River Thames: Encyclopedia II - River Thames - History

River Thames - History

From over 600,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene ice age, until the Anglian glaciation around 475,000 years ago, the early River Thames flowed from Wales to Clacton-on-Sea, and crossed what is now the North Sea to become a tributary of the Rhine. The river followed a path through Buckinghamshire, the southern part of Hertfordshire and Essex, running from the area of modern Staines up the valley of the Colne to Hatfield and then eastward across Essex towards the primeval Rhine. It was later diverted by encroaching ice down the valley of the modern River Lea to its present estuary position. This path was then itself blocked by a mass of ice near Hatfield and a lake ponded up to the west of this around St Albans. Waters eventually overflowed near Staines to cut the path of the modern Thames through central London. When the ice retreated about 400,000 years ago the river bed along the new route followed the lower path and so the river remained on its present day course. The flow in the Colne valley then reversed, now flowing south as a tributary into the modern Thames. Superficial gravel deposits from the primordial Thames are found throughout the Vale of St. Albans.

Numerous iron age hoards found in the lower Thames indicate the religious importance of the river. The skulls found near Hammersmith have been interpreted both as human sacrifices and as victims of Boudica's revolt. Within the human timescale, following the example of the local Celts, the Romans called the river Tamesis: Julius Caesar (De Bello Gallica), Cassius Dio (xl. 3) and Tacitus (Annals xiv. 32).^[2]

Richard Coates has recently suggested that the river was called the Thames upriver where it was narrower, and Plowonida down river where it was too wide to ford. This gave the name to a settlement on its banks, which became known as Londinium from the original root Plowonida derived from pre-celtic Old European 'plew' and 'nejd,' meaning something like the flowing river or the wide flowing unfordable river.^[3]

The Thames provided the major highway between London and Westminster in the 16th and 17th centuries. The clannish guild of watermen ferried Londoners from landing to landing, and tolerated no outside interference. A versifying waterman, John Taylor the Water Poet (1580—1654), described the river in a poem commemorating a voyage from Oxford to London,

In the 17th and 18th centuries, during the period now referred to as the Little Ice Age, the Thames often froze over in the winter. This led to the first Frost Fair in 1607, complete with a tent city set up on the river itself and offering a number of amusements, including ice bowling. After temperatures began to rise again, starting in 1814, the river has never frozen over completely. The building of a new London Bridge in 1825 may also have been a factor; the new bridge had fewer pillars than the old and so allowed the river to flow more freely, thus preventing it from flowing slowly enough to freeze in cold winters.

By the 18th century, the Thames was one of the world's busiest waterways, as London became the centre of the vast, mercantile British Empire. During this time one of the worst river disasters in England took place on 3 September 1878 on the Thames, when the crowded pleasure boat Princess Alice collided with the Bywell Castle killing over 640.

In the 'Great Stink' of 1858, pollution in the river became so bad that sittings at the House of Commons at Westminster had to be abandoned. A concerted effort to contain the city's sewage by constructing massive sewers on the north and south river embankments followed, under the supervision of engineer Joseph Bazalgette.

The coming of rail and road transportation, and the decline of the Empire in the years following 1914, have reduced the prominence of the river. London itself is no longer a port of any note, and the Port of London has moved downstream to Tilbury. In return, the Thames has undergone a massive clean-up from the filthy days of the late 19th and early- to mid-20th centuries, and life has returned to its formerly dead waters. It is now the cleanest river in the world that flows through a city.

In the early 1980s, a massive flood-control device, the Thames Barrier, was opened. It is closed several times a year to prevent water damage to London's low-lying areas upstream. In the late 1990s, the 12-km-long Jubilee River was built, which acts as a flood channel for the Thames around Maidenhead and Windsor.^[4]

The Sex Pistols played a concert on the Queen Elizabeth Riverboat on June 7, 1977, the Queen's Silver Jubilee, while sailing down the river.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki