Tom Chivers

My book London Clay: Journeys in the Deep City makes - I’m told! - the perfect Christmas gift for the London-lover in your life 😊 Available in paperback, hardback, ebook and audiobook. Link in bio. 📖 'A lyrical meditation on landscapes and cities, vivid reportage and a memoir. And also a beautifully realised and moving read.' Financial Times 'A beguiling mix of history, geology, folklore and memoir that captivated me from the first page.' Lara Maiklem, author of Mudlarking 'Tom Chivers brings a poet's sensibility to this book about the hidden parts of the capital, mixing the past with the present, the known with the unknown and his personal story with social history and geology.' Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other 📖 What secrets lie beneath a city? Tom Chivers follows hidden pathways, explores lost islands and uncovers the geological mysteries that burst up through the pavement and bubble to the surface of our streets. From Roman ruins to a submerged playhouse, from an abandoned Tube station to underground rivers, Chivers leads us on a journey into the depths of the city he loves. A lyrical interrogation of a capital city, a landscape and our connection to place, London Clay celebrates urban edgelands: in-between spaces where the natural world and the metropolis collide. Through a combination of historical research, vivid reportage and personal memoir, it will transform how you see London, and cities everywhere. 'Tom Chivers, with the forensic eye of an investigator, the soul of a poet, is an engaging presence; a guide we would do well to follow.' Iain Sinclair, author of The Last London 📖 #London #Londonhistory #nonfiction #psychogeography #explore #writersofinstagram #urban #mudlark #mudlarker #mudlarking #urbangeography #history #city #lostriver #lostrivers #naturewriting

Friends, I have NEWS 🗞 In October I started a PhD @qmulgeography in collaboration with @molarchaeology ! For the next four years I will be researching the relationship between people, history, landscape and the environment through the lens of #mudlarking on the #Thames! The PhD project is funded by #AHRC via the Collaborative Doctoral Partnership - a programme which supports PhDs between academic institutions and cultural/heritage organisations. 🌊 It’s very strange going back to university 18 yrs after finishing my BA, but I’m passionate about the subject and privileged to have an amazing supervisory team across the fields of geography, history, heritage & archaeology. QM: Professor Alastair Owens & Dr Edward Legon MOLA: Dr Claire Harris & Catherine Gibbs I love the Thames deeply and can’t wait to explore how mudlarks traverse its landscapes and shape its stories… #mudlark #mudlarker #beachcombing #beachcomber #London #Londonhistory #geography #history #archaeology #heritage #queenmary #qmul #academic #academia #phd

🎈 Happy 10th birthday to my beautiful daughter Martha 🩷💛🩵💚🧡 We celebrated today at our local city farm (and Martha’s spiritual home) @surreydocksfarm 🐑 🐐 🐖 🐓 with entertainment from the ever-brilliant @streettheatreuk 🎭 WE LOVE YOU MARTHA 💖💖💖💖

Up from the mud: half of a four-part George I alnage seal, 1714-24. This lead alloy seal would have been attached to a bag of cloth being processed for import or export in the Port of London. It is marked with the number 1 ½ indicating the amount in pence paid in duty to the Crown via customs officials known as alnagers. #mudlarking #Thames #London #Londonhistory #archaeology

I am constantly astonished by the contrasts in scale that you experience exploring the Thames foreshore and looking for stuff in the mud. This tiny yellow bead is a case in point! Genuinely very difficult to pick up! Sorry about the sound; it was very windy… 🟡 #mudlarking #london #thames #londonhistory #archaeology

Sometimes you can search an entire beach on your hands and knees for two hours and it’s in the final second - the very final movement of the trowel across the surface - that something pops up to say hello. This was the case yesterday evening when I found a 400-year-old rose farthing dating to the reign of Charles I 🥀 #mudlarking #Thames #London #archaeology #numismatist

Yesterday I went on a river walk with my old friend @chrisjcook1 . We started in Shoreham, Kent, and followed the Darent down to its confluence with the Thames 🍃 💦 Just outside Dartford, opposite an industrial estate, we were amazed to find the ruins of a water mill in use (said the information panel) as early as the late Saxon period. It was the world’s first commercial paper mill, operating from 1588 under the appropriately named John Spilman (or Spielman - he was German). In the 18th century it was converted for the production of gunpowder. #Darent #Kent #river #Thames walking

In glorious April sunshine I picked out this tiny, wafer-thin silver coin from the matrix of fine gravel on the Thames foreshore. It’s a Charles I halfpenny minted between 1625 and 1642 and features a Tudor rose on both sides. It’s pretty worn away at the edges but still sparkles in the light. The music you can hear is by William Lawes, who composed music for the royal court in this period. When Charles’s dispute with Parliament led to the outbreak of Civil War, Lawes joined the Royalist army. He was honored with the title ‘Father of Musick’ after being killed at the Battle of Rowton Heath in 1645. Lawes’s body was lost or destroyed and his burial site is unknown. [Thanks to @carolinenmudlark for clarifying that it’s a halfpenny not a penny as originally thought and stated in the reel!] #mudlarking #Thames #London #archaeology #EnglishCivilWar

Time and the river⏳ In my PhD thesis I explore what I call the ‘divergent’ timescales of the Thames foreshore and the experiences of mudlarks who search it, following Anna Tsing’s concept of ‘temporal polyphony’ - a music of interwoven rhythms. #mudlarking #Thames #London #time #river

An hour searching the river after work. Two small things. One very big thing. Which is your favourite? 🪙 Post-medieval lead token - probably 18th-century 🐚 Cowrie shell probably produced for exchange in West Africa or Asia in the 17th or 18th century 🐮 Cow horn core after outer material removed for working, difficult to date but probably post-medieval #mudlark #mudlarking #Thames #London #archaeology

A beautiful day by the sea in Hastings with my two mermaids 🧜‍♀️ + @_lucy_slater @alexopayetetteh @davetongue & children/grandparents 🌞 🌊 🍻

Is it a dog or a monkey? Waddyafink? 🐶 🐵 #mudlark #mudlarking #Thames #London #archaeology