50 Fun Facts About River Thames

About how long is the River Thames?

About 200 miles: the usual figure is 215, but the start moves, and in the 2022 drought the first springs dried up and the river began more than five miles downstream.

What is the Thames called as it passes through the city with the university boat clubs and Folly Bridge?

The Isis is thought to be a scholars' mistake: they read the river's Latin name, Tamesis, as Thame plus Isis, so the stretch above the Thame's mouth kept the second half.

The usually quoted source of the Thames, Thames Head, is in which county?

Gloucestershire: a stone in a field near Kemble marks Thames Head, yet the spring is dry for much of the year, and in dry spells the river begins farther downstream.

The rival source at Seven Springs would add 14 miles to the Thames, letting it overtake which river as Britain's longest?

Severn: measured from Seven Springs the Thames would beat it by nine miles, and Thames Head is often dry, but maps name that stream the Churn.

Into which sea does the Thames flow?

North Sea tides run deep into London: twice a day they lift the river at London Bridge, by as much as 7 metres on the biggest spring tides.

London's new super sewer shares its name with which term for the Thames through the capital and out to sea?

The Tideway is the tidal Thames, where the sea pushes in twice a day; the tunnel beneath it slopes steadily downhill from Acton in the west to Abbey Mills in the east, so its load runs the way the river does.

Which lock marks the normal tidal limit of the Thames?

Teddington's weir is the usual limit, not an absolute one: the highest spring tides can top it and push the river back upstream.

The navigable Thames steps down towards London through roughly how many locks?

About 45 locks, each beside a weir, step the river down from Lechlade to the tidal reach; keepers work them by day, and after hours boaters may operate the gates themselves.

The small river islands of the Thames are traditionally known by which name?

Aits, also spelled eyots, dot the river, and Westminster Abbey and Parliament stand on a former one, Thorney, long since joined to the bank.

The London Bridge that spanned the Thames from 1831 was sold in 1968 and rebuilt in which US state?

Arizona: each facing stone was numbered, shipped through the Panama Canal and trucked to Lake Havasu City, where the bridge reopened in 1971 over a channel dug for it in the desert.

The Brittonic root 'Tam' in the river's name is thought to have meant what?

Dark is the usual reading, perhaps 'the dark one', and the same root is thought to lie behind the Tamar and the Tame, though some scholars think the name is older than the Celtic languages.

John Burns's "liquid history" retort for the Thames dismissed which American river as "muddy water"?

The Mississippi: the old Battersea MP is said to have granted the St Lawrence its water and the Mississippi its muddy water, but called the Thames liquid history.

What pushed the Thames south onto its present course through London about 450,000 years ago?

An ice sheet of the Anglian glaciation blocked the old valley near St Albans; until then the Thames had run north of London, through Essex and Suffolk.

What is the sandbank at the mouth of the Thames Estuary that got the world's first lightship in 1732?

It marked the seaward limit of the Port of London until 1964 and is now marked by Sea Reach No. 1 Buoy.

The annual tradition of counting the Thames's swans is called what?

Swan Upping is a five-day July row upriver in traditional skiffs: the crews circle each brood, lift the birds from the water, check their health and ring the cygnets.

A 2024 survey by London Zoo's scientists counted thousands of which animals living in the Thames Estuary?

Seals: the count, made from boats and RAF training flights, found almost 600 harbour seals and about 3,000 greys, where the first full survey in 2013 had found 708.

In January 2006 a northern bottle-nosed whale swam past the Houses of Parliament and up the Thames as far as which district?

Chelsea: crowds lined the banks to watch the deep-sea whale, which died the next evening on the barge that was carrying it back towards the estuary.

Which Roman leader's account of his 54 BC expedition contains some of the earliest references to the Thames?

Julius Caesar wrote that the Thames could be forded at one place only, and that with difficulty, and that the Britons had lined the far bank with sharpened stakes.

Who razed the young Roman settlement of Londinium beside the Thames in AD 60 or 61?

Boudica's rebels burned the trading town that had spread across the Walbrook valley, and the traces of their fires still lie under the City; once she was beaten, the Romans rebuilt it.

King John was forced to grant Magna Carta in 1215 at which spot beside the Thames?

Runnymede's riverside meadows, now National Trust land, saw the charter sealed, and its text reached into the river itself, ordering every fish weir on the Thames and the Medway pulled down.

Which king, the victor of Crécy, complained in 1357 that the Thames was full of 'dung and other filth'?

Edward III had been out on the river, and wrote to the mayor that he had 'beheld dung, and laystalls, and other filth' heaped on the banks and smelt the stench, and wanted the lot cleared.

London's frost fairs on the frozen Thames belong to which climate period?

The Little Ice Age set the scene, and old London Bridge helped: its many piers slowed the river, but after a new bridge in 1831 and the Victorian embankments no frost fair was held again.

What was led across the frozen Thames below Blackfriars during the last frost fair of 1814?

An elephant was marched over the ice beside Blackfriars Bridge in February 1814, at a four-day fair where oxen were roasted and printing presses turned out souvenirs.

Doggett's Coat and Badge, one of the oldest sporting events in the world, is a rowing race for whom?

Apprentice watermen fresh from their training have raced upriver from London Bridge since 1715, when the comic actor Thomas Doggett put up the prize: a red coat with a silver arm badge.

Stone from which hills was floated down the Thames from Radcot to rebuild St Paul's Cathedral after 1666?

Cotswolds quarries at Taynton and Burford carted their stone to the wharf at Radcot, and barges took it on down the river to London.

In Georgian and Victorian London, the poor who scavenged the Thames foreshore at low tide for things to sell were called what?

Mudlarks picked over the mud as the tide dropped for anything they could sell; their modern namesakes need a licence to search the same foreshore, and hunt history rather than a living.

When the Great Stink of 1858 rose from the Thames, how did most doctors believe cholera was spread?

Through foul air, or miasma, so the stench itself seemed deadly; the sewers MPs then rushed to fund were meant to clear the smell, yet they also kept sewage out of the drinking water, the real carrier.

Which engineer built the massive embankment sewers that cleaned up the Victorian Thames?

Joseph Bazalgette hid his low-level sewer behind the new Victoria Embankment, which turned a tidal shore into a riverside road and gardens and made room for an underground railway as well.

The Princess Alice, lost on the Thames in 1878 with about 650 lives, was what kind of vessel?

A pleasure steamer bringing day-trippers home from the Kent seaside: a coal ship cut her in two near Woolwich and she sank within minutes, into water polluted by the city's sewage.

Marc Brunel's Thames crossing of 1843 was the world's first of what kind?

Underwater tunnel: it opened to walkers only and became a tourist attraction, lined with shops under the river, until it was converted for trains in the 1860s.

Tower Bridge is the only bridge of which type on the Thames?

Bascule is French for seesaw: each half of the roadway is balanced like one, so little power is needed to lift it. Steam drove the machinery until 1976, when electricity took over.

What shut London's Millennium Bridge days after it opened in 2000?

A sideways wobble: the deck swayed alarmingly under the opening crowds, Londoners named it the Wobbly Bridge, and it stayed shut until 2002 while engineers fitted dampers to steady it.

The 1928 flood that drowned fourteen people in London eventually led to which flood defence?

The Thames Barrier: in 1928 the river poured over its walls into basement homes where most of the victims lived, and after a deadlier surge in 1953 London settled on ten steel gates, working since 1982.

The Cutty Sark, in dry dock beside the Thames at Greenwich, was built in 1869 to race which cargo home from China?

Tea, and speed was the whole point. But the Suez Canal opened the very week she was launched, handing steamships a short cut, and after eight tea voyages she switched to Australian wool.

The 1989 Marchioness disaster, which killed 51 people, led to what being set up on the tidal Thames?

Dedicated lifeboat stations: a public inquiry came only in 2000, after years of pressure from the victims' families, and the RNLI crews it led to have worked the river since 2002.

London's super-sewer exists because the old sewers overflowed whenever what happened?

It rained: the old sewers carry rainwater and waste in the same pipes, so even a drizzle could overload them and tip the mix into the river. The new tunnel catches that overflow and holds it for treatment.

In 1957, decades before a clean-up that won it a world river prize, the tidal Thames was declared what?

Biologically dead was the Natural History Museum's verdict on the filthy post-war river, yet it now teems with fish again, and in 2010 the recovery won the International Riverprize.

The University Boat Race is rowed on the Championship Course between which two points?

Putney and Mortlake: the crews row upstream, but the start is timed for the incoming tide, so the current runs with them all the way. The course has been in use since 1845.

Which July rowing event ranks with Ascot and Wimbledon on the English social calendar?

Henley Royal Regatta earned the 'Royal' in 1851, when Prince Albert became its first royal patron, and every reigning monarch since has taken on the role. It began in 1839.

Olympic rowing left the Thames in 2012 for a lake owned by which school?

Eton College dug Dorney Lake beside the river near Windsor for its own rowers, a ten-year job finished in 2006, six years before the Olympic crews came.

Which comedian swam 140 miles down the Thames in eight days for Sport Relief in 2011?

David Walliams swam from Lechlade to Westminster, pushing on through a stomach bug, and raised more than £1 million. He had swum the Channel for the same charity in 2006.

Handel's Water Music premiered on the Thames in 1717 for which king?

George I listened from the royal barge on a July evening while about 50 musicians played from a second barge, and Handel wrote the suites for outdoor performance.

Three Men in a Boat follows a Thames boating holiday from Kingston upstream to where?

Oxford was where the three friends turned back. Jerome K Jerome set out to write a serious travel guide, but the jokes took over, and the 1889 book has never been out of print.

Which Dickens novel opens with a scavenger and his daughter pulling a corpse from the Thames?

Our Mutual Friend was still being serialised in 1865 when Dickens survived a train crash, helped the injured, then climbed back into his carriage to rescue the manuscript of the instalment he was writing.

Which Kinks song follows a couple, Terry and Julie, who meet by the Thames?

Waterloo Sunset started out as 'Liverpool Sunset'; Ray Davies moved it to London after the Beatles released Penny Lane. It reached number two in Britain in 1967.

Which French Impressionist painted the Houses of Parliament through Thames fog in a series begun in 1900?

Claude Monet painted Parliament from a terrace at St Thomas' Hospital across the river and the bridges from his room at the Savoy Hotel, on visits between 1899 and 1901.

Which man-made flood-relief channel, opened in 2002, carries Thames floodwater past Maidenhead and Windsor?

The Jubilee River cost about £110 million. People in villages just downstream, such as Wraysbury, have complained ever since that it made their own flooding worse.

Which body manages the tidal Thames, from its upper tidal limit out to the estuary, and publishes its tide tables?

The Port of London Authority exists because the private dock companies were in financial trouble: a 1908 Act handed their docks and the tidal river to one public body.

On which Thames island at Twickenham did the Rolling Stones play a hotel residency in 1963?

Eel Pie Island's hotel club issued its regulars with passports to 'Eelpiland', and David Bowie, the Who and Eric Clapton all played there. Until a footbridge opened in 1957, the only way across was by ferry.

Which Arctic whale was spotted off Gravesend in September 2018, over 1,000 miles from home?

A beluga, soon nicknamed Benny, was seen feeding around barges in the estuary. Belugas normally live thousands of miles away in the Arctic and are known as sea canaries for their chirps and whistles.