famous University Rowing Clubs in training.

MIDDLES RIVER
From downstream the Thames meanders its way through beautiful countryside reaches and historic settlements, with an enormous and almost inexhaustible variety of places to visit.

LOWER RIVER DOWNSTREAM
Downstream of Teddington (a derivative of Tide-end-town) the River Thames changes its rhythm.  Though still 60 miles from and the North Sea the Thames becomes tidal. Twice a day the river flows back up towards its source, as the sea pushes its way up the estuary.  With the falling tide the foreshore is revealed – a somewhat neglected part of the river, but whose mud and shingle conceal fascinating clues to the great city of London’s rich past. The river changes its character many times as it flows towards the Nation’s capital.  Suburban gardens and green open spaces of stately parks rub shoulders with Georgian mansions, often set alongside new luxurious riverside homes built on former industrial sites. Passenger boats coming upriver from Westminster stop at Richmond, Kew Chiswick, and Putney on route for Kingston and Hampton Court .In Central London you will find a wide choice of passenger boats plying the piers between Westminster and the Thames Barrier.
In Central London every stretch of the river has a tale to tell of former days.  Palaces, docks, cathedrals and churches, great bridges, theatres and museums all jostle for attention.  Here one can spend many happy days exploring the city’s rich past, both on foot and by boat, or shopping in the luxurious areas of the West End and the galleria, which abound by the Thames.  Samuel Boswell recorded that Dr Johnson, the author of the first Dictionary of the English Language, once said, and “When one is tired of London one is tired of life itself, for there is in London everything that life affords.”

THAMES IS A LIQUID HISTORY
Many of the key players in the history of England have lived on or around the River Thames.  In 1929 the MP John Burns once famously described the river as “liquid history” – the actual quote was “The St Lawrence is water, the Mississippi is muddy water, but the Thames is liquid history”.   The following summary can only give a hint of the wealth of history that is out there for the curious visitor to explore.

The story of the Thames goes back to over 30 million years ago when the river was once a tributary of the River Rhine, because Britain was not an island. During the Great Ice Age 10,000 years ago, the Thames changed its course and pushed its way through the Chiltern Hills at the place now known as the Goring Gap.  The Thames was then 10 times its present size, a high-energy fast flowing river, fuelled by the melting ice sheets.  However, this rapid progress slowed down, and by 3,000 years ago the river had settled down into its familiar meandering pattern that – with a few exceptions – we know today.

Archaeological finds now suggest that the Thames valley was probably first inhabited 400,000 years ago. 
Signs of permanent settlements dating back to Neolithic times have been found at Runnymede and Staines. Farming and fishing were the main occupations.  In the Bronze Age men in boats started to trade with Continental ports and the Thames valley became a leading trading area.  Later the Romans came to the site of what is now London, and they consolidated the Thames as an international port by constructing wharves mills and, of course, London Bridge, the first man-made crossing of the river.  The story of why they selected the site we now see as the place for the bridge is an interesting one.  It was where there was the first easy crossing of the river after they sailed upstream from the estuary. The Romans discovered that by using the rising tide their boats could be swept over 50 miles inland up the Thames from the North Sea, with no wind or muscle power needed.  Later invaders also made use of this free energy source.  Over the next 1000 years the Thames’ long tradition of farming, fishing, milling and trade with other nations began and has continued right up to the present day.  Most of the Thames’ riverside settlements trace their origins back to these very early roots.  Hungry hoards from Saxony invaded the Thames valley and established many settlements, usually distinguished by the suffix  - “ing”. Towns such as Goring and Reading owe their origins to these Saxon settlers, who built many water mills.  So began the centuries-old conflict between those settlers who wanted to navigate up and down the Thames, and those who wanted to dam the river to build millraces and fish traps. Fists flew in dry weather when millers were understandably reluctant to release their precious store of dammed water in order to float off boats below the mills.  Navigation remained difficult until the building of pound locks in the 17th and 18th centuries.  Conflict over water use and abstraction of water from the Thames continues even today. This topic is explored in a later chapter. 

As the Thames grew in importance successive settlers built castles and forts along the river in order to protect the valley and their possessions against jealous invaders.  The Roman town of Dorchester boasted a vast military fortification, and – of course - it was the Romans who built the City walls around London and a large fort on the site of what is now the Tower of London.  Later, it was the Anglo-Saxons who built defences at the mouth of the Thames on the Essex and Kent banks. 

However, these failed to stop the fearsome Vikings in their longboats, who swept up the river on daring raids.  Indeed, by AD870 the Vikings had sailed up the Thames as far as Reading creating havoc wherever they could and taking possession of farms and villages by force, as was their tradition.  The dreaded Vikings were known for their mighty feats and for the rape and pillage of everyone and everything that stood in their way. Life was hard if you were not a Viking!
In time, when even the Vikings became bored with their traditional way of achieving their ends in the Thames valley over the next few hundred years, and peace was finally restored under the rule of the Danish King, Canute in AD1016. By now most of the place names along the Thames were established, as we now know them. The River Thames became a favoured valley for settlement.  It provided not only protection but also water for domestic use and for power for mills, also fertile land for the cultivation of crops and livestock and fish for food.  It was said that the apprentices of London became tired of being fed salmon so often!

NORMAN INVASION AND FOREIGN DOMINATION OF ENGLAND
Once King William had fought and won total control of the strategic Thames Valley he went on to invade the rest of England. To facilitate the subjugation of his unwilling new subjects he had built many castles, including those at Wallingford, Rochester and Windsor.  Windsor is now the largest inhabited castle in the World. 
William the Conqueror also began the construction of the Tower of London, the stern fortress built to guard access to the Pool of London, and destined to be used by successive Monarchs as a State prison and a place of torture and execution.  The castles along the Thames guarded strategic crossing places, and enabled the King to keep strong garrisons of knights and fighting men up and down the Thames valley, ready to ride out and beat up the locals whenever they showed signs of rebellion against the harsh Norman rule.  Next came the tax collectors, chasing villagers and farmers up and down the Thames valley for monies deemed to be due to the King after the properties were assessed and recorded in William’s famous

DOOMSDAY BOOK.
Eventually even the great Norman Lords of the manors became disenchanted with the feudal system and the way in which their manors were so heavily taxed.  In AD1215 they forced King John to sign the Magna Carta (“Great Charter”) on an island in the Thames at Runnymede. This granted them among a host of other things the right of Navigation under Clause 23 of the Charter. 

THE MIDDLE AGES
“The Queen was brought by water to Whitehall .At every stroke of oars did tears fall”….!!!!
Less romantic was Henry VIII’s final trip from London to Windsor – he was due to be buried in St George’s Chapel there.  During the course of his reign Henry had dissolved the monasteries and turned the monks and nuns out of their buildings.  He claimed the monies raised by this action for himself, distributing the spoils among his courtiers and favourites.  During the overnight stop between London and Windsor his barge moored at Syon House in Isleworth.  His coffin suddenly split open, and dogs were found licking his remains.  This fulfilled a prophecy made by a friar at the time when Henry VIII had claimed what was a former convent as his own property. 
During the reign of the Stuart Kings, Hampton Court and Kew Palace were developed, and such famous architects as Sir Christopher Wren were employed to embellish the gorgeous facades – which can still be seen from the river.   King William and his Queen Mary particularly loved the view of the Thames from Hampton Court and had the great formal gardens laid out so that they could maintain the view.

RIVER OF PLEASURE
During Victorian times there was an explosion of interest in the Thames as a leisure source, and many of the activities we enjoy on the river today started in this era.  The new railways, which reached towns on the river such as Reading, Oxford and Windsor, provided a popular “day out” for those ordinary people who could afford it.  Rowing boat firms sprung up with boats for hire. The river filled with small boats during the summer.  Rowing in particular became a hugely popular pastime and clubs increased.  Regattas became annual events.  The world famous Henley Regatta dates from 1839, and still takes place every year at Henley in late June and early July. 

In AD 1829 the Colleges at Cambridge put out a challenge to those at Oxford, and a rowing race ensued between the two Universities – and so began the most famous rowing race in the World.  The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race is now the Nation’s favourite rowing race, and it takes place in late March or early April over a course between Putney and Mort Lake, as it has done every year since 1845, with the exception of the War Years.

Other river races grew up as a result of continuing interest in the Thames as a leisure location.  Punting at Oxford was one of these, and so was sailing and canoeing.  The first canoes to be used on the Thames were “dug-outs” in pre-historic times, made by our ancestors so that they could fish for food on the river. Early examples of dugouts have been found in the riverbed, and one example is in the Museum of London. A long-distance canoe race from Devizes to Westminster Bridge also started during this period.
The 20th Century saw a huge decline in the use of the River Thames for trade, in the Port of London area especially. A combination of factors- including the introduction of container ships needing deepwater anchorage - led to the closure of the London docks.  The Isle of Dogs and the Royal Docks were never to be the same. Because of the development of containerisation new docks were built at Tilbury to handle the lorries and containers coming in from all over the World and the emphasis on trade and the Thames shifted downriver from London itself.

Trade declined on the upper River Thames as well, mainly because goods were moved by road. Many older people remember trade on the river at Wands worth and Lambeth right up to the 1960's. Coal for fire stations was moved in this way.   Since this time there has been an unprecedented surge of building programmes, which have changed the character of the London riverside areas from industrial use to residential use.  To own an apartment by the riverside with river views is now a treasured (and expensive) aspiration.

A trip on the new Docklands Light Railway takes you to the Isle of Dogs Docklands area, which has changed out of all recognition over the past 25 years.  Luxury flats nestle with huge skyscrapers and glass walls in the Canary Wharf area alongside shops and restaurants and wine bars. Where once busy stevedores wrestled with heavy smelly cargoes, now smartly dressed City workers, bankers and investment managers scurry to meetings across the footbridges, which have been built over the waterways, or crowd the myriad number of shops, which have mushroomed, in the lower levels of the huge towers.

Just so that the memory of what the docks used to look like is not lost forever, the Museum of London has recently built an imaginative new museum in an old warehouse at Canary Wharf, which gives an exciting idea of what life in Docklands was all about.  It is called “Museum of Docklands”. Interestingly, there is currently increasing interest in reviving the river as a means of transporting bulky goods (such as household waste) in an environmentally friendly way.

Further alternative use of the Docklands area has been made with the construction of the London City Airport, which is now linked by the Docklands Light Railway to the City of London. Leisure activities have also grown in the docks themselves.  Excel exhibition centre situated on one of the docks hosts the International Boat Show every January, and water sports clubs and societies meet to encourage use of the docks for sailing, canoeing and so on. Hotels have also sprung up in this area, which cater for business meetings, weddings and weekend breaks.

New use has also been made of the River Thames by the introduction of a regular commuter service by boat between piers in Docklands and the centre of London.  When the bombing attacks hit London in 2005 the Thames boat commuter service kept running.  Tourism played a great part in the use of the river for boat trips up and down the Thames in London, and a river trip, accompanied by a running commentary from one of the experienced boat pilots on the history in front of you is a “must-do” for most tourists visiting London. 

The Tate-to-Tate boat service by fast catamaran also was introduced to transport people between the Tate Galley on Milbank and the Tate Modern gallery at Backside.  The Tate Modern is itself a success story – formerly the huge Bank side Power Station belching out noxious fumes for more than 100 years, it was completely refurbished in AD2000 and reopened as a showcase for the latest in Modern Art.  Connected to the north bank of the Thames at St Paul’s, by the Millennium Footbridge, it is yet another example of the River Thames (and its buildings) re-inventing itself.

SO THERE IS A LOT OF HISTORY AND ACTIVATYS ON THE RIVER THAMES..!