Down to a beach on the Thames
In centuries past, when rowing boats carried passengers along the river, many flights of steps were needed to give access to landing stages. In the heart of the city few such stairs have survived, one of them at the end of Cousin Lane. Here you can descend to a hidden beach at ebb tide (but take care, as the steps can be slippery), in order to see, hear and smell London from an unfamiliar angle.
Down on the shore, the noise of road traffic recedes, but trains rumble across Cannon Street Bridge, and the waves from Thames Clippers splash up on the little beach. Pebbles crunch beneath your feet. Looking down, you see stones of many colours, pieces of brick rounded by the river current, shards of pottery, animal bones and oyster shells, and at low water, you can walk across this uneven ground for about 100 metres in both directions for a water-snail’s view of bridges and embankments.
Info
Address Between Thames Street and the river, immediately west of Cannon Street Station, EC4R 3TE | Public Transport Cannon Street (Circle, District Line). | Tip Next to Cousin Lane Stairs, Steelyard Passage leads beneath the railway bridge. From the 13th century, the Steelyard was the London depot of the Hanseatic League of German trading cities. A plaque on the east side of the bridge commemorates it.
This is not the prosperous, shiny surface of London, but its many-layered underside. The high quayside walls, full of holes and patched up in brick, are covered in green slime and fronds. Heavy chains hang from them, and rotting timbers rise from the river bed. A round iron gate in the wall and a concrete channel for its outflow are reminders of the dank warren of sewers and underground streams that lies beneath the streets. The Walbrook, which flowed through the Roman and medieval city, reached the Thames close to this spot. On beaches like this, the tides and river current scour the river bed and bring London’s past to light. In the late 1950s, a 14th-century sword was turned up close by. Broken clay pipes and coins are found all the time by Thames mudlarks, whose hobby is digging up history in the Thames.
The atmosphere of Cousin Lane Stairs has been captured by a wonderful project, www.soundsurvey.org.uk, which presents an acoustic map by means of recordings made all over the city.
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