Thames Uncovered Part 3

The Thames Path from Teddington to the Thames Barrier can, in part, be walked on either bank, the south-side being slightly shorter. We start this section of the walk at Tide-End Town, so called because it is the last point at which the Thames is affected by the tides. 

It is here that we meet Teddington Lock which is the largest and longest lock system on the Thames with a barge lock measuring an impressive 650 feet. It was built in 1904 and designed to accommodate a steam tug and six barges. It can still cope with the three-tier pleasure cruisers that now plough back and forth along the river. The Thames gets into the blood of many that work on the river. Ferrymen, watermen, boatbuilders, dockers, whole families and organisations have been bound, through their work, to the Thames for many generations. 

Thames Uncovered Part 2

This stretch of the Thames through Berkshire and Buckinghamshire is seen as the upmarket part of the river. From the 1870s it also became the chief pleasure resort for Southern England. Hordes of working class excursionists came to the river and her banks. In the snootier papers of the time these tourists were dubbed as “Arry and Arriet”. However this was still regarded as the Golden age of the Thames and it took the outbreak of war in 1914 to bring it to a halt.

As you walk away from Pangbourne look upstream to see a view that is almost the same as that photographed on glass plates by Henry Taunt in 1885. His description of this part of the Thames sums the area up: "There are extremely pretty scenes all around Pangbourne, picturesque cottages and quaint bits are to be seen everywhere, beautiful walks are found in nearly every direction, up the valleys, through the woods, and over the hills, with great diversity of landscape; while the flora of the neighbourhood is more varied than in any other part of the Thames.”

Walking downstream past meadows the path passes Mapledurham Hall on the north bank. It was built in 1588 the year of the Spanish Armada in the shape of an E in honour of Elizabeth I. The house is shielded by trees, there is a mill and small 15th century church and it is altogether very picturesque. So much so that it was used as inspiration for E.H.Sheperd’s sketches of Toad Hall found in Kenneth Grahame’s famous book The Wind in the Willows.

Thames Uncovered Part 1

It has, as they say, been a journey. I was commissioned some ten years ago to photograph The Thames; to produce a coffee table book of the river in celebration of a company’s 50 years of involvement with the Thames and its work on the then new footbridge at Caversham.

Soon I was happily ambling along the Thames photographing anything and everything that took my fancy using a new Leica camera that I had been asked to field test - a bonus! I was feeling very happy about the world. Discovering the upper and lower reaches of the river were a revelation as I came to realise that the Thames is so much more than just a stretch of river between Hammersmith Bridge and the Thames Barrier.

This first section covers the area from the Source to Lechlade. At Trewsbury Mead, a meadow some 3 miles South-West of Cirencester, there stands a stone obelisk inscribed: ‘The Conservatives of the River Thames 1857 to 1974. This stone was placed here to mark the source of the River Thames.’ However, this simple object not only marks the official source of the Thames but also the start of the Thames Path - 184 miles of walking from the the river’s source, or head, to where it meets the North Sea.