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Looking south along the river from the London Eye at Westminster
The Thames (pronounced "temz") is a river flowing through southern England and connecting
London with the sea.
Course
The Thames has a length of 346 kilometres (215 statute miles) with its source near the village of Kemble in the Cotswolds; it then flows through Oxford (where it is called the Isis, a
truncation of its Latin name), Reading, Maidenhead, Eton and Windsor. From the time it
leaves Wiltshire, where it rises, it has traditionally formed the county boundary, firstly between Berkshire on
the south bank and Oxfordshire on the north, then between Berkshire and
Buckinghamshire, Buckinghamshire and Surrey, Surrey and Middlesex, and between
Essex and Kent. From the
outskirts of Greater London, it passes Syon House, Hampton Court, and Richmond (with
the famous view of the Thames from Richmond Hill), and Kew, before it passes through London
proper, then Greenwich and Dartford
before entering the sea in a drowned estuary, The Nore. Part of the area west of London is
sometimes termed the Thames Valley whilst east of Tower Bridge
development agencies and Ministers have taken to using the term Thames
Gateway.
About 90 kilometres from the sea, upstream of London, the river begins to exhibit signs of tidal activity as the North Sea begins to affect it. London was
reputedly made capital of Roman Britain at the spot where the tides
reached in 43 AD, but a variety of factors have pushed this spot up river in the 2000 years
since then. At London, the water is slightly brackish with sea
salt.
History
From over 600,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene ice age, until the Anglian glaciation around 475,000 years ago, the early River Thames flowed
from Wales to Clacton-on-Sea,
crossed what is now the North Sea to become a tributary of the Rhine.
Within the human timescale, following the example of the
local Celts, the Romans called the river Thamesis: Caesar (De Bello Gallica), Dion Cassius (xl. 3) and Tacitus
(Annales xiv. 32).
Richard Coates has recently suggested that the river was called the Thames upriver
where it was narrower, and Plowonida down river where it was too wide to ford. This gave the name to a settlement on its banks
which became known as Londinium from the original root Plowonida derived from
pre-celtic Old European 'plew' and 'nejd'. meaning something like the flowing river or the wide flowing unfordable river. see
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The Thames provided the major highway between London and Westminster in the 16th and 17th centuries. The clannish guild of
watermen ferried Londoners from landing to landing, and brooked no outside interference. A versifying waterman, John Taylor, the
Water Poet (1580—1653), described the river in a poem commemorating a voyage from Oxford to London,
In the 17th and 18th
centuries, during the period now referred to as the Little Ice Age,
the Thames often froze over in the winter. This led to the first "Frost Fair" in 1607,
complete with a tent city set up on the river itself and offering a number of odd amusements, including ice bowling. After
temperatures began to rise again, starting in 1814, the river never again froze over
completely. The building of a new London Bridge in 1825 may also have been a factor; the new bridge had fewer pillars than the old and so allowed the river to flow
more freely, thus preventing it from flowing slowly enough to freeze in cold winters.
By the 18th century, the Thames was one of the world's busiest waterways, as London became the centre of the vast, mercantile
British Empire. During this time one of the worst river disasters in
England took place on September 3, 1878
on the Thames, when the crowded pleasure boat Princess Alice
collided with the Bywell
Castle killing over 640.
In the 'Great Stink' of 1858, pollution in the river became so bad that sittings at the
House of Commons at Westminster had to be
abandoned. A concerted effort to contain the city's sewage by constructing massive sewers on the north and south river embankments followed, under the supervision of engineer Joseph Bazalgette.
The coming of rail and road transportation, and the decline of the Empire in the years following 1914, have reduced the prominence of the river. London itself is no longer a port of any note, and the Port of London
has moved downstream to Tilbury. In return, the Thames has undergone a massive
clean-up from the filthy days of the late 19th and early- to mid-20th centuries, and life has returned to its formerly dead waters.
In the early 1980s, a massive flood control device, the Thames Barrier, was opened. It is utilised several times a year to prevent water damage to London's
low lying areas upstream.
There are many bridges and tunnels
crossing the Thames, including Tower Bridge, London Bridge, Lambeth Bridge, and the
Dartford Crossing.
The Thames in Literature
Many books refer to the Thames. Three Men in a
Boat by Jerome K. Jerome describes a boat trip up the
Thames. Somewhere near the Oxford stretch is where the Liddells were rowing in the poem at the start of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Somewhere near here was where Alice fell asleep. The river is mentioned in both The Wind in the Willows and the play Toad of Toad Hall.
In books set in London there is Sherlock Holmes looking for a boat
in A Study in Scarlet, Bill Sykes kills Nancy just
near the river.
Crossings of the Thames
See Crossings of the River Thames for
a full article. Famous crossings include
Islands in the Thames
Listed in upstream order.
- Canvey Island
- Isle of Grain
- Frog Island, Rainham
- Isle of Dogs
- Chiswick Eyot
- Oliver's Island, Kew
- Brentford Ait
- Lot's Ait
- Isleworth Ait
- Corporation Island, Twickenham
- Glover's Island, Twickenham
- Eel Pie Island, Twickenham
- Trowlock Island, Teddington
- Steven's Eyot
- Raven's Ait, Hampton Court
- Boyle Farm Island
- Thames Ditton Island
- Ash Island, East Molesey
- Tagg's Island, Hampton Court
- Garrick's Ait
- Platt's Eyot
- Sunbury Court Island, Sunbury
- Swan's Rest Island, Sunbury
- Rivermead Island, Sunbury
- Sunbury Lock Ait
- Wheatley's Ait
- Desborough Island, Shepperton
- D'Oyly Carte Island
- Lock Island
- Hamhaugh Island
- Pharaoh's Island
- Penton Hook Island
- Truss's Island
- Church Island, Staines
- Hollyhock Island, Staines
- Holm Island, Staines
- The Island, Hythe End
- Magna Carta Island, Runnymede
- Pats Croft Eyot
etc.
See also
Other uses of the name
Other rivers with the same name include:
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