Mudlark River: Down the Thames with a Victorian Map

The discovery of a Victorian map in a London antiques shop takes Simon Wilcox on a journey down the Thames: his mission a bit like that of those Victorian river scavengers, the mudlarks, to forage about on the shoreline for something of value.

The mudlarks found old coins, and objects washed up from ships anchored in the London docks. Tramping down the Thames Path, catching the occasional boat, Simon finds fragments of history lurking just below the surface of the modern waterway.

As the trip...