Beginning in 2017, as part of our project working with older Londoners we ran an oral history project to record people’s memories of the Thames and the foreshore and how it’s changed over time. City Bridge Trust provided the funding and members of the Foreshore Recording and Observation Group (FROGs) found people with stories to tell. Between August 2017 and July 2019 we recorded twelve oral history interviews.

A group of FROG volunteers consisting of Adam Morris, Graham Strudwick, Shirley Regan, Margaret Daly and Antonia Merrick researched the background and context to the interviews. On these pages you can explore the themes highlighted by the researchers and listen to excerpts from the recordings.

Oral History volunteer researcher Antonia Merrick and TDP archaeologists Helen Johnston and Will Rathouse hand over the London’s Lost Waterway files to Stefan Dickers at the Bishopsgate Institute where the project is now archived.

The Themes
The research volunteers identified key themes on which to focus and draw together stories from different interviewees.

The archive of oral histories, including the full interviews, is now available at the Bishopsgate Institute (see picture above) were provided by: Hilary Davies, Elizabeth Wood, John Tough, Fred Rooke, Irene M. Raven, Euan Graham, Ken Dwan, Hazel Brothers, Philip Baxter, Pat Wilson, Stephen Manning, and Freda Hammerton.

We are dedicating this project in remembrance of our volunteer Jeanne Lewis and our interviewee Freda Hammerton. Jeanne volunteered with Thames Discovery Programme for many years, and helped coordinate the oral history project.

Thames Discovery Programme is indebted to the generous funding provided by City Bridge Trust. We are especially grateful to the interviewees who kindly consented to narrate their memories and to the FROG volunteers who recorded, transcribed, summarised and researched the background to those memories. We would also like to thank the Bishopsgate Archive for agreeing to be the final repository for the work.

Please let us know what you think of this resource here.