Tag: River Thames

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Eels, Pies, Islands, the deep Sargasso Sea & Rock and Roll July 23rd

Photo by Natalia Gusakova on Unsplash
Photo by Natalia Gusakova on Unsplash, Eels

Summer is the best time to fish for Eels. Mid May to the end of July. But they can be caught all year around. Jellied Eels have been a staple of East End diets since the 18th Century. They were to be found in many stalls dotted around the East End, from vendors venturing into pubs and in Pie and Mash shops. Tubby Isaacs is perhaps, the most famous. Jellied eels are still sold in a diminishing number of places in the East End. Manze’s Eel, Pie, and Mash shop at 204 Deptford High Street, London was listed in December 2023. The shop opened in 1914 and was a pioneer of commercial branding. This is the fourth Manze’s shop to be listed: Tower Bridge Street, Chapel Market Islington, and Walthamstow High street. The current owner of the Deptford shop is retiring and so the shop will close.

There are three Pie and Mash shops near me in Hackney. The one in Dalston has become a bar. In Broadway Market it is now an optician. But the one in Hoxton Market is surviving, and all three have retained their distinctive interiors. On the River Lee Navigation is another piece of Eel history which is the excellent Fish and Eel Pub at Dobbs Weir.

Pie and Mash Shop. Established 1862, closed down 2021. Broadway Market, Hackney (photo, copyright the author)

My mum loved jellied eels. It took me until I was over 60 before I could bring myself to try them. And I have no wish to repeat, what for me, was a revolting experience.

By JanesDaddy (Ensglish User) - English Wikipedia - [1], CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1663124
By JanesDaddy (Ensglish User) – English Wikipedia – [1], CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1663124

Gervase Markham in his ‘The English Husbandman’ of 1635 provides instructions on how:

To take Eels in Winter, Make a long bottle or tube of Hay, wrapped about Willow boughs, and having guts or garbage in the middles. Which being soaked in the deep water by the river side, after two or three days the eels will be in it and you may tread them out with your feet.

And here is a fascinating article on Eel fishing.

Eel traps at Bray, on the River Thames (Henry Taught 1885)

Romans, Saxons and Eels

Eels have been eaten for thousands of years. Apicius, author of a famous collection of Roman Recipes tells us of two sauces for eels:

Sauce for Eel Ius in anguillam

Eel will be made more palatable by a sauce which has​ pepper, celery seed, lovage,​ anise, Syrian sumach,​ figdate wine,​ honey, vinegar, broth, oil, mustard, reduced must.

Another Sauce for Eel Aliter ius in anguillam

Pepper, lovage, Syrian sumach, dry mint, rue berries, hard yolks, mead, vinegar, broth, oil; cook it.

Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, which tells of Britain as a land with “the greatest plenty of eel and fish.” Several fish traps have been found in and around the Thames, one for example in Chelsea.

Aristotle, Freud and the Deep Sargasso Sea

But eels had a great mystery no one knew where they came from or how they reproduced. Aristotle thought they spontaneously emerged from the mud. Sigmund Freud dissected hundreds of Eels, hoping to find male sex organs. It was only on 19th October 2022 that an article in the science journal Nature disclosed the truth. The article was ‘First direct evidence of adult European eels migrating to their breeding place in the Sargasso Sea‘. Ir proved beyond doubt that the theory that Eels go to the sea near Bermuda to spawn was, incredibly, true.

Eel Pie Island

Eel Pie Island . Ordnance Survey In 1871 to 1882 map series (OS, 1st series at 1:10560: Surrey (Wikipedia)

But Eels also have their place in Rock and Roll History. Eel Pie island is on the Thames, near Twickenham and Richmond. It is famous for its Eels. But was home to an iconic music venue. The Eel Pie Hotel hosted most of the great English Bands of the 50s. 60s, and 70s. The roll call of bands here is awesome. The Stones, Cream, Rod Stewart, Pink Floyd, you name it, they were here:

David Bowie, Jeff Beck, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Memphis Slim, Champion Jack Dupree. Buddy Guy, Geno Washington, Long John Baldry, Julie Driscoll and Brian Auger. John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Ten Years After, Chicken Shack, and one of my all-time favourite bands. the Savoy Brown Blues Band. And I have forgotten the Nice, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Joe Cocker, and the Who. And many more!

The Rolling Stones played at the Railway Tavern, Richmond on Sunday, February 24, 1963. Here they were spotted by people from the nearby Eel Pie Hotel. They were booked for a 6 month residency, which they began as virtually unknown and ended as famous.

Here is a recipe for Baked Eel pie from Richmond, near the famous Eel Pie Island.

This was first published as part of another post in 2022, and revised and republished on 28th November 2023, 2024.Moved from November 28th to July 23rd in 2025

(I moved it to make room for a post on Mrs Shakespeare. Also, because I cannot find anything to substantiate the opening statement that the Eel Season had its second day on November 28th. All evidence I find says the best fishing is in the Summer.

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Swan Upping July 16th

Swan Upping By Philip Allfrey Abingdon 2006 – CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2464315. The Royal Uppers are to the right and the Vintners’ Uppers on the left.

Swan upping takes place on the 3rd Week of July. It is an annual census of the Swans on the River Thames. This year it began on Monday, July 14th. It began in the 12th Century.

In theory, the King has the ownership of all unmarked Mute Swans on open water in the UK. Swan Upping is an ancient ceremony during which Swans are upped, checked for health and ringed if they do not belong to the King. In fact, it is the Cygnets which are upped. They are checked for weight and health. Their parents are checked for an ownership ring. If the parents are ringed then the young cygnets will be ringed accordingly. If the parents are not ringed, then they belong to the King and remain unringed.

This ceremony now only takes place on the Thames. It begins at Sunbury and progresses to Abingdon. The Swan Uppers have traditional wooden rowing skiffs and a scarlet Upping Shirt. They are managed by the Swan Marker. The Royal Uppers are accompanied by Swan Uppers from the two City Livery Companies that still have rights to ownership of Thames Mute Swans. These companies are the Dyers Company and the Vintners Company.

If you want to catch Swan Upping this year you will find them upping Swans at the following places:

Thursday 17th July 2025 
Sonning-on-Thames 09.00 – Departure point 
Caversham Lock 10.15 
Mapledurham Lock 12.30 
Goring Lock 17.00 
Moulsford 18.00 
  
Friday 18th July 2025 
Moulsford 09.00 – Departure point 
Benson Lock 10.00 
Clifton Hampden Bridge 13.00 
Culham Lock 16.15 
Abingdon Bridge 17.00 

King Charles is Seigneur of the Swans and you can find more details at https://www.royalswan.co.uk

Swans moult in July and August, and this renders them flightless. This can last for a period of up to 6 weeks. So it makes them a lot easier to up!

The Swannery at Abbotsbury

Now I didn’t find that fact on any of the web sites I consulted about Swan Upping. For many years I gave a wonderful programme called Literary Landscapes where we explored lanscapes associated with Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Agatha Christie, Conan-Doyle and Charles Dickens. On it, we went to the Swannery at Abbotsbury in Dorset. This was founded by Benedictine Monks in the time of King Cnut. The Strangeways family acquired the Monastery after the Dissolution and still own the Swannery. So they are the fourth authority in the UK who own Swans.

It is a remarkable place, in the heart of Hardy’s Wessex and by the glorious Chesil Beach. Every other year, the Mute Swans are checked and ringed during the flightless period. When Pavlova was working on Swan Lake, she took the dancers to Abbotsbury to observe the behaviour of the Swans.

Photo by the author of a panel at Abbotsbury showing Pavlova’s dancers posing by the Swans of Abbotsbury

Feathers are collected during the moulting season. They are used by Lloyds Registry, the Society of Calligraphers, illuminators, and other scribes for writing-quills. Other feathers are used by the Plummery to make headdresses for the Royal Bodyguard. They are also used for artists’ brushes, brushes for sweeping bees from honeycomb and arrow flights! (Source: panel at Abbotsbury).

Ringing the Swans at Abbotsbury 2018 Photo by Kevin Flude

Cartmarking is taking place On Saturday at the Guildhall in London 19th July. For more details of the historic vehicle events: https://thecarmen.co.uk/history/cart-marking/

Created July 16th 2025

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Source of the River Thames Dries up

Source of the River Thames to right middle of map. In drought, the source is now bottom middle of the map. Cirencester Top middle.

As a keen boat user of the River Thames, I am distressed to read that the source of the River Thames has ‘dried up’ for the first time. It is now five miles further down the River than it was.

Full details in this Guardian Article.

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PLOWONIDA – LONDON’S ORIGINAL NAME & THE LONDON ‘RITUAL LANDSCAPE’

https://www.etymonline.com/word/*pleu- Definition of the proto-indo-european route "pleu
https://www.etymonline.com/word/*pleu-

Richard Coates in a ground breaking article ‘A New Explanation Of The Name Of London’ Transactions Of The Philological Society Volume 96:2 (1998) Pgs 203 – 229 suggested the original name of London was Plowonida – or settlement by the wide flowing river. He deduces its name by comparing different versions of ‘London’ in different Celtic dialects and traces them back to what he believes is the common origin. This is the root *pleu meaning fleet flowing river, and onida which means ‘settlement by the’.

So, in the 2nd Millennia BC – the Bronze Age, there was a settlement by the flowing River. He thinks the Thames was the name for the river upstream of the Pool of London, and where it widened into an estuary it was called the Pleu. Etymonline.com says of the name Thames:

Thames – River through London, Old English Temese, from Latin Tamesis (51 B.C.E.), from British Tamesa, an ancient Celtic river name perhaps meaning “the dark one.” The -h- is unetymological (see th).

https://www.etymonline.com/word/thames

So, in the Bronze Age there must have been a small settlement probably in the area of the City or on the south bank in Southwark. It’s possible we have already found it in the occasional findings of post-holes, gullies, plough marks, brushwood platforms and burial mounds (particularly in Southwark) that have been found or we may be yet to find it. Or we may never find it. And if we do, unless it is significant in some way or has a signpost on it saying (“You are entering Plowonida”) we will never know.

Of course Coates may be wrong, but he is the most distinguished linguist of recent years to put his head about a dangerous parapet. Antiquarian journals were full of suggestions for the name of London. Previous suggestions include Lake Side Town, Lud’s Castle, Londinos’s settlement. None have survived scrutiny, and very few people were willing to make a guess after the late 70s, until 1998 and Richard Coates. However they all seem to accept that the name is pre-Roman in origin.

Archaeologists since the 1970s have been completely convinced there was no City before the arrival of the Romans. So, why bother finding the original name of a place that did not exist? However, last year in an excavation underneath Amazon’s new HQ, Principle Place, just north of Liverpool Street station, was found over 400 pieces of neolithic pottery, and evidence of extensive feasting. If you put this together with the burials found in the water margins of the River Thames, and the incredible finds of prestige metal objects: helmets, shields, swords, cauldrons, etc. from the River a case is beginning to be made (by David Keys in the Independent for example) that the area of the City of London might have been an important place for gatherings. So is it possible that the origins of London are as part of a ritual landscape?

If this is taken seriously it has a lot of implications for received opinion.

I discuss this and other issues in my Myths and Legends Guided Walks for London Walks. Click here to see the details

Bran's head taken to Tower Hill
King Bran’s head buried at Tower Hill