January 31, 2023 • 26 mins
In this episode, Anne Marie talks to Anna Borzello. Previously, she worked as the BBC correspondent for Focus in Africa in Uganda from 1995 to 2001. These days you can find Anna on the River Thames foreshore foraging for historical artifacts which tell the story of London’s expansive history.
Anna admittedly plans her life around the river’s tides. Before she commits to doctor’s appointments, lunch dates, fill in the blank, she first consults the tide charts. Low tide wins out every time. It was such a pleasure to talk to Anna about her experiences as a mudlark along the Thames foreshore, and I think you will see why, not only is she well-versed on London’s history, she is absolutely delightful!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Anne Marie Cannon (00:06):
Hello fellow armchair historians, Anne Marie
here. Today I talked to AnaBarcelo. Previously, she worked
as a BBC correspondent for focusin Africa in Uganda from 1995
until 2001. These days, you canfind Anna on the River Thames
foreshore foraging forhistorical artifacts, which tell
(00:30):
the story of London's expansivehistory. Anna admittedly plans
her life around the riverstides. Before she commits to
doctor's appointments, lunchdates, fill in the blank. She
first consults the tide charts.
Low tide wins out every time. Itwas such a pleasure to talk to
Ana, about her experiences as amudlark along the Thames
(00:54):
foreshore and I think you willsee why not only is she well
versed on London's history, sheis absolutely delightful.
Anna Borzello, welcome toarmchair historians.
Anna Borzello (01:15):
Thank you very much. I'm thrilled to be here.
Anne Marie Cannon (01:18):
I'm thrilled to have you because you're going
to be talking about one of mymost favorite things in the
whole entire world. So we justreally get right off into the
races. And I'm going to ask youthe question, What is your
favorite history that we'regoing to be talking about today,
Anna Borzello (01:34):
we're going to be talking about mud locking, which
is, well, it's my hobby, butthat doesn't really express what
I feel about it enough. It'smore like a way of life and mud
locking is when I go down to theriver. And I searched the
exposed for sure, which is thedifference between low and high
tide for objects that have beenlost or dropped or dumped some
(01:58):
time in London's 2000 year oldhistory. And I searched for
those objects and then Iresearched them and somehow
retrieve the past throughinvestigating them.
Anne Marie Cannon (02:10):
So yeah, some of my listeners who have been
listening to me for a while,have heard some of the other
interviews I've done with myblogs, they know that I'm
obsessed, Jason Sandy, sighfinds and the like so that's
really helpful that you kind ofprefaced what it is that you do.
It's specifically when you talkabout mud larking, you're
talking about the town's
Anna Borzello (02:32):
Well, I'm talking about the terms but it's really
searching any tidal river forobjects that have been lost in
the mud, you're retrieving theseobjects from from the riverbed.
Anne Marie Cannon (02:43):
So how did you get involved in mob larking?
How did you find out about it?
What was your evolution.
Anna Borzello (02:52):
But I grew up in London, and I've always been
drawn to the Thames and I spenta lot of time around the Thames
when I was a teenager. Iremember dancing on the
foreshore with friends when Iwas a teenager and being
brokenhearted, and seekingsolace by the terms. And at some
point, the notion that therewere objects on the foreshore
entered my mind, but I'm stillnot clear. When or how that
(03:16):
happened. I had a chat with mydad. And he said at some point,
maybe in the 80s, a friend tookhim down to the riverside and
told him about clay pipe stems.
And I think you told me andthat's maybe how the idea got
embedded and then slowlyevolved. In the 90s 1999, there
was a huge exhibition of mudlocked objects by an artist
(03:37):
called Mark Dion, at the Tate inLondon. And I remember going
into that exhibition andthinking I should really get
down to the foreshore and startsearching soon before everybody
goes, but at the time, I wasliving in Sub Saharan Africa.
And when I got back, I had kids,and I'm a single parent, so I
was watching them the wholetime. And it was only eight
years ago, when the childrenwere firmly in school that I
(03:59):
thought now is a time just tofollow that hunch and that
instinct and go and discoverwhat's on the foreshore. So I
went down with a group I thinkcalled the Thames explorer
trust, who took groups down fora sort of like little look
around. It's like an educationaltool for three hours. And then
from then on, I just took itlike a job really put on a pair
(04:19):
of Wellington boots and parkedthe car and every day I'd go
down wherever I could to searchthe foreshore for objects, and
it became has become a way oflife since then.
Anne Marie Cannon (04:30):
Would you say it's an obsession?
Anna Borzello (04:33):
I think that nearly everyone who made logs
will say it was an obsession. Imean, I my life is really ruled
by timetable but by the tidetables, so I get the tide
tables. I work out even beforethis interview, I worked out
whether you crashed with a lowtide. If you had, we would not
be talking time. When I'mtalking on the phone to the
doctor. They'll say oh yeah,there's an appointment at nine
(04:55):
o'clock and I'll just say holdon. I just have to consult my
diary. And then I look up thetitle tables because you never
know if there's a really goodload side, you don't want to
miss it. And I know that I'm notthe only mudlark who thinks that
way. Our holidays are alsoplanned around tide. So it is
the tide sort of begin to ruleyour life. And then you discover
other people in the communityand your friendships grow. And
(05:18):
then these objects begin to takeover your house and hold mental
space and your reading. So yes,it's, it's an obsession, I think
that's fair to say,
Anne Marie Cannon (05:28):
well, and the way that I discovered you is, I
have been following my blogs fora couple years now on line. And
of course, I watch Nicola white,do her YouTube videos, and sci
fi ins and I also love jewels,guides. And so in the background
of these videos, I see thiswoman, and she catches my
(05:51):
attention. And I noticed thatyou are hanging out with all the
cool kids in London, those arethe people that I would be
hanging out with if I livedthere. And so I was like, Who is
this person? And, you know, Istarted following you on
Instagram, and you have a greatInstagram page. So the one thing
(06:11):
that we should probably talkabout is that, and I'm not sure
when they, they implementedthis, but you can't just go to
the foreshore and forage, youhave to have what they call a
foreshore permit.
Anna Borzello (06:23):
Well, when I started, which was late 2015,
you could search if you werejust looking with your eyes
alone, if you want to disturbthe surface in any way you
needed a license. And then in2017, that was changed the Port
of London Authority whoregulates all that all the all
the foreshore said no, if youhave to have a license for any
form of searching, and at thetime, there were only 200
(06:46):
licenses, there's been a massiveboom in the popularity of
mudlark. And there's now 5000licenses issued. In fact,
there's so many licenses issuedthat they've been temporarily
suspended. So it's not possibleto get new ones you can, you can
use the license you've got or anew and old one. But for the
moment, they're evaluatingwhat's happening and trying to
(07:07):
work out the best way to toensure that the foreshore is
protected. The vast majority ofus are very respectful of the
foreshore. And we all love whatwe do. And it really matters to
us. And we feel like we'resaving history, a lot of us it's
not just for ourselves, it feelslike you're recovering London's
history. So we hope thatwhatever the resolution is, is
beneficial for all.
Anne Marie Cannon (07:28):
While it seems reasonable, it does seem
reasonable that they're doingthat I'm just grateful that I
did get my permit back in 2000.
And I think it was 19. And it'scoming up for re after renew it.
Actually it expires while I'm inLondon in May. So I just need to
keep that up so that I don'tlose that option. Now we know a
little bit about my blogging,and we know a little bit about
(07:52):
your evolution about how you gotinto it. Can you tell me about
you know, something particular afind or a particular grouping of
objects that you're especiallyinterested in? And can you tell
us the history about thosethings?
Anna Borzello (08:08):
I can, it's quite complicated because I I sort of
love all my objects. But I thinkof them in two kinds of
categories. There are theobjects which connect to a
particular person. So forexample, the traders tokens that
you get that were issued in themiddle of the 17th century, when
(08:29):
shopkeepers were able to use theRoyal Mint to basically get
little tokens that they coulduse for small change and make
their mark on them. And when youget one of those tokens, you can
discover who the person thatissued, the more that who the
person was that had that tokenissued, and where they lived and
what they did. And youresearched them I found one
(08:49):
recently he was a Quaker, he wasimprisoned, he had a wife called
Anna. And these people come backto life for a moment. It's like
you pull them out of the mud andyou say, you know, these people
were long gone, these ordinarypeople. And now they live again
for this brief moment. And thenthere's another category of
objects, which I like becausefor me, they bring the past
(09:10):
alive in a way that my historylessons never occurred. I just
studied history at we have tospecialize in England from 16 to
18. And history was one of thesubjects I chose. And it for
some reason, history never camealive. For me. It was like
looking at shadows on the wallthat people weren't real. I
couldn't connect with theiremotions. I couldn't imagine
(09:30):
what their lives were like. Andyet when you find, for example,
dress pins, of which I have15,000 In fact, I have them near
me somewhere or here they areI'm gonna I'm going to shake
them. You can hear them in theirlittle shot here. 1000 dress
pins when you find those, andyou begin to wonder why they're
there. And then you realize, asyou find them that these were
(09:52):
objects that were the part ofthe furniture of the past for
hundreds of years, London haslived with these pins and the
pins weren't the kind of throwaway, who cares about the items
that we have now, in the 15thcentury, these pins were so
valuable because the metal thatthey were made out of was quite
hard to come by that they wereactually bequeathed in wills.
(10:12):
And I worked out that you could100 pins would buy you 33 sheep
was same amount of money, that'show valuable they were. And then
metal became more available, andthe price went down. But they
were still really importantitems, trade wars over the big
arguments with the French overthem, people trying to regulate
(10:33):
their quality, Queen Elizabeth,the first of England had a royal
pin maker, you know, her clotheswere completely held together by
these objects she had, I thinkher most elaborate dress had
10,000 pins, keeping ittogether, then you realize she
needed to have servants to keepthem together, then you realize
it whenever she moved, maybe shewas pricked. And you think about
(10:54):
these people in the past thatirritation of having those pins
come loose and pricking yourskin, and that you must have had
those pins on your dressingtable. And you'd need a server
to pin you into your clothes. Sosomehow, through these little
tiny objects, the the feeling ofwhat it was like to live in
certain periods of history comesalive. And I find that really
(11:17):
fascinating. Also, actually,pins are amazing, because
they've gone from being a reallyhigh value item to being a
really low value item. And whenyou trace that you get this
whole sort of economic evolutionas well. You can basically trace
the history of England for 600years through this little tiny
common object. So thesedifferent sorts of objects and
(11:38):
different categories of objectsspeak to me in in different in
different ways.
Anne Marie Cannon (11:43):
That's amazing. I love the way you
describe that. I've heard of thepins. I didn't find anyone I was
there last year, but how do theyend up in the Thames? So many of
them? Is it just because, youknow, they're precariously held
into place? And then they falloff your skirts? Or how does
that work?
Anna Borzello (12:03):
I think first of all, there were loads of them
around. So there are loads ofthem, though everybody had them.
They were such a common objectthat you know, by the 19th
century, 18th century, therewere factories, I mean,
workshops in Britain producingthem, Britain was a great
producer of pins, people wouldthey were just falling out of
clothes, and then they werefalling out clothes on the
street. And then the waterdrains, they were flowing down
(12:25):
onto the river, you know, alongwith the rivulets of water
coming down through the drain.
So they just gathered, and thenthe river sorts by weight. So
it'll sort all the pins intovarious sections. So if you find
one pin, you're going to findthe load of other pins in the
same area.
Anne Marie Cannon (12:40):
Oh, wow. So what would you say is your most
precious find today?
Anna Borzello (12:51):
It's really hard for me to answer that question.
Because I'm attached to so manyof my finds, I often remember
the sort of joy of finding them.
And that's like mixed in withthe object itself. So I don't
think that I can select whateverI do select, I often choose my,
my collection of pins justbecause of all the labor that
went into finding them. But themoment I'm really taken by
(13:12):
something I found two monthsago, just because it was so
unusual. I mean, nobody elseseems excited by it. It's a
little object made out of pipeclay, and it's round, and it's a
mold and it's got initials onit. And it was used to imprint,
you know, to imprint insomething and to leave this seal
someone's initials, but I don'tknow what it was used for. But
(13:35):
through investigating it, I hadto go through the whole idea of
whether it was a seal for glassbottle, or whether it was a
maker's mark on pottery. Andthen I got led down this whole
path of Mayberry. It was used todecorate cakes and biscuits and
marzipan and butter in the 18thcentury when they were crazy
about decorating their foods.
(13:57):
And so that really appealed tome because it was just a little
avenue I hadn't been down. SoI'm not, I can't really choose a
favorite item. I can also saythat yesterday I was sent
something by a friend. And itturned out that one of my
friends had been put in a bookof the portable antiquities
scheme and it was chosen as oneof the objects that have been
found that was of interest inthat year. I really interested
(14:20):
in clay pipes which littered theforeshore. And I've got very
many of them. And thisparticular clay pipe stood out
to me because it didn't makesense. It didn't fit the
typography. And it also didn'thave it wasn't made of the same
white hard clay. And it turnedout to be of Native American
design. Central London. Yeah.
And it's really bizarre and whenI put it on a clay pipe Facebook
(14:42):
page, the Americans went crazy.
They were so excited. I got thisthis little pipe in England it
was so bizarre. They don't turnup in England at all. Often it
was very unusual, which is why Iended up in this being recorded
being selected in the this yearand it's because As I think
partly because the clay is notvery good quality. So it's
(15:03):
friable, and it would break, butI imagined that what happened
was sometime in the 17thcentury, some sailor was in
colonial, you know, Jamestown,and he got this pipe and he got
on a boat and came back toEngland, they got swept
overboard with the rubbish andended up here. But what's
interesting about it isapparently, it's a mix of two,
Native American design. So itmust have been a time when maybe
(15:26):
different groups weren'tconverging in the town center.
And those influences werechanging as sort of a mishmash
of different designs. So Ireally liked that it's really
interesting.
Anne Marie Cannon (15:38):
So tell me, tell us, for my listeners that
don't know, tell me about theclay pipes and what they are and
why they're so plentiful.
Anna Borzello (15:49):
So clay pipes, kind of magical objects. So
basically, the cigarette ends ofyesteryear. So no one's going to
get excited by a horrible littlefilter that you find today, or
even vapes, which unfortunately,litter the foreshore today, but
the clay pipes are beautiful.
They're like bones, they're sohard the the white clay. And
they are, they were basicallydisposable throw away cigarettes
(16:11):
since I used it and grow fromabout 50 and 80. So So Walter
Rallo, went off to the Americasand discovered the Native
American smoking tobacco there,brought it back to England and
introduced it to the court. Andit took off. And at the
beginning, the little clay pipeswe had here were very small,
because tobacco was expensive.
(16:34):
And as tobacco became moreplentiful, unfortunately,
because of the slave trade, andthat the price went down. And
the key platforms get bigger.
And soon everybody was smokingin England, they were smoking,
you know, young people weresmoking and all people, women,
children were smoking. And youoften get these clay pipes on
the foreshore at points wherepeople congregate, I sort of
think of it as like when peopleget on the bus, and they put out
(16:57):
their cigarette and they grindunder their feet. So you might
get it outside taverns, or on aferry point, you might get a lot
of these old clay pipes in thewaves. And actually, as the
waves go in and out, the claypipes bang against each other,
and they make a tinkling sound.
It's rather beautiful. They'resort of like old, but they're
like very beautiful white bones.
And there's also this amazingchiming sound as they move
(17:20):
through the waves.
Anne Marie Cannon (17:23):
Oh, that's interesting. I've never heard of
that. They are very strong. Idid find a couple when I was
there. And I found one of thereally old ones with the small
ball. It was pretty broken up,though. But I've never heard
that about them making thatsound,
Anna Borzello (17:41):
when it's only when there's a lot of them. And
so it used to be that you'd getvery, very many of them, and now
has many more mud locks haveless pipes around. Yeah, but
still on a low tide, when eventhe little pipe stems Tinker in
the water. It's a lovely sound.
Anne Marie Cannon (17:56):
It sounds like it would be okay, so you
can't pick your favorite child.
Anna Borzello (18:03):
I can't pick my favorite child. But I have, I
have just idea I have too manyof them, I get very excited by
my finds. So what I love aboutthese finds, as you get them you
get excited. And that by theprocess of finding is exciting.
And then you take it home andthen you clean it up and
photograph it and then researchit, and then maybe put it on a
Facebook page, like for example,the clay pipe Facebook page, and
(18:26):
people chime in and they tellyou a little bit about the
history of that object. And bythe end, you've built up a
little window into a little partof the past. And over time you
get this really intriguing viewof the past as viewed through
these objects that you found onthe foreshore.
Anne Marie Cannon (18:43):
Can I see your shelves? Were you shown to
me? Oh, wow. That's amazing. Doyou ever have to get rid of
things? Or how do you like keepcollecting these things?
Anna Borzello (18:59):
I collect these objects. And then I choose the
ones I like the best and putthem on the shelves I sought
them out. I've got loads ofbeads here I must have about
1000 beads. So the beads go intothe bead section the marbles
into the marble section. I'vegot a selection of false keys
here.
Anne Marie Cannon (19:15):
Oh my word.
Let me say, oh, oh my goodness.
She's not even kidding. She hasfalse teeth.
Anna Borzello (19:22):
Yeah, those are I mean, there's a whole intro you
know about false teeth. Thesefalse teeth were these like NHS
issues. So they'd be post 1950 Igot I dread to think how those
ended up on the terms and maybethey were flushed down the
toilet. But then you get theolder kind here which is
vulcanized rubber, which is fromthe late Victorian times late
(19:43):
19th century. I mean these arereally unpleasant I can't see.
Well, it's a much harder sort ofrabbit it's got a weird texture
to it like old ham. Attractive.
And then of course you ended upresearching the History of false
teeth and realize that there'sthis incredible history that
goes right back to Waterlooteeth, which is when the people
(20:05):
would go off to the battlefieldsof the Battle of Waterloo and
pull teeth from the mouth of thedead, then take them back to the
dentist in London, you could usethem as false teeth, you know,
of high quality for those whocould afford it in Britain. So
it's sort of intriguing howthese things evolve. Every fine
takes you on a little journeylike that. Anyway, you asked me
(20:27):
what I do. So I tend to sortthings out, you can see but your
listeners can't that I've got aassortment here of pottery
that's been marked with thefingerprints of the potter. Can
you see that? Yeah. So that'sthe thumb mark of someone from
500 years ago, and you can slipyour finger into the little
depression that they've made andfeel feel the past that way feel
(20:48):
their finger marks. But thenevery so often I'll I'll go to
the fall short thing. I don'tknow why I've picked up this
stuff. And I'll put it in a bagand then I just take it back.
And I do try and take it back toa place that's appropriate. So I
wouldn't dump a load ofVictorian stuff in an area that
normally throws up Georgianartifacts, because that would
(21:09):
just be, I don't know, it justdoesn't feel right. And at the
moment, I actually have a wholebag in the car. It's quite
heavy. And it's all mixed up ofstuff. And I have an idea of
where I'm going to drop it. Andthen hopefully someone will find
some of the objects.
Anne Marie Cannon (21:25):
That is interesting.
Anna Borzello (21:27):
It feels right to to bring it back. Yeah, I mean,
I suppose I supposetheoretically, you could put it
in the garbage because it's inthe Thames because it's trash.
So in a way, if you put it inthe trash is going to end up in
another trash place, you know,inland. But I still feel that
it's if you take it from theriver, you should put it back to
the river. And I know I'm notthe only one that feels that
(21:48):
way. But yeah, I will take itback. So that's what I do with
excess objects. And so forexample, I've got loads of
pipes, and there's hundredshere. I don't know if you can
see them. Yeah, I do. And withthose pipes, I tend to swap them
out. So if I get a long pipe,I'll take a less long pipe and
put that one back.
Anne Marie Cannon (22:05):
Oh, that's interesting. I love that.
Anna Borzello (22:09):
But then there's also a pleasure not just in the
history of the objects, butthere's a, there's an there's a
pleasure in collecting things.
So I do like the accumulation ofobjects, like the accumulation
of these marbles here, say, allthese tests arrive, or these
buttons. And there's somethingthat I like, I think what I like
about the accumulation is thatthey accumulate because there
were so many of them. And so thefact that there's so many of
(22:33):
them is because they were partof everybody's life at this
particular period of history. Soagain, it brings back into my
brings back into my imagination,the idea that these objects were
part of someone's world that in,in Victorian Britain, everybody
would use that stoneware, forexample, you know, that would
have been common, you'd have hadink on your table in a stoneware
bottle.
Anne Marie Cannon (22:57):
You know, one of the things you've talked
about, which I think is thething, it's that tangibility of
touching the past, and who wasthe last person that held that
item in their hand, and it fellaway from them. And this is the
first time it's like, it'salmost like being in a time
machine, right like that, to beable to touch that history and
(23:19):
imagine it and you have a verygood imagination, the way that
you've drawn out some of youknow the ideas about the pins,
for example, that was amazing.
And, you know, it just it doesseem like it takes a special not
a special but a certain kind ofperson to appreciate that. We're
going to stop here for today,but be sure to join us next week
(23:45):
for part two of my interviewwith Anna bordello. In the
meantime, be sure to check outour episode notes to find out
more about Anna and mud larkingand how to support the show.
Thanks for joining us have agreat week. armchair historians
is produced by Belgian rabbitproductions, hosted by Anne
(24:06):
Marie cannon music this week isstrings by gold Tiger sound
editing and designed by AnneMarie cannon
Hello fellow armchair historians, Anne Marie
here. Today I talked to AnaBarcelo. Previously, she worked
as a BBC correspondent for focusin Africa in Uganda from 1995
until 2001. These days, you canfind Anna on the River Thames
foreshore foraging forhistorical artifacts, which tell
(00:30):
the story of London's expansivehistory. Anna admittedly plans
her life around the riverstides. Before she commits to
doctor's appointments, lunchdates, fill in the blank. She
first consults the tide charts.
Low tide wins out every time. Itwas such a pleasure to talk to
Ana, about her experiences as amudlark along the Thames
(00:54):
foreshore and I think you willsee why not only is she well
versed on London's history, sheis absolutely delightful.
Anna Borzello, welcome toarmchair historians.
Anna Borzello (01:15):
Thank you very much. I'm thrilled to be here.
Anne Marie Cannon (01:18):
I'm thrilled to have you because you're going
to be talking about one of mymost favorite things in the
whole entire world. So we justreally get right off into the
races. And I'm going to ask youthe question, What is your
favorite history that we'regoing to be talking about today,
Anna Borzello (01:34):
we're going to be talking about mud locking, which
is, well, it's my hobby, butthat doesn't really express what
I feel about it enough. It'smore like a way of life and mud
locking is when I go down to theriver. And I searched the
exposed for sure, which is thedifference between low and high
tide for objects that have beenlost or dropped or dumped some
(01:58):
time in London's 2000 year oldhistory. And I searched for
those objects and then Iresearched them and somehow
retrieve the past throughinvestigating them.
Anne Marie Cannon (02:10):
So yeah, some of my listeners who have been
listening to me for a while,have heard some of the other
interviews I've done with myblogs, they know that I'm
obsessed, Jason Sandy, sighfinds and the like so that's
really helpful that you kind ofprefaced what it is that you do.
It's specifically when you talkabout mud larking, you're
talking about the town's
Anna Borzello (02:32):
Well, I'm talking about the terms but it's really
searching any tidal river forobjects that have been lost in
the mud, you're retrieving theseobjects from from the riverbed.
Anne Marie Cannon (02:43):
So how did you get involved in mob larking?
How did you find out about it?
What was your evolution.
Anna Borzello (02:52):
But I grew up in London, and I've always been
drawn to the Thames and I spenta lot of time around the Thames
when I was a teenager. Iremember dancing on the
foreshore with friends when Iwas a teenager and being
brokenhearted, and seekingsolace by the terms. And at some
point, the notion that therewere objects on the foreshore
entered my mind, but I'm stillnot clear. When or how that
(03:16):
happened. I had a chat with mydad. And he said at some point,
maybe in the 80s, a friend tookhim down to the riverside and
told him about clay pipe stems.
And I think you told me andthat's maybe how the idea got
embedded and then slowlyevolved. In the 90s 1999, there
was a huge exhibition of mudlocked objects by an artist
(03:37):
called Mark Dion, at the Tate inLondon. And I remember going
into that exhibition andthinking I should really get
down to the foreshore and startsearching soon before everybody
goes, but at the time, I wasliving in Sub Saharan Africa.
And when I got back, I had kids,and I'm a single parent, so I
was watching them the wholetime. And it was only eight
years ago, when the childrenwere firmly in school that I
(03:59):
thought now is a time just tofollow that hunch and that
instinct and go and discoverwhat's on the foreshore. So I
went down with a group I thinkcalled the Thames explorer
trust, who took groups down fora sort of like little look
around. It's like an educationaltool for three hours. And then
from then on, I just took itlike a job really put on a pair
(04:19):
of Wellington boots and parkedthe car and every day I'd go
down wherever I could to searchthe foreshore for objects, and
it became has become a way oflife since then.
Anne Marie Cannon (04:30):
Would you say it's an obsession?
Anna Borzello (04:33):
I think that nearly everyone who made logs
will say it was an obsession. Imean, I my life is really ruled
by timetable but by the tidetables, so I get the tide
tables. I work out even beforethis interview, I worked out
whether you crashed with a lowtide. If you had, we would not
be talking time. When I'mtalking on the phone to the
doctor. They'll say oh yeah,there's an appointment at nine
(04:55):
o'clock and I'll just say holdon. I just have to consult my
diary. And then I look up thetitle tables because you never
know if there's a really goodload side, you don't want to
miss it. And I know that I'm notthe only mudlark who thinks that
way. Our holidays are alsoplanned around tide. So it is
the tide sort of begin to ruleyour life. And then you discover
other people in the communityand your friendships grow. And
(05:18):
then these objects begin to takeover your house and hold mental
space and your reading. So yes,it's, it's an obsession, I think
that's fair to say,
Anne Marie Cannon (05:28):
well, and the way that I discovered you is, I
have been following my blogs fora couple years now on line. And
of course, I watch Nicola white,do her YouTube videos, and sci
fi ins and I also love jewels,guides. And so in the background
of these videos, I see thiswoman, and she catches my
(05:51):
attention. And I noticed thatyou are hanging out with all the
cool kids in London, those arethe people that I would be
hanging out with if I livedthere. And so I was like, Who is
this person? And, you know, Istarted following you on
Instagram, and you have a greatInstagram page. So the one thing
(06:11):
that we should probably talkabout is that, and I'm not sure
when they, they implementedthis, but you can't just go to
the foreshore and forage, youhave to have what they call a
foreshore permit.
Anna Borzello (06:23):
Well, when I started, which was late 2015,
you could search if you werejust looking with your eyes
alone, if you want to disturbthe surface in any way you
needed a license. And then in2017, that was changed the Port
of London Authority whoregulates all that all the all
the foreshore said no, if youhave to have a license for any
form of searching, and at thetime, there were only 200
(06:46):
licenses, there's been a massiveboom in the popularity of
mudlark. And there's now 5000licenses issued. In fact,
there's so many licenses issuedthat they've been temporarily
suspended. So it's not possibleto get new ones you can, you can
use the license you've got or anew and old one. But for the
moment, they're evaluatingwhat's happening and trying to
(07:07):
work out the best way to toensure that the foreshore is
protected. The vast majority ofus are very respectful of the
foreshore. And we all love whatwe do. And it really matters to
us. And we feel like we'resaving history, a lot of us it's
not just for ourselves, it feelslike you're recovering London's
history. So we hope thatwhatever the resolution is, is
beneficial for all.
Anne Marie Cannon (07:28):
While it seems reasonable, it does seem
reasonable that they're doingthat I'm just grateful that I
did get my permit back in 2000.
And I think it was 19. And it'scoming up for re after renew it.
Actually it expires while I'm inLondon in May. So I just need to
keep that up so that I don'tlose that option. Now we know a
little bit about my blogging,and we know a little bit about
(07:52):
your evolution about how you gotinto it. Can you tell me about
you know, something particular afind or a particular grouping of
objects that you're especiallyinterested in? And can you tell
us the history about thosethings?
Anna Borzello (08:08):
I can, it's quite complicated because I I sort of
love all my objects. But I thinkof them in two kinds of
categories. There are theobjects which connect to a
particular person. So forexample, the traders tokens that
you get that were issued in themiddle of the 17th century, when
(08:29):
shopkeepers were able to use theRoyal Mint to basically get
little tokens that they coulduse for small change and make
their mark on them. And when youget one of those tokens, you can
discover who the person thatissued, the more that who the
person was that had that tokenissued, and where they lived and
what they did. And youresearched them I found one
(08:49):
recently he was a Quaker, he wasimprisoned, he had a wife called
Anna. And these people come backto life for a moment. It's like
you pull them out of the mud andyou say, you know, these people
were long gone, these ordinarypeople. And now they live again
for this brief moment. And thenthere's another category of
objects, which I like becausefor me, they bring the past
(09:10):
alive in a way that my historylessons never occurred. I just
studied history at we have tospecialize in England from 16 to
18. And history was one of thesubjects I chose. And it for
some reason, history never camealive. For me. It was like
looking at shadows on the wallthat people weren't real. I
couldn't connect with theiremotions. I couldn't imagine
(09:30):
what their lives were like. Andyet when you find, for example,
dress pins, of which I have15,000 In fact, I have them near
me somewhere or here they areI'm gonna I'm going to shake
them. You can hear them in theirlittle shot here. 1000 dress
pins when you find those, andyou begin to wonder why they're
there. And then you realize, asyou find them that these were
(09:52):
objects that were the part ofthe furniture of the past for
hundreds of years, London haslived with these pins and the
pins weren't the kind of throwaway, who cares about the items
that we have now, in the 15thcentury, these pins were so
valuable because the metal thatthey were made out of was quite
hard to come by that they wereactually bequeathed in wills.
(10:12):
And I worked out that you could100 pins would buy you 33 sheep
was same amount of money, that'show valuable they were. And then
metal became more available, andthe price went down. But they
were still really importantitems, trade wars over the big
arguments with the French overthem, people trying to regulate
(10:33):
their quality, Queen Elizabeth,the first of England had a royal
pin maker, you know, her clotheswere completely held together by
these objects she had, I thinkher most elaborate dress had
10,000 pins, keeping ittogether, then you realize she
needed to have servants to keepthem together, then you realize
it whenever she moved, maybe shewas pricked. And you think about
(10:54):
these people in the past thatirritation of having those pins
come loose and pricking yourskin, and that you must have had
those pins on your dressingtable. And you'd need a server
to pin you into your clothes. Sosomehow, through these little
tiny objects, the the feeling ofwhat it was like to live in
certain periods of history comesalive. And I find that really
(11:17):
fascinating. Also, actually,pins are amazing, because
they've gone from being a reallyhigh value item to being a
really low value item. And whenyou trace that you get this
whole sort of economic evolutionas well. You can basically trace
the history of England for 600years through this little tiny
common object. So thesedifferent sorts of objects and
(11:38):
different categories of objectsspeak to me in in different in
different ways.
Anne Marie Cannon (11:43):
That's amazing. I love the way you
describe that. I've heard of thepins. I didn't find anyone I was
there last year, but how do theyend up in the Thames? So many of
them? Is it just because, youknow, they're precariously held
into place? And then they falloff your skirts? Or how does
that work?
Anna Borzello (12:03):
I think first of all, there were loads of them
around. So there are loads ofthem, though everybody had them.
They were such a common objectthat you know, by the 19th
century, 18th century, therewere factories, I mean,
workshops in Britain producingthem, Britain was a great
producer of pins, people wouldthey were just falling out of
clothes, and then they werefalling out clothes on the
street. And then the waterdrains, they were flowing down
(12:25):
onto the river, you know, alongwith the rivulets of water
coming down through the drain.
So they just gathered, and thenthe river sorts by weight. So
it'll sort all the pins intovarious sections. So if you find
one pin, you're going to findthe load of other pins in the
same area.
Anne Marie Cannon (12:40):
Oh, wow. So what would you say is your most
precious find today?
Anna Borzello (12:51):
It's really hard for me to answer that question.
Because I'm attached to so manyof my finds, I often remember
the sort of joy of finding them.
And that's like mixed in withthe object itself. So I don't
think that I can select whateverI do select, I often choose my,
my collection of pins justbecause of all the labor that
went into finding them. But themoment I'm really taken by
(13:12):
something I found two monthsago, just because it was so
unusual. I mean, nobody elseseems excited by it. It's a
little object made out of pipeclay, and it's round, and it's a
mold and it's got initials onit. And it was used to imprint,
you know, to imprint insomething and to leave this seal
someone's initials, but I don'tknow what it was used for. But
(13:35):
through investigating it, I hadto go through the whole idea of
whether it was a seal for glassbottle, or whether it was a
maker's mark on pottery. Andthen I got led down this whole
path of Mayberry. It was used todecorate cakes and biscuits and
marzipan and butter in the 18thcentury when they were crazy
about decorating their foods.
(13:57):
And so that really appealed tome because it was just a little
avenue I hadn't been down. SoI'm not, I can't really choose a
favorite item. I can also saythat yesterday I was sent
something by a friend. And itturned out that one of my
friends had been put in a bookof the portable antiquities
scheme and it was chosen as oneof the objects that have been
found that was of interest inthat year. I really interested
(14:20):
in clay pipes which littered theforeshore. And I've got very
many of them. And thisparticular clay pipe stood out
to me because it didn't makesense. It didn't fit the
typography. And it also didn'thave it wasn't made of the same
white hard clay. And it turnedout to be of Native American
design. Central London. Yeah.
And it's really bizarre and whenI put it on a clay pipe Facebook
(14:42):
page, the Americans went crazy.
They were so excited. I got thisthis little pipe in England it
was so bizarre. They don't turnup in England at all. Often it
was very unusual, which is why Iended up in this being recorded
being selected in the this yearand it's because As I think
partly because the clay is notvery good quality. So it's
(15:03):
friable, and it would break, butI imagined that what happened
was sometime in the 17thcentury, some sailor was in
colonial, you know, Jamestown,and he got this pipe and he got
on a boat and came back toEngland, they got swept
overboard with the rubbish andended up here. But what's
interesting about it isapparently, it's a mix of two,
Native American design. So itmust have been a time when maybe
(15:26):
different groups weren'tconverging in the town center.
And those influences werechanging as sort of a mishmash
of different designs. So Ireally liked that it's really
interesting.
Anne Marie Cannon (15:38):
So tell me, tell us, for my listeners that
don't know, tell me about theclay pipes and what they are and
why they're so plentiful.
Anna Borzello (15:49):
So clay pipes, kind of magical objects. So
basically, the cigarette ends ofyesteryear. So no one's going to
get excited by a horrible littlefilter that you find today, or
even vapes, which unfortunately,litter the foreshore today, but
the clay pipes are beautiful.
They're like bones, they're sohard the the white clay. And
they are, they were basicallydisposable throw away cigarettes
(16:11):
since I used it and grow fromabout 50 and 80. So So Walter
Rallo, went off to the Americasand discovered the Native
American smoking tobacco there,brought it back to England and
introduced it to the court. Andit took off. And at the
beginning, the little clay pipeswe had here were very small,
because tobacco was expensive.
(16:34):
And as tobacco became moreplentiful, unfortunately,
because of the slave trade, andthat the price went down. And
the key platforms get bigger.
And soon everybody was smokingin England, they were smoking,
you know, young people weresmoking and all people, women,
children were smoking. And youoften get these clay pipes on
the foreshore at points wherepeople congregate, I sort of
think of it as like when peopleget on the bus, and they put out
(16:57):
their cigarette and they grindunder their feet. So you might
get it outside taverns, or on aferry point, you might get a lot
of these old clay pipes in thewaves. And actually, as the
waves go in and out, the claypipes bang against each other,
and they make a tinkling sound.
It's rather beautiful. They'resort of like old, but they're
like very beautiful white bones.
And there's also this amazingchiming sound as they move
(17:20):
through the waves.
Anne Marie Cannon (17:23):
Oh, that's interesting. I've never heard of
that. They are very strong. Idid find a couple when I was
there. And I found one of thereally old ones with the small
ball. It was pretty broken up,though. But I've never heard
that about them making thatsound,
Anna Borzello (17:41):
when it's only when there's a lot of them. And
so it used to be that you'd getvery, very many of them, and now
has many more mud locks haveless pipes around. Yeah, but
still on a low tide, when eventhe little pipe stems Tinker in
the water. It's a lovely sound.
Anne Marie Cannon (17:56):
It sounds like it would be okay, so you
can't pick your favorite child.
Anna Borzello (18:03):
I can't pick my favorite child. But I have, I
have just idea I have too manyof them, I get very excited by
my finds. So what I love aboutthese finds, as you get them you
get excited. And that by theprocess of finding is exciting.
And then you take it home andthen you clean it up and
photograph it and then researchit, and then maybe put it on a
Facebook page, like for example,the clay pipe Facebook page, and
(18:26):
people chime in and they tellyou a little bit about the
history of that object. And bythe end, you've built up a
little window into a little partof the past. And over time you
get this really intriguing viewof the past as viewed through
these objects that you found onthe foreshore.
Anne Marie Cannon (18:43):
Can I see your shelves? Were you shown to
me? Oh, wow. That's amazing. Doyou ever have to get rid of
things? Or how do you like keepcollecting these things?
Anna Borzello (18:59):
I collect these objects. And then I choose the
ones I like the best and putthem on the shelves I sought
them out. I've got loads ofbeads here I must have about
1000 beads. So the beads go intothe bead section the marbles
into the marble section. I'vegot a selection of false keys
here.
Anne Marie Cannon (19:15):
Oh my word.
Let me say, oh, oh my goodness.
She's not even kidding. She hasfalse teeth.
Anna Borzello (19:22):
Yeah, those are I mean, there's a whole intro you
know about false teeth. Thesefalse teeth were these like NHS
issues. So they'd be post 1950 Igot I dread to think how those
ended up on the terms and maybethey were flushed down the
toilet. But then you get theolder kind here which is
vulcanized rubber, which is fromthe late Victorian times late
(19:43):
19th century. I mean these arereally unpleasant I can't see.
Well, it's a much harder sort ofrabbit it's got a weird texture
to it like old ham. Attractive.
And then of course you ended upresearching the History of false
teeth and realize that there'sthis incredible history that
goes right back to Waterlooteeth, which is when the people
(20:05):
would go off to the battlefieldsof the Battle of Waterloo and
pull teeth from the mouth of thedead, then take them back to the
dentist in London, you could usethem as false teeth, you know,
of high quality for those whocould afford it in Britain. So
it's sort of intriguing howthese things evolve. Every fine
takes you on a little journeylike that. Anyway, you asked me
(20:27):
what I do. So I tend to sortthings out, you can see but your
listeners can't that I've got aassortment here of pottery
that's been marked with thefingerprints of the potter. Can
you see that? Yeah. So that'sthe thumb mark of someone from
500 years ago, and you can slipyour finger into the little
depression that they've made andfeel feel the past that way feel
(20:48):
their finger marks. But thenevery so often I'll I'll go to
the fall short thing. I don'tknow why I've picked up this
stuff. And I'll put it in a bagand then I just take it back.
And I do try and take it back toa place that's appropriate. So I
wouldn't dump a load ofVictorian stuff in an area that
normally throws up Georgianartifacts, because that would
(21:09):
just be, I don't know, it justdoesn't feel right. And at the
moment, I actually have a wholebag in the car. It's quite
heavy. And it's all mixed up ofstuff. And I have an idea of
where I'm going to drop it. Andthen hopefully someone will find
some of the objects.
Anne Marie Cannon (21:25):
That is interesting.
Anna Borzello (21:27):
It feels right to to bring it back. Yeah, I mean,
I suppose I supposetheoretically, you could put it
in the garbage because it's inthe Thames because it's trash.
So in a way, if you put it inthe trash is going to end up in
another trash place, you know,inland. But I still feel that
it's if you take it from theriver, you should put it back to
the river. And I know I'm notthe only one that feels that
(21:48):
way. But yeah, I will take itback. So that's what I do with
excess objects. And so forexample, I've got loads of
pipes, and there's hundredshere. I don't know if you can
see them. Yeah, I do. And withthose pipes, I tend to swap them
out. So if I get a long pipe,I'll take a less long pipe and
put that one back.
Anne Marie Cannon (22:05):
Oh, that's interesting. I love that.
Anna Borzello (22:09):
But then there's also a pleasure not just in the
history of the objects, butthere's a, there's an there's a
pleasure in collecting things.
So I do like the accumulation ofobjects, like the accumulation
of these marbles here, say, allthese tests arrive, or these
buttons. And there's somethingthat I like, I think what I like
about the accumulation is thatthey accumulate because there
were so many of them. And so thefact that there's so many of
(22:33):
them is because they were partof everybody's life at this
particular period of history. Soagain, it brings back into my
brings back into my imagination,the idea that these objects were
part of someone's world that in,in Victorian Britain, everybody
would use that stoneware, forexample, you know, that would
have been common, you'd have hadink on your table in a stoneware
bottle.
Anne Marie Cannon (22:57):
You know, one of the things you've talked
about, which I think is thething, it's that tangibility of
touching the past, and who wasthe last person that held that
item in their hand, and it fellaway from them. And this is the
first time it's like, it'salmost like being in a time
machine, right like that, to beable to touch that history and
(23:19):
imagine it and you have a verygood imagination, the way that
you've drawn out some of youknow the ideas about the pins,
for example, that was amazing.
And, you know, it just it doesseem like it takes a special not
a special but a certain kind ofperson to appreciate that. We're
going to stop here for today,but be sure to join us next week
(23:45):
for part two of my interviewwith Anna bordello. In the
meantime, be sure to check outour episode notes to find out
more about Anna and mud larkingand how to support the show.
Thanks for joining us have agreat week. armchair historians
is produced by Belgian rabbitproductions, hosted by Anne
(24:06):
Marie cannon music this week isstrings by gold Tiger sound
editing and designed by AnneMarie cannon
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