The Notebook of Curiosity : On the Foreshore at Parliament

Another weekend was spent on the shores of the Thames for the bank holiday weekend. This time it was the Houses of Parliament beach. The foreshore can only be accessed by the stairs on Milbank, so it’s quite a long walk to get to the Parliament end, slightly disconcerting with the tide changing so quickly. There was a lot of broken crockery, glass, and coca cola bottles especially near the end of the shore which lies almost underneath Parliament. As the Parliament bars are all along the river, there must have been some wild parties! As well as these finds there was the usual clay pipes and animal bones, the normal Thames finds. The main interest however was the stone mouldings that were dotted along the foreshore, and a team of FROGs (Foreshore Research and Observation Group) set about recording these and making drawings of them. I was on ‘Team Wall’. We were given the task of recording the bomb damage on part of the river wall. The wall damage has actually been covered up very well, and is barely visible from the bridge and the river. It’s so easy to forget what London went through during the war. Recording the wall was a good reminder of what the people of London went through not long ago.

I was down on the foreshore on Saturday and Sunday. On the Saturday it was really rainy, making it difficult but amusing to record and even communicate with people with our hoods up! Sunday however was a lovely sunny day. I definitely prefer spending more than one day on site, as you really get to know the area and the team, it can be hard though sometimes fitting it round a full time job.