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Liz Anderson: I’m Liz Anderson. I’ve been mudlarking for about ten years now.
I call it my job, I suppose I’m a hobbyist, but for me it’s more than that because of the love of history and it never gets boring for me. I blog about it, I do exhibitions, I do interviews. I have to be disciplined with my time, but for me I do view it as my job.
Lorraine Turner Akcakaya: Just give us a typical day when you’re mudlarking.
Liz Anderson: It would obviously depend on the tide. But I usually have my rucksack packed the night before and I have in there my knee pads, which are necessary for kneeling down on the foreshore. I have some water and a snack. I’ve got a mini medical kit because accidents do happen. You lean on something sharp. You have to be very careful not to cut yourself. I do wear gloves as well and I have my wellies. And so I have all my kit laid out, you know, the night before. Get myself on the train into the City of London. I will also know when the peak low tide is. So, I try and get there about two hours before. So, I’ve got a couple of hours to search before the tide starts coming in. And when the tide starts coming in, it depends on where you are. You might have another hour, but you have to be careful, obviously, not to get cut off. That’s when you need to be focused about what the water’s doing. I do prefer to mudlark on my own because it’s my time as well, not just searching, but to reset my batteries. So, it’s my mindfulness. I just block everything else out. So, anything I’m worried about, or the noise of, you know, London coming to life in the morning. It’s a wonderful time. There will slowly be other mudlarks arriving because some areas are very popular. And then we might go and have a coffee afterwards and just chat about what we’ve all found that day. You found that, but I wish I’d found it instead. You know, we have those moments. So, there’s a lot of friendship. If I had an early morning start, then I’ll probably be back home kind of mid-afternoon and then what I start doing is I wash my finds in a bucket. I have my special bucket and a very soft brush and just give everything a clean. Rinse it out and then just let it dry naturally. I have a notebook, which I’ve kept for years, where I log all the things that I’ve found and I draw little maps, little secret maps, where I found kind of things over the years or an area that’s eroding. And I’m keeping an eye on it because something might be coming out. Maybe we hit a medieval layer or something, you know, after all these years.
Lorraine: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever found?
Liz: People for millennia have treated the river as a rubbish dump and that still happens today as it did thousands of years ago. It’s horrible to see dead animals. I did once find a carrier bag on the foreshore with a dead cat that had been stuffed, by what looked like an amateur taxidermist, with glass eyes. And it was just really weird. I do find weapons. I found guns on the foreshore. It’s a very convenient way if you’ve been up to no good, just chucking it in the river. I’ve had to call out the armed response unit before to check on a gun that I found.
Lorraine: What would you say are sort of the things that you love about your job?
Liz: It’s a privilege to do what I do and share that with other people via exhibitions and my blog and doing interviews. We find broken bits of people’s lives, you know, broken fragments, lost things, things that aren’t of any value, but were of value to somebody a long time ago. And it’s made me rethink how we value objects, that we now live in a throwaway society. But hundreds of years ago people did throw things away when they broke, but mostly they repaired them and kept them and they valued things more. So, I think I’ve learned a lot about human nature as well through mudlarking.
I call it my job, I suppose I’m a hobbyist, but for me it’s more than that because of the love of history and it never gets boring for me. I blog about it, I do exhibitions, I do interviews. I have to be disciplined with my time, but for me I do view it as my job.
Lorraine Turner Akcakaya: Just give us a typical day when you’re mudlarking.
Liz Anderson: It would obviously depend on the tide. But I usually have my rucksack packed the night before and I have in there my knee pads, which are necessary for kneeling down on the foreshore. I have some water and a snack. I’ve got a mini medical kit because accidents do happen. You lean on something sharp. You have to be very careful not to cut yourself. I do wear gloves as well and I have my wellies. And so I have all my kit laid out, you know, the night before. Get myself on the train into the City of London. I will also know when the peak low tide is. So, I try and get there about two hours before. So, I’ve got a couple of hours to search before the tide starts coming in. And when the tide starts coming in, it depends on where you are. You might have another hour, but you have to be careful, obviously, not to get cut off. That’s when you need to be focused about what the water’s doing. I do prefer to mudlark on my own because it’s my time as well, not just searching, but to reset my batteries. So, it’s my mindfulness. I just block everything else out. So, anything I’m worried about, or the noise of, you know, London coming to life in the morning. It’s a wonderful time. There will slowly be other mudlarks arriving because some areas are very popular. And then we might go and have a coffee afterwards and just chat about what we’ve all found that day. You found that, but I wish I’d found it instead. You know, we have those moments. So, there’s a lot of friendship. If I had an early morning start, then I’ll probably be back home kind of mid-afternoon and then what I start doing is I wash my finds in a bucket. I have my special bucket and a very soft brush and just give everything a clean. Rinse it out and then just let it dry naturally. I have a notebook, which I’ve kept for years, where I log all the things that I’ve found and I draw little maps, little secret maps, where I found kind of things over the years or an area that’s eroding. And I’m keeping an eye on it because something might be coming out. Maybe we hit a medieval layer or something, you know, after all these years.
Lorraine: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever found?
Liz: People for millennia have treated the river as a rubbish dump and that still happens today as it did thousands of years ago. It’s horrible to see dead animals. I did once find a carrier bag on the foreshore with a dead cat that had been stuffed, by what looked like an amateur taxidermist, with glass eyes. And it was just really weird. I do find weapons. I found guns on the foreshore. It’s a very convenient way if you’ve been up to no good, just chucking it in the river. I’ve had to call out the armed response unit before to check on a gun that I found.
Lorraine: What would you say are sort of the things that you love about your job?
Liz: It’s a privilege to do what I do and share that with other people via exhibitions and my blog and doing interviews. We find broken bits of people’s lives, you know, broken fragments, lost things, things that aren’t of any value, but were of value to somebody a long time ago. And it’s made me rethink how we value objects, that we now live in a throwaway society. But hundreds of years ago people did throw things away when they broke, but mostly they repaired them and kept them and they valued things more. So, I think I’ve learned a lot about human nature as well through mudlarking.
