London and the Thames Estuary in the Later Middle Ages : Economic and Environmental Change

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LONDON AND THE THAMES ESTUARY IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES:

ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

James A. Galloway

([email protected])

Note: This is a pre-publication version of a paper subsequently published in A. Wilkin, J. Naylor,

D. Keene and A.-J. Bijsterveld eds. Town and Country in Medieval North Western Europe:

Dynamic Interactions (Tunrhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 119-44. The published version should be

considered definitive and cited in any reference to this work.

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LONDON AND THE THAMES ESTUARY IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES:

ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

James A. Galloway

London, medieval England’s capital and largest city, lay at or near the tidal head of the River

Thames. To the west of the city, the Thames reaches into the heart of southern England, passing

though a varied landscape of arable and pastoral farming, and giving access to the wooded slopes

of the Chiltern Hills. Eastwards of London, the Thames is fringed by alluvial marshlands and,

beyond the river-port of Gravesend, widens into a large funnel-shaped estuary, facing towards

the European mainland (Figure 1). Contemporaries and historians alike have agreed on the

crucial role that the river played in the city’s prominence. For Fitz Stephen, writing in the late

twelfth century, the Thames was ‘that mighty river, teeming with fish’ which enabled merchants

‘from every nation that is under heaven’ to carry their merchandise to London by ship.1 Three

and a half centuries later, in the 1530s, it was reckoned to be, of all England’s rivers, ‘the moost

commodious and profitable to all the Kinges liege people’, contributing to the ‘savegarde and

ordering of the Kinges navy, conveyaunce of Marchauntdisses and other necessaries to and for

the Kinges moost honorable Householde’ and facilitating the activities of merchants trading into

the surrounding hinterland as well as the city itself.2 Londoners claimed jurisdiction over the

river between Staines, upstream of the city, and the Yantlet Creek, a channel which separates the

Isle of Grain from the rest of the Hoo peninusla in north Kent, thereby linking the mouth of the

river Medway to the Thames Estuary, which at that point is some 6km wide.3

1 William Fitz Stephen, Norman London, pp. 49, 54. 2 Statutes of the Realm, vol. 3, p. 550. 3 Keene, ‘Issues of water in medieval London’, p.167.

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Figure 1 : London and the Thames Estuary, showing alluvial marshlands and principal

places mentioned in the text

Transport and markets

Later medieval London was a city that had grown from and into the Thames. Its waterfront had

been systematically extended into the river through a process of successive revetment and

infilling, creating new ground for building, new quays and waterfronts. A great stone bridge,

completed around 1200, formed the lowest crossing point of the Thames. Formed of 19 arches,

the bridge linked London with its southern suburb, the borough of Southwark, and also linked

the capital to land routes from Surrey, Sussex and other parts of southern England.4 The massive

structure formed a partial dam, and was generally held to mark the highest point of penetration of

salt water. It also encouraged the accumulation of ice in severe winters, and was instrumental in

the periodic complete freezing of the Thames during the centuries of the Little Ice Age. Large

sea-going vessels normally did not pass beyond the bridge, although one of the spans contained a

drawbridge which could be raised to facilitate their passage. Instead, much traffic up-river of the

4 Thomas, The Archaeology of Medieval London.

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bridge was conducted in the smaller river boats known as shouts. These boats were flat-bottomed

vessels, resembling a barge but pointed at both ends. They varied considerably in size, and in the

fourteenth century had a carrying capacity ranging between c.60 and 200 quarters of grain.5 Such

vessels plied up and down between Queenhithe in London and the river port of Henley in

Oxfordshire, the normal head of navigation for bulk goods. An almost complete river-boat of

c.1400 discovered in 1970 in the bed of the Thames at Blackfriars in London may have been a

shout. It was a little under 15m. long, had a mast amidships, probably had a square sail and could

have carried a cargo of around 7.5 tons.6

Shouts could ‘shoot the bridge,’ passing through the arches, a dramatic and hazardous operation

due to the dam-like action of the bridge. Just downstream of the bridge was the harbour of

Billingsgate, where boats from the estuary and beyond unloaded their cargoes. Here vessels of

considerably larger tonnage could tie up, sea-going cogs and ‘farcosts’ which were suited to

coastal and estuarine traffic. However, the largest ships were obliged to moor in the channel and

offload their cargoes into lighters, or in some cases to unload at river-ports further east, such as

Woolwich, Greenwich and Deptford, for transhipment to London, a practice which mid-sixteenth

century legislation attempted to end.7

The ease of transport along the Thames and around the estuary was a major factor in forging this

zone as the core of London’s economic hinterland. Access to the metropolitan markets and to

more distant urban communities in and beyond England encouraged precocious economic and

institutional development around the estuary. This is reflected in the pattern of foundation of

markets and fairs, which show a distinct ‘linearity’ produced by a concentration of early

foundations in locations close to the water.8 A disproportionate number of places close to the

estuary shore had acquired market rights before 1250, many before 1230, including West

Thurrock (1207) Barking (1219) and Hadleigh (1228) in Essex and at a variety of locations in

Kent, including the small boroughs and other early foundations at Fordwich, Seasalter, Reculver

and Sarre whose commercial role stretches back into the early middle ages. For the county of

5 Langdon, ‘The efficiency of inland water transport in medieval England’, pp. 115 & 119. 6 Marsden, Ships of the Port, pp. 55ff. 7 Milne, The Port of Medieval London, p. 178. 8 The source for this is the Centre for Metropolitan History’s Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales

to 1516, complied by Samantha Letters and available online at http://www.history.ac.uk/cmh/gaz/gazweb2.html, last

accessed 25/08/2010. See especially Figure 4 in the ‘Full Introduction’.

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Essex as a whole, Britnell calculated that one-third of all the markets established between 1200

and 1270 were located at small ports and other locations close to the coast.9

Such markets handled a variety of produce, and might attract merchants from London and

elsewhere, in addition to facilitating an essentially local trade in grain and other foodstuffs,

leather and iron goods and other cheap manufactures. Aveley on the Essex (north) shore of the

tidal river, held a busy weekly market, founded in 1248, which came to specialise in the sale of

butter and cheese, the produce of sheep and cattle grazed on the Thames-side marshes. It also

drew fullers and other cloth-workers and merchants from across the river in Kent.10

Fairs were

normally annual events, and might attract buyers and sellers from considerable distances. They

were often the venue for the sale of livestock, as well as higher valued textiles and imports. The

fairs of Romford and Blackmore were important for the sale of sheep, most of which probably

were drawn from the marshland pastures to the south, and they were later rivalled and then

overtaken by the fair at Romford.

This commercial infrastructure, utilised both by local traders and London merchants and

provisioners, promoted economic integration within the valley and estuary of the Thames.

From the analysis of grain prices from London and other towns and rural manors in southern

and south-eastern England, it appears that a significant degree of wheat market integration

was already in existence by 1300, although the sources on which these findings rest are

patchy in their coverage, and variable in quality.11

Within the Thames Valley a distinct

gradient of prices appears to have existed at the close of the thirteenth century, with the

highest prices prevailing in the capital, and a decline occurring eastwards and westwards

from London. These price gradients provide support for the idea that London formed a price-

setting market as early as 1300, with prices in the supply region tending to decline with

distance from England's principal urban market. Significantly, a distinct gradient is

observable for oats as well as for wheat, indicating that, at least at a regional level, a degree

of integration characterised the markets for cheaper grains as well as the premier bread grain.

9 Britnell, ‘Essex markets before 1350’, pp. 15-21. 10 From: 'Parishes: Aveley', pp. 1-16. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=63837 (Date

accessed: 17 June 2010). 11 This summarises work is presented in detail in Galloway, ‘One market or many?’, pp. 23-42.

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The volatility of prices also tended to be lower along the axis of the Thames than at inland

locations.

London’s specialised grain dealers had strong contacts along the line of the Thames and

around the estuary. The strongest links were with the river port of Henley in Oxfordshire,

where granaries were owned and grain stored for transport to the city, but Faversham in

north Kent was a close second in terms of the regularity and strength of contacts. Faversham

was able to draw upon a compact and highly productive hinterland for grain, much of it

grown upon the embanked and drained alluvial soils adjoining the estuary and the Stour

Levels between Faversham and the city of Canterbury. Its grain market was held four days a

week and drew in both large and small-scale producers from the surrounding area and

sometimes from further afield. Other important markets for wheat and oats around the

Thames Estuary, frequented by the London cornmongers, included Canterbury, Rochester,

Hoo, Dartford and Maidstone in Kent and Shoebury in Essex.12

‘Peak Grain’ and the estuarine environment

The grain-based economy reached its zenith in the decades around 1300, reflecting the peaks

in London and national population around this time, and the rapid development of the

institutions and infrastructure of trade over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

This coincided also with the culmination of a process of reclamation of the marshlands

around the tidal river Thames and the Estuary. At the time of the compilation of Domesday

Book (1086), the Thames marshes appear to have lain open to the tides, although they had

considerable economic value as saltmarsh grazing for sheep and as a source of wild

resources; fisheries and fishing weirs were established in marsh creeks and upon tidal

mudflats, wild fowl were hunted and reeds and rushes cropped for roofing and flooring. In

the outer estuary, a seasonal salt-making industry took place upon the mudflats of Kent and

Essex. Tidal mills were located on natural and artificial channels linking to the Thames,

12 Campbell, Galloway, Keene and Murphy, A medieval capital and its grain supply, pp. 46-53, 91-5.

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exploiting the rise and fall of the tides to grind grain for local consumption and for the

metropolitan market.13

The subsequent two centuries witnessed a progressive process of embankment - the

construction of river and seawalls to exclude the tides and networks of drainage ditches and

sluices to remove freshwater from the marshes. This process went furthest, and may have

begun earliest, along the tidal stretches of the river Thames east of London. The earliest

references to river walls date to around the year 1200, and it must be assumed that the

process of embankment had begun somewhat earlier. Thus at Tilbury we hear of conveyance

of half an acre north of ‘the wall’ in 1198-9, and, less ambiguously, the undertaking at

Rainham in Essex in 1201-2 by a tenant of 5 acres to ‘defend the wall against the Thames’.14

An earlier reference to the possibility of ploughing the saltmarsh at Dartford in Kent, dating

from the reign of Henry II (1154-89), suggests that embankment was then being considered

if it had not actually been undertaken.15

As this Dartford reference suggests, the conversion of tidal saltmarsh to arable land was a prime

consideration in the process of embankment, at least in the area between London and Gravesend.

It is striking to find also, in the Rainham conveyance, that a neighbouring marsh tenant was

named Peter le Cornmongere. There were at least two factors at work here. First and foremost

was the rising commercial demand for grain, particularly from London and other urban markets.

Secondly, some of the Thames-side parishes suffered from a shortage of productive arable land,

as the ‘uplands’ adjoining the marshes were sometimes of low fertility. This seems particularly

to have been the case in northwest Kent, in the vicinity of Greenwich, Woolwich and Erith,

where the higher ground was characterised by heath, woods and poor pasture as well as low-

yielding arable land. Expansion of the cultivated area through reclamation of the marshes was

thus doubly attractive here, given local scarcity and a burgeoning commercial demand for the

products of arable farming. Extents (valuations of lands) from the late thirteenth and early

fourteenth centuries show how productive and profitable marsh arable could be compared to

arable outside the marsh. The valuations placed upon landed assets are generally seen as

13 Gardiner, ‘The transformation of marshlands in Anglo-Norman England’, pp. 35–50. 14 Kirk ed., Feet of Fines Essex vol. 1, 1182-1272, pp. 17, 26. 15 Bowler, ‘The reclamation and land-use of the Thames marshes of north west Kent’, pp. 64, 127.

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reflecting their worth beyond expenses, or their net profitability.16

At Aveley in Essex most of

the arable land was valued at 4d. per acre in 1310, but a parcel of arable ‘in the marsh’ was

considered to be worth 12d. per acre. The differential between the valuation of marshland and

upland could be very large. At East Ham arable in the marsh was valued at 28d. per acre in 1294,

compared to 6d. per acre for non-marsh arable, and at Erith in Kent 71 acres of sown arable were

valued at 6d. each in 1338, while 244 acres of sown arable in the marsh were each said to be

worth 36d.17

These valuations are among the highest recorded for arable land in medieval

England.18

Although the early phases of embankment and reclamation are poorly-documented it is clear that

Londoners and London-based institutions were involved, directly and indirectly, in the project to

embank the Thames-side marshes. Much land around the tidal river and Thames Estuary was in

the hands of religious houses, and while the Canterbury houses of Christ Church and St

Augustine’s dominated in some areas, and smaller houses such as Barking Abbey and Lesnes

Priory owned much of the marshlands in their own neighbourhoods, London houses including St

Mary Graces, Holy Trinity, Aldgate and the great Abbey of St Peter’s Westminster also held

much land in the riparian and estuarine zone.19

The Bishopric of London was endowed with land

around the Thames, including the extensive marshes belonging to Stepney manor just to the east

of the city. By the early thirteenth century the Bishops had promoted or at the least permitted the

embankment of Walmarsh and the development of arable farming there, and a discrete settlement

grew up in the Isle of Dogs – a peninsula of marsh formed by a great loop of the Thames –

associated with the sub-manor of Pomfret.20

Other London-based institutions with significant

interests in the marshes and their development included the Bridge House, which was

responsible for the maintenance of London Bridge. Individual Londoners acquired manors and

smaller holdings around the river and the estuary, sometimes as working holdings designed to

furnish supplies to a London household, and sometimes purely for rental income. An inquisition

of lands seized in Little Half-Hundred in north-west Kent in the aftermath of the civil war of

16 Campbell, Galloway and Murphy, ‘Rural land-use in the metropolitan hinterland 1270-1339: the evidence of

inquisitions post mortem’, Agricultural History Review, 40 (1992), 1–22; Bruce M. S. Campbell, English seigniorial agriculture 1250–1450 (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), 350–5. 17 UK National Archives, Public Record Office (PRO) C134/21 (7); C133/68(10); C134/104(1). 18 Campbell, Seigniorial agriculture, 349–52. 19 Barron and Davies, The Religious Houses of London and Middlesex. 20 Croot, ‘Settlement, tenure and land use in medieval Stepney: evidence of a field survey c.1400’, pp. 1–15.

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1263-5 show that Nicholas Horn and John Capper of London held 5½ and 8 acres of marsh land

there respectively, while four other Londoners held various quantities of ‘land’ and rents in Erith

and other locations.21

Such lands were subject to ‘marsh law’ whether the holder was resident or

not, and obliged to share the cost of the construction and maintenance of walls and drainage

ditches.

Around the outer estuary, east of Gravesend, the differential between the valuations of marsh and

non-marsh arable tended to be smaller, and some extensive areas of marsh – including parts of

Canvey Island and adjacent marshes in Essex – remained unembanked.22

Those marshes which

were embanked here were often used as improved and protected grazing for sheep, cattle and

horses. Christ Church Priory Canterbury kept some 1300 sheep on their north Kent manors of

Barksore, Elverton and Ham in the early fourteenth century, mostly grazed on embanked

marshland, and a further 3-4000 on similar lands further east in the Stour Levels.23

These

animals were valued for meat and cheese as well as for wool, and undoubtedly formed part of

London’s supply for these foodstuffs. A London ordinance of 1368, which obliged those

bringing lambs to the city for sale “from the east by boat” to unload them at Botolph’s quay, if

they did not wish to proceed upstream of London bridge, reflected an established trade in

animals from coastal Essex and perhaps Kent.24

Here the pressures to convert saltmarsh to arable

husbandry were less intense than along the tidal river, due to the greater fertility of adjacent

lands, many of which were also alluvial in nature. Around the busy market town of Faversham,

and between Canterbury and Sandwich, lay some of the most fertile lands in England, whose

high valuations (between 8d and 36 per acre) in inquisition post mortem extents reflect

productivity rather than scarcity.25

Nevertheless, the buoyant market for grain c.1300 encouraged

some movement towards arable cultivation in the coastal marshes, and the demesne at Barksore

included land under wheat, barley, oats and legumes within the embanked area in the early

fourteenth century.26

Across the estuary, at Prittlewell in Essex, the demesne of William de

Warrenne included 140 acres of marshland arable in 1287 – which may actually have lain on

21 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous vol. 1, p. 227. 22 Rippon, The transformation of coastal wetlands, pp. 203-4. 23 Smith, Canterbury Cathedral Priory, p. 152. 24 Calendar of the Letter-Books, Letter Book G, ed. By Sharpe, p. 225. 25 Campbell et al. Medieval Capital, 140-1 26 Canterbury Cathedral Archives, DCc/Barksore.

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Canvey - although these lands were given the very modest valuation of between 2d and 4d per

acre.27

The later middle ages – economic and environmental change

The post-Black Death period saw profound changes in population, economy and society

throughout Europe, associated with demographic decline and stagnation, changes in the balance

of class forces, agrarian recession and increased per caput spending power set against an overall

contraction in the trade in bulk foodstuffs.28

Within the hinterlands of major cities these changes

had a particular articulation, related to the changing balance of power between town and country,

the refocusing of urban demand, and changes in the organisation of craft and industrial

production in response to shifts in patterns of demand and rising production costs. These

socioeconomic changes in turn were associated with wider environmental changes as land-use

altered and (overall) became less intensive, with arable contracting while pasture, and in some

regions woodland and ‘waste’, expanded. External to the economy, though mediated in its effects

by cultural practices and perceptions, a long-term process of climate change was underway

which saw a significant drop in mean temperatures between the thirteenth and seventeenth

centuries, albeit with numerous shorter-term fluctuations and regional variations.29

This drawn

out transition between the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age was punctuated by

shorter-term environmental crises, associated with extreme weather events, volcanic eruptions

and outbreaks of human and animal disease.30

The estuarine core of medieval London’s hinterland was particularly sensitive to this package of

socioeconomic and environmental shifts and shocks. Embankment and drainage of the Thames

marshes had been an expensive investment, given their limited inland extent compared to many

other coastal wetlands, and was undertaken in an era of expanding demand and buoyant bulk

trade in agricultural produce. After 1349 labour costs rocketed, making routine maintenance of

marsh defences an increasing burden upon lords and tenants alike, and emergency repairs, such

27 TNA, PRO C133/47(13). 28 Recent work on these themes, mainly focused on England, is presented in Dodds and Britnell eds., Agriculture

and Rural Society after the Black Death. 29 For a recent synthesis see Behringer, A Cultural History of Climate. 30 Campbell, ‘Nature as historical protagonist: environment and society in pre-industrial England’, pp. 281-314.

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as might be necessary after a major breach in river or sea walls caused by storm flooding, a

potentially ruinous expense. At the same time falling metropolitan, regional and national

populations reduced demand for the bulk foodstuffs – especially grain – the production and

marketing of which had been one of the principal aims of the reclamation process. The

specialised grouping of London cornmongers, such a distinctive part of metropolitan society

c.1300, gradually disappears in the second half of the century, as grain dealing passed more into

the hands of general merchants and provincial traders.31

Grain prices remained relatively buoyant for a quarter of a century after the initial outbreak of

plague, but in the later 1370s they fell back markedly, to remain generally low – excepting short

term crises – for the remainder of the middle ages. This dealt a further blow to the commercial

grain economy and increased the difficulties facing farmers in the Thames marshlands. Although

robust data is increasingly scarce, land values in the marshlands appear to have fallen back

markedly. An extent for the Londoner John de Garton’s lands at Erith, drawn up in 1376 and

thus before the main fall in grain prices had taken place, indicates that land there no longer

commanded the remarkable high valuations seen in the decades around 1300. De Garton’s arable

was valued at 4d and 8d per acre. Although it is not explicitly stated, it is probable that the 57

acres valued at 8d per acre lay in the marsh, while the less valued lands were on the poorer high

ground. If this deduction is correct, then the net valuation of marsh arable at Erith had fallen to

less than one-quarter of the peak value placed upon it before the Black Death. Twenty-seven

acres of meadow in de Garton’s holding were said to be worth nothing, because they had been

flooded by the Thames, while his woods there had no value beyond their utility ‘for the expense

and repair of the Thames wall’. 32

It is thus likely that the reduced value placed upon arable land,

while in part a reflection of an overall de-intensification of the agricultural system, was also in

part a reflection of the growing expense of defending the marshlands against flooding.33

The Thames marshlands, like other coastal wetlands of the North Sea area, were always

vulnerable to extreme tides, and to the type of devastating storm flooding associated with North

31 Last references to an organised guild of London cornmongers come soon after 1400 – Campbell et al., Medieval

Capital, p. 82. 32 TNA: PRO C135/257(2), and see above. 33 For other similar references see Galloway, ‘Storm flooding, coastal defence and land use around the Thames

Estuary c.1250-1450’, pp. 183-4.

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Sea storm surges, produced by a combination of tide, wind and atmospheric pressure. These

surges may have become more common during the climatic deterioration of the later middle

ages, although the most recent detailed research on the coasts of the Low Countries is more

suggestive of alternating cycles of greater and lesser storm frequency without a clear long-term

trend.34

Storm surges entering the Thames Estuary could raise water levels by several metres, as

the funnelling effect of the estuary amplified further the already large tidal range.35

Along the

tidal river west of Gravesend this effect became most pronounced and threatened marsh

defences, riverside walls, quays and other installations. Walls could be overtopped, allowing salt

water to damage arable land, pasture and meadow. In the most serious incidents the river- or sea-

walls were breached, permitting subsequent tides to flow in and out through the gap, scouring

out a major depression and covering all or part of the marshes twice a day.

Localised floods were common, and were not always serious, but periodically major storm

surges, or clusters of surges, caused immense and widespread damage around the Thames,

sometimes as part of a wider English or North Sea flooding episode. The 1230s, late1280s, and

the 1320s saw frequent and severe floods, and in November 1334 a major storm surge appears to

have hit the Thames area with great severity. Lands close to London, at Bermondsey,

Rotherhithe and Stepney were amongst those inundated by these episodes of storm flooding, and

further out around the estuary both the Essex and Kent coasts suffered sea-wall breaches and

flooding of agricultural land.36

With few exceptions, however, the flooded lands were recovered

within a relatively short time, breaches were repaired and losses to livestock made good. Despite

the apparent stalling of population and economic growth, and the terrible losses inflicted by the

weather-induced famine of 1315-18 and subsequent livestock epidemic, money and resources

continued to be found to repair storm damage in the marshlands, in the anticipation that

substantial profits were still to be made there. At Barksore in north Kent, where routine

maintenance works in the marshes cost in the range of £1 to £5 per year, £36.2s had to expended

on emergency repairs following the storm surge of November 1334, and a further £32 in 1337

following a renewed breach of the sea walls. The major item in each of these years was the

34 de Kraker, ‘Reconstruction of storm frequency in the North Sea area of the preindustrial period’, pp. 51–70. 35 Some revisions on the Thames tidal regime in the middle ages are presented in Goodburn with Davis, ‘Two new

Thames tide mill finds of the 690s and 1190s’, pp. 1-14. 36 For a fuller treatment, see Galloway and Potts, ‘Marine flooding in the Thames estuary and tidal river c.1250-

1450: impact and response’, pp. 370–9.

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buying in of several thousand man-days of labour required in addition to the normal manorial

workforce.37

The radical changes in economy and society wrought by the repeated visitations of plague from

1348-9 onwards ushered in a new era for the marshes - one which in essence lasted for 200 years

- in which long-term flooding and reversion to inter-tidal conditions became common. The 1370s

appear to have been particularly calamitous, and may represent a turning point. A locally serious

episode of flooding affected the Thames-side marshes in late winter 1373–74, and was closely

followed by storm surges in the autumns of 1374 and 1375. Major expenditure was committed to

the defence of estuarine marshlands around the mouth of the River Medway, including the

exposed manor of Sharpness where we hear in an account of 1374 of ‘the destruction of the

marsh after the feast of St. Dionysius [9 October] by the great flood-tide’. At Barking, East Ham

and North Woolwich the surges breached the river walls and flooded extensive areas of

marshland. Large sums of money were expended by landholders over the following years and

decades, and numerous grants of aid were made by the Crown. Special commissions with powers

to impress labour were established in order to repair the breach and drain the marshes. Gradually,

however, the efforts faded away, the marshes remained subject to the tides, and large-scale

efforts to recover them do not appear to have resumed for over a century. Examples of long-term

abandonment of reclaimed marshlands in the Thames area could be multiplied. Along the north

Kent shores of the Estuary, and around the mouth of the Medway, major losses took place in the

early fifteenth century, associated with major surges in 1404 and 1421, while close to London

the Isle of Dogs was flooded by a major river-wall breach in the mid-fifteenth century and its

chapel and hamlet – one of the few true marsh settlements in the Thames area – were

abandoned.38

By no means all reclaimed marshland suffered long-term flooding during the course of the later

middle ages; indeed it is probable that the majority of the lands that had been embanked during

the twelfth and thirteenth centuries continued to be protected from the tides during the fourteenth

and fifteenth. The nature of the sources naturally tends to draw more attention to those areas

37 Galloway and Potts, ‘Marine flooding’, p. 373. 38 Galloway and Potts ‘Marine flooding’; Galloway, ‘Storm flooding’. Most settlements around the Thames were

located on gravel terraces above the marshes, and thus not themselves subject to flooding.

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where dramatic or cataclysmic change occurred than those where an essential continuity

prevailed. Nevertheless, manorial accounts survive for demesnes which continued to include

significant areas of embanked marshland beside the Thames into the fifteenth century. One such

is the Essex manor of Yonges or Leventhorpes, which included marshland in the parishes of

Wennington, Aveley and Rainham. Acquired by John Leventhorpe around 1418, Yonges was

characterised by a mixed farming economy, with both arable and livestock present. Leventhorpe

actively developed the pastoral side of the economy, however, enlarging the existing sheep flock

of the manor, and buying in cattle at surrounding markets and fairs.39

Even at the beginning of

this process the sale and ‘farming’ of animals and animal products were a larger source of

revenue than grain sales, and London butchers and cheesemongers were actively involved in

exploiting the manor’s resources.40

A few miles to the north of Wennington, Romford market

was an important source of supply of cattle and calves for London butchers during the later

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and many of the animals bought there may have been grazed

on the Thames marshes.41

The recurrence of storm flooding, allied to a radically changed social and economic context, thus

did not mean that all defences were abandoned, or that reclaimed marshlands no longer had a

value. It did, however, mean that when a particularly violent storm surge caused defences to fail

and inundated the marshlands with salt water it was, after the third quarter of the fourteenth

century, much less obvious than at earlier periods that repair and recovery were worth the

tremendous and escalating costs incurred. This, more than anything else, would appear to explain

the contrast between parishes such as Barking and East Ham, where massive retrenchment is

evident, and Wennington where an essential continuity prevailed, albeit with a shifting balance

of land-use on the embanked marshes.

Diversification - fisheries

One result of these intertwined economic and environmental changes was an increase –

impossible to quantify, but certainly real – in the area of brackish-water habitats around the

39 Powell ed. , A History of the County of Essex, vol. 7, pp. 180-90. 40 Essex Record Office, D/DL M30. 41 MacIntosh, Autonomy and Community: the Royal Manor of Havering 1200-1500, p. 142.

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Thames Estuary and the tidal Thames downstream of London after c.1350 and especially after

c.1375. Some extensive areas of marshland had ceased to be defended against the tides, and

water of greater or lesser salinity was now allowed to flow freely across them. Flooded coastal

marshes soon revert to saltmarsh and mudflat after the breaching of walls, and networks of marsh

ditches may become ‘reactivated’, regaining the characteristic sinuous and deeply incised

character of creeks in ‘natural’ coastal wetlands.42

The process of compaction and shrinkage had

led to the level of many reclaimed marshes being lower than saltmarsh beyond the walls, and this

in turn might lead to the creation of ‘lakes’ or lagoons on flooded marshes, linked to the estuary

by one or more channels. At Barking we hear of a ‘lake on land once arable’, while sixteenth

century maps of the ‘Great Breach’ at Erith depict an extensive lagoon-like feature with network

of tributary creeks lying on the landward side of the breached Thames wall.43

Such landscape changes created new opportunities for exploitation of the many fish species

inhabiting the estuarine environment. Saltmarsh creeks and open mudflats are ideal locations for

the installation of fixed fishing weirs or kiddles, v-shaped wooden structures positioned to take

advantage of tidal movements to funnel fish into nets or baskets at the apex. Such structures had

been in use around the Thames since prehistory, and very large examples, probably associated

with monastic houses, survive from coastal Essex in the early medieval period.44

It is probable

that most of the ‘fisheries’ recorded in Domesday Book in the later 11th century refer to these

types of fixed fishing structures. Many were recorded around the tidal Thames, the Essex and

Kent shores of the estuary, and alongside some of its principal tributaries – the rivers Lea, Darent

and Medway. A particular concentration was found around the mouth of the Medway, an area of

extensive saltmarsh, and in coastal parishes lying to its east.45

At and after this period many of

these fisheries would have been involved in supplying the London market with fresh fish, as well

as with satisfying more local markets and subsistence needs. Flounder, smelt and lampern, as

well as salmon, were among the most economically important species caught, and are frequently

mentioned in medieval and later sources.46

Kiddles were subject to attempted regulation from an

early period, being seen as a threat to navigation, the foreshore structures having the potential to

42 Gardiner, ‘Archaeological evidence for the exploitation, reclamation and flooding of salt marshes’, pp. 73–83. 43 Galloway, ‘Piteous and grevous sights: the Thames marshes at the close of the Middle Ages’, pp. 15-27. 44 Rippon, Transformation, p. 221. 45 Darby, Domesday England (Cambridge: CUP, 1977), 280-1 46 Wheeler, The Tidal Thames, pp. 46-83.

16

damage boats when submerged. London civic ordinances and national legislation repeatedly tried

to banish or remove kiddles from the Thames, while the city’s fishmongers were concerned to

prevent small-mesh nets trapping young fish and damaging stocks.47

The embankment of the

marshes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries may have meant that increasing numbers of these

structures were being placed on the foreshore of the main channel of the Thames, as many of the

marsh creeks became closed off.48

When 16 kiddle nets were confiscated and burnt by the

London authorities in February 1320, their owners were identified as coming from Erith,

Barking, Plumstead and Lesnes, all locations on the tidal river bordered by extensive embanked

marshes.49

Flooding of marshes in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries reopened some extensive areas

for fishing. Breaches in river walls became ideal sites for fishing with nets suspended from boats,

intercepting movements of fish onto and out of the flooded marsh with the tides, while new fixed

weirs and kiddles could be established within the reactivated marsh creeks. The best

documented example of this happening is at Barking, following the disastrous flooding of the

mid-1370s. A royal writ was addressed to the Abbess of Barking in July 1380, instructing her to

repair ‘a wall which had broken down and let in the water of the Thames, so that the

neighbouring land had become flooded and stocked with fish, which people caught in an

immature state and gave as food to their pigs’. 50

An enquiry held before the London authorities

six years later revealed that the Abbess, together with the Abbot of Stratford, lord of

neighbouring East Ham, were licensing the erection of new fishing weirs in the flooded

marshes.51

Land at the ‘Inner Breach’ at Rotherhithe was conveyed with a fishery attached in 44

Edw III, probably located on flooded land, while fishing on the flooded Isle of Dogs provided a

regular income for the Bishop’s of London in the later fifteenth century. Similarly, new fisheries

developed at the ‘Great Breach’ at Erith in the sixteenth century, and attempts to repair the river

wall were hampered by fishing boats crossing and re-crossing the gap.52

A late fifteenth century

Act of Parliament indicates that the fishing of flooded or ‘drowned’ grounds beside the Thames

47 Liber Albus: The White Book of the City of London, ed. by Riley, pp. 498 ff. 48 Drainage of fresh water from embanked marshes did, however, necessitate the construction of sluices, which often became the site of productive eel-fisheries. 49Sharpe, Letter Book E, p. 115. 50 Sharpe, Letter Book H, 151. 51 Calendar of select pleas, ed. by A.H. Thomas, pp. 116–17. 52 Galloway, ‘Piteous and grievous’, p. 21.

17

with ‘unlawful nets and engines [weirs]’ was a widespread practice, one which was blamed for a

diminution of fish stocks through the trapping of the young fish which tended to congregate there

in shoals at high tide.53

These developments reflect late medieval economic realities, in that marshes which had been

subject to severe flooding were being exploited in ways which did not require the rebuilding of

sea or river walls and the restoration of drainage channels. Moreover, they were geared to the

production of a commodity – fresh fish – for which demand remained buoyant, with rising living

standards promoting a probable per caput increase in consumption. Kiddles also remained in the

main channel of the river, and in considerable numbers. A survey or inquisition carried out for

the Mayor of London in 1421 identified hundreds of weirs, kiddles and similar structures within

the city’s claimed jurisdiction between Staines on the non-tidal Thames and the Yantlet Creek

which separates the Hoo Peninsula and the Isle of Grain in the estuary.54

Many were said to have

been recently erected, including 10 ‘pightweirs’ at Woolwich, 20 kiddles at Stanford-le-Hope, 20

at Mucking and no less than 40 at Cliffe ‘newly raised and placed’ by John Haddock and John

Sutton. All these structures were said to be ‘in the River Thames’, but it is highly probable that

some were in adjacent marsh creeks; at Cliffe, the present-day channel of the Thames is 1.5km

miles wide and a further 2km of embanked marsh and pools lie between the channel and the

town of Cliffe itself. Many of the weirs and kiddles may have supplied fish to the capital. Some

decades before 1421 the ‘poor lieges of Lesnes, Plumstead, Erith, Woolwich and Greenwich’ had

petitioned the King to be allowed to continue their tradition of fishing with boats, nets and

‘engines’ and thereby supplying the City of London as well as ‘all the surrounding

countryside.’55

The desire to impose authority over the river and inner estuary of the Thames, and to regulate the

practices of fishermen in the interests of conserving stocks and removing obstacles to navigation,

led London’s citizens into very real conflicts with other Thames-side communities in the later

middle ages. In 1386 six men from Woolwich were charged with having assaulted John

53 From: ‘Henry VII: January 1489’, Parliament Rolls of Medieval England. URL: <http://www.british-

history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116566&amp;strquery=thames> accessed 29 May 2010. 54 Wright, ‘Medieval Latin, Anglo-Norman and Middle English’. I am grateful to Maryanne Kowaleski for drawing

my attention to this important text. 55 TNA, PRO SC/8/22/1061.

18

Salisbury, the city’s surveyor of the Thames, by firing arrows at him when he tried to confiscate

nets of too narrow a gauge.56

Then, in February 1407, Alex Boner, the city’s officer essayed an

ambitious expedition to confiscate illegal nets in the Thames and the Medway, but his efforts

roused armed opposition from a band of Essex and Kentish men, estimated at 2000 in total.

Boner was intercepted on the river by men armed with bows and arrows, who then pursued him

to the town of Barking and seized back the confiscated nets.57

These armed confrontations with

hinterland populations over economic issues, however familiar they might sound to historians of

many other parts of Europe, have little parallel in English urban history. They highlight the

exceptional tensions which had arisen around the Thames corridor in the post-Black Death

period as a result of dramatic environmental, social and economic change. Those tensions had

also provoked the inhabitants of communities from around the tidal river and the estuary to take

an early and significant role in the great uprising which shook the English state in 1381. Men

from Barking, Dartford, Fobbing and other communities bordering the Thames marshes had

taken up arms against tax-collectors and other local representatives of the state, and it is not hard

to imagine that the storm-flooding, loss of land and livelihood, and impressments of labour to

work in the Barking marshes and elsewhere in the previous five or six years had influenced their

willingness to rebel.58

Ultimately the Londoners’ battle to suppress kiddles on the river failed,

partly no doubt due to this stubborn and sometime violent resistance by local communities who

increasingly looked to fishing for their economic survival, but also, perhaps, due to weaknesses

and ambiguities in the city’s jurisdictional position; fifteenth century petitions and legislation

reveal the crown’s reluctance to admit London’s long-claimed right to oversight of the Thames,

Medway and Lea, and the city’s frustration that the task of enforcing regulations on kiddles was

periodically given to county authorities and commissioners ‘who do not have the right or are able

do anything in the said rivers because they are in the liberty of the city of London’.59

Diversification – industrial synergies

56 Thomas, Calendar 1381-1412, p. 119. 57 Sharpe, Letter Book I, p. 58 58 Oman, The Great Revolt of 1381, pp. 32-4. This theme is explored further in Galloway, ''Tempests of weather and

great abundance of water': the flooding of the Barking marshes in the later middle ages', pp. 67-83. 59 Parliament Rolls October 1427, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116533&strquery=gorces,

accessed 26/8/2010.

19

Environmental diversity, allied to cheap and easy transport of bulk produce, drew many parts of

the estuary into a close and symbiotic relationship with London, based upon the supply and in

some cases the processing of raw materials for urban crafts and industries. To the south of the

river-port of Maidstone commercial quarrying of ragstone, one of the most widely used building

stones in southern England, was stimulated by the ease of water transport via the Medway and

the Thames, linking the quarries to major centres of construction in London and elsewhere.60

Westminster Abbey and other major royal and civic building projects in and around the

metropolis drew in vast amounts of the Kentish stone throughout the middle ages. Where the

estuary cut the line of the North Downs near Northfleet and Greenhithe, major chalk quarries

developed. The chalk, a low-value stone, could be brought directly to the Thames, and was used

in London for footings and rubble infill; 61

it was also used around the tidal river to strengthen

river walls, as at Greenwich and Stepney, a practice that may have increased in response to

recurrent storm flooding. Large volumes of chalk were also consumed in London in the form of

lime for mortar. Some lime was made near the quarries, but most was manufactured in

Limehouse, to the east of London from chalk carried there by boat. Limeburners sometimes

owned their own boats as well as the kilns where the chalk was burnt.62

Limemaking was only one of a number of fuel-hungry industries based in and around later

medieval London. Together with tile and brick-making, pottery, brewing and the metal trades it

created demand for large quantities of fuel, only a small proportion of which was met by coal

shipped in from north-east England. The great bulk of the capital’s industrial and domestic fuel

needs were met by wood fuels, in a wide variety of forms including logs, faggots and charcoal.63

The ‘uplands’ adjoining the tidal river were quite well wooded, particularly in the vicinity of

Erith, Woolwich and Swanscombe and are known to have supplied London brewers and other

industrial consumers.64

Further out, wood fuels were sourced in Faversham, probably the

products of the extensive Blean woods in north Kent, and from parts of south-east Essex. This all

conforms with a transport-cost model predicting that the estuary fell within London’s normal

supply zone in the fourteenth century. What is missing is much evidence that London’s

60 Holt, ‘The medieval market town', pp. 28-9. 61 Gardiner, ‘Hythes, small ports and other landing places’, p. 91. 62 McDonnell, Medieval London Suburbs, pp. 109-10. 63 Galloway, Keene and Murphy, 'Fuelling the city’, pp. 447-72. 64 Du Boulay, The Lordship of Canterbury, pp. 217-8.

20

woodmongers – specialist dealers in wood fuels and building timber – frequented the tidal river

and the estuary. Rather their activities were concentrated along stretches of the Thames upstream

of London, in the wooded counties of Middlesex and especially Surrey close to the city. 65

The

wood brought from the tidal Thames and estuary seems to have been handled by non-specialists

or contracted directly between consumers and producers. The explanation may lie in the

competing demands upon the estuarine woodlands, which were required to produce large but

fluctuating quantities of timber and coppice wood for use in sea and river defences.66

Earth walls

were sometimes heaped up around timber frameworks, sluices were often made from hollowed

tree trunks, and it was common practice to face or thatch sea and river walls with faggots or

other forms of brushwood, to reduce erosion caused by spray and rainfall. Faggots were also

used to reduce current scour and increase alluviation, while timber piles were used to stabilise

vulnerable sections of wall and to anchor bridges, jetties and associated structures. Routine

maintenance work thereafter consumed regular quantities of coppice wood each year, while the

periodic flood-related breaching of walls necessitated the use of large quantities of all types of

wood in emergency repairs. These factors may have made the woods around the estuary less

reliable as sources of routine commercial supply to London, and hence less attractive to the city’s

professional woodmongers.

An unusually close connection between London and the small towns of its hinterland and

between food consumption and industrial production is shown by the trade in the animal hides

required by capital’s leather industries in the post-Black Death period. The city’s great demand

for meat drew large numbers of cattle and other animals in to the city and its environs for

slaughter, and generated a plentiful supply of raw hides. A proportion of these were then

processed in the capital’s extensive extra-mural tan-yards, but many were sent back into the

region for tanning at and in the vicinity of satellite towns, most of which were accessible by

water. Holt has identified the outlines of a major reciprocal trade whereby regular shipments of

thousands of raw hides went from London to Maidstone in the late fourteenth and fifteenth

centuries, tanned hides being brought back in equally large numbers for the use of the capital's

65 Galloway, Keene and Murphy, ‘Fuelling’, p. 464. 66 Rippon, Transformation, pp. 47-9.

21

leather craftsmen.67

A similarly symbiotic relationship between the tanners of Barking and the

capital is suggested by licences to ship boatloads of raw hides there in the later fourteenth

century. Thus in 1387 when John Sebroke was permitted to carry 80 ox-hides to Barking by boat

for tanning, surety was provided by three London cordwainers (shoemakers), who we may

assume were in due course to receive back the processed leather for use in their own

workshops.68

Similar later-fourteenth century cases involved the river and estuary ports of

Greenwich, Faversham, Sittingbourne in Kent, and the slightly more distant Essex port towns of

Colchester and Maldon (Figure 2).69

On occasion raw skins or hides may have been brought

from the hinterland into London for tanning, reversing the normal direction of circulation; this

may have been the intended purpose of the consignment of skins loaded on to a ship from

Flanders when it put in at Faversham in the 1350s and subsequently seized in the port of

London.70

A relationship with the tanning industry of another of the larger towns of the south-

east is suggested by Common Pleas debts from 1403, when a London leather-seller claimed sums

of money from two Canterbury tanners.71

The growth of the reciprocal trade with satellite towns

around the estuary seems a genuine innovation of the post-plague period, coinciding with a

decline in the number and importance of London’s citizen-tanners and their eclipse as a distinct

craft guild.72

67 Holt 'Medieval market town', pp. 29-30. 68 Calendar of Close Rolls 1385-89, p. 222 69 Calendar of Patent Rolls 1370-74, p. 359; Calendar of Close Rolls 1354-1360, pp. 291-293, 375-7; Calendar of

Close Rolls 1364-8, pp. 328, 335; Calendar of Close Rolls 1385-9, pp. 101, 103. 70 Cal. Letter Book G, 74; alternatively the skins may have been intended for export to Flanders or elsewhere. 71 Centre for Metropolitan History, ‘Common Pleas c.1400’ Database. 72 Keene, ‘Tanners’ widows, 1300-1350’, p.13.

22

Figure 2 : Towns involved with London in the tanning trade c.1350-1400 (Source: see

footnotes 67-71)

Sheep grazing the Kent and Essex marshes provided wool for cloth-making in London and

elsewhere within the metropolitan region. While this wool was not of the highest quality, rated

inferior to that of the Cotswolds and parts of the West Country, it was widely used in the

manufacture of broadcloth as well as kerseys. Sheep can successfully graze salt marsh as well as

freshwater marsh, the exposure to salt in fact being beneficial in controlling foot rot and liver

fluke, so the environmental and economic changes of the later middle ages probably increased

rather than reduced the grazing area available around the estuary.73

Much wool brought to

London via the Thames was destined for sale at the Westminster staple, to be subsequently

exported, but London clothmakers also bought from these near-at-hand sources. When the

London dyer Henry Grenecobbe was given licence in 1383 to bring wool from Thanet in north-

east Kent to London via the Thames, it was in order ‘to make cloth’.74

Five bales of wool were

73 Rippon, Transformation, pp. 38-40. 74 Calendar of Patent Rolls 1377-81, 270; Calendar of Patent Rolls 1381-5, 306

23

carried to London from the marsh island of Foulness at the mouth of the estuary c.1420.75

Colchester, a major centre of cloth-making in north-east Essex, drew heavily upon the Thames

and coastal marshlands for its wool supplies. Colchester cloth makers also received shipments of

Kentish wool from the ports of Faversham and Romney, a trade in which the Londoner Thomas

Marsh was involved in the 1420s.76

As with the leather trade, later medieval London was

increasingly a ‘finishing’ centre for English textiles, and more and more drew the smaller

industrial centres around the estuary, as well as further afield, into a subservient relationship,

dependent on London capital and mercantile networks for both the production and marketing of

their cloth.77

Conclusion

This study of London and the Thames Estuary during the late Middle Ages emphasises the

crucial role of natural forces and environments in shaping and structuring urban hinterlands,

although they are always mediated by social and economic factors. The simple opposition of

‘town and country’ does not do justice to the variety of environments and ecosystems within

urban, rural and semi-urban areas. The existence of major rivers and estuaries tends to elongate

urban hinterlands, but also adds a particular environmental dynamic to the ways in which towns

influence and structure activity within the countryside. Changes in urban and regional

populations, living standards and levels of commercialisation bring changes in the urban impact

upon the countryside; they also precipitate environmental changes, which in turn create new

problems and opportunities for human society. During the later Middle Ages declining urban and

regional populations, with falling prices and rapidly rising wages, allied to recurring damage

from storm flooding, effected significant change in the wetlands bordering the outer estuary and

the tidal river Thames. Although many reclaimed marshes continued to be used as agricultural

land, defended against the tides, others reverted to inter-tidal conditions and their fisheries and

other natural resources came to assume greater importance. Changes in the structure of demand

from the London market – including a decline in the bulk grain trade and rising demand for fresh

fish as living standards rose - impacted upon the productive but vulnerable Thames marshes

75 Smith, Foulness: A History of an Essex Island Parish, p. 12. 76 Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester 1300-1525, pp. 141-2, 248. 77 Oldland, ‘The finishing of English woollens, 1300-1550’, pp. 97-118.

24

more intensely than elsewhere. At the same time, London’s consumption of meat, which held up

better than demand for grain in an era of rising living standards, encouraged estuarine farmers

increasingly to favour the pastoral sector. As a by-product, there were growing opportunities for

industrial integration in the leather industry, as towns around the estuary came to process large

quantities of hides for London’s leather-workers. The capital’s increasing dominance of the

English economy, through its control of finishing trades and unparalleled access to export

markets, enabled it to forge new relations with towns around the estuary and beyond.

The core of London’s hinterland was its most dynamic and in a sense its most volatile part. Ease

of transport and access to the metropolitan market stimulated precocious development, but could

not buffer the estuarine zone from the upheavals caused by the twin environmental impacts of

extreme climate-related events and epidemic disease. Attempts to retain the status quo in the

Thames marshlands may have increased resistance to lordly and royal exactions, and fed

rebellion in communities around the tidal river and the estuary. Similarly, London’s attempts to

enforce its jurisdictional rights over the Thames provoked, for England, an unusual degree of

open town-country and large town-small town conflict in the later Middle Ages. Around the river

and estuary the (often contested) changes we see – from farming to fishing, from greater to lesser

intensity of land-use, and a selective London-focused industrialisation – represent the responses

of a resilient European city and its rural hinterland to unparalleled socioeconomic and

environmental challenges.

25

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