[APPENDIX I]
THE RIVER EMBANKMENT
Let us add to this account that of the discoveries made in the Parish of St. Michael Crooked Lane in connection with the approaches of the new London Bridge:—
“On cutting through the present embankment of the river, it appeared, as might be expected, to be of comparatively modern construction. The outward wall was upright, and of Kentish rag, in courses of about fourteen inches, and about one foot in the bed. It was backed by quantities of chalk and great lumps of madrepore; the latter supposed, from being of foreign produce, to have been brought hither by ships as ballast, and thrown against the wall as rubbish to fill up the vacant spaces.
Proceeding northwards, the ground was found to be a mass of marsh, extending from the river’s edge to about sixty feet beyond Thames Street, evidently from its having once formed part of the bed of the river. It shelved up towards Thames Street, and was dug into from ten to twenty-four feet deep at that part, to find a safe foundation for laying the south abutment of the land arch built across Thames Street; but the soil proved to be so loose that vast quantities of solid materials were obliged to be sunk for making a secure foundation. This was also the case in laying the foundations of the walls of all the brick arches which support the northern approach; though in no place was the soil found of so marshy a nature as here.
The site of the ancient ‘Oyster gate’ was identified by cart-loads of oyster shells being found on the spot. This place had been hid in the reign of Elizabeth, by building what Stowe calls the artificial forcier or engine for increasing the supply of Thames water to the metropolis, and which was succeeded by the later Waterworks. In digging at the greatest depth on this site, there was turned up part of a leathern sandal, singularly looped on the sides, which had been apparently lost in the mud; also some fragments of Roman pottery, and a few coins.
The principal discovery here, and beyond it northwards, however, was of two separate ancient lines of embankment, one being on the south side of Thames Street, and the other at some distance.
The first embankment, on the south side of Thames Street, was found about ten feet below the surface of the street, and was traced to the depth of more than twenty feet. It was formed of large solid trees of oak and chesnut, about two feet square, roughly hewn, having camp sheathings, and strong timber waltlings spiked to the piles, the whole of great strength and massiveness.” (St. Michael Crooked Lane, pp. 13-14.)
The original embankment lower down the river at Dagenham was “composed of large trunks of trees, similar to what were discovered on the above occasion in Thames Street, only that yew trees were used instead of oaks. On digging down about twenty-two feet, at a place called the Moor-logg (a marsh which must have aboriginally resembled Southwark), they met with a vein of divers sorts of rotten wood (yew timber only, which was found amongst it, being not decayed), which lay about three feet and a half or four feet underneath the surface of the marsh ground belonging to the levels, about ten feet in depth, and with very little mixture of earth that could be discerned amongst it. Underneath it there was about twelve or fifteen inches depth of blue clay, then gravel and sand. A great part of this Moor-logg seemed to be comprised of small brushwood; and many hazel-nuts had been taken up in digging, which the captain had in his hand, and looked to have been firm, but upon a very little pressure they broke to dust. Several of the yew trees found were fourteen or sixteen inches diameter, and perfectly sound excepting the sap. The willow or sallow trees were, many of them, found of two feet and upwards diameter, and retained a whitish colour, like touchwood. Above the vein mentioned they found, as in Thames Street, stags’ horns. The same sort of marsh ground was found at Woolwich and Deptford.” (St. Michael Crooked Lane, pp. 15-16, note.)
In 1826 an excavation in Tooley Street brought to light a curious embankment.
“The first few feet were made ground, merely rubbish; then came a thick, close, sedimentary deposit of alluvial clay and Thames-river mud, averaging about seven to ten feet thick, which evidently had its origin in the tidal and sedimentary matter from the adjacent river. Below this mud and clayey deposit was a close stratum of peat, tightly compressed, varying materially in thickness in different places along the street, but averaging from two to four and five feet in thickness. This peat was chiefly composed of vestiges of hazel trees, hazel-nuts in beautiful preservation, fragments of oak, beech, and other trees, and leaves and stems of various plants confusedly intermixed; the wood and hazel-nuts and the oak differing in no respect, in their character, from what might be grown at the present time in the same neighbourhood. This peat and wood had undergone no apparent chemical change. It was highly saturated with moisture, had rather an agreeable odour, and was of a light brown colour. Fragments of the hazel and oak wood, on being kept in a dry situation for two or three months, shrunk into about one-tenth of their original size by the evaporation of the combined water, but left the outside bark in its original shape, while the remaining inside, ligneous fibre of the hazel or oak became, on cutting it with a knife, nearly as black and as hard as ebony. Below this stratum of peat came the usual angular fragments, called by geologists diluvial gravel; consisting of fragments of flint, reposing on the great argillaceous deposit of the blue London clay.” (St. Michael Crooked Lane, pp. 16-17, note.)