Southwark Cathedral would like to thank film-maker Francesca Long for these two short films of our Larking: The Thames and Beyond exhibition and the Mudlarking Day we hosted in October 2021. We hope you enjoy them!

From July to October 2021 the Cathedral were delighted to host Larking: The Thames and Beyond exhibition which celebrated the release of A Field Guide to Larking by Lara Maiklem, mudlark and author of bestselling Mudlarking: Lost and Found on the River Thames.

Larking is the art of looking for the little treasures that are all around us, on beaches (beachlarking), in fields (fieldlarking), at home (houselarking and gardenlarking) and of course mudlarking in rivers, especially on the Thames, and A Field Guide to Larking is an illustrated guide to how to give it a go yourself.

The exhibition brought pages from the book to life with real artefacts: objects from Lara’s own collection and treasures borrowed from other larkers. It also featured some of the original illustrations by Johnny Mudlark and Chiz Harwood.

The display included commonly found Thames objects – nails, pottery and buttons, – alongside more rare and unique objects, such as an Iron Age pot, a Roman scabbard chape and medieval Pilgrim badges Many of the pieces were on public display for the first time and each one had its own story to tell.

On Saturday 31 October 2021, to mark the end of the exhibition we hosted a Mudlarking day of events which attracted over 1500 visitors.  The short film below highlights some of the activities that took place on the day.  Southwark Cathedral would like to thank the following for joining us: Lara Maiklem, The Port of London Authority, the Thames Discovery Programme, Bloomsbury Publishing, Portable Antiquities Scheme, Raewyn Harrison and Mike Webber. 

The music has been kindly provided by the London Sea Shanty Collective who performed on the day.