Thames by Peter Ackroyd

Author:Peter Ackroyd
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780385528474
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2008-11-03T16:00:00+00:00

There was an unusual condition of the weather that materially affected the life and nature of the Thames in previous centuries. The river had a propensity to freeze at the bottom while the water above continued to flow. The watermen called this ground-ice the “ice-meer,” a cake of ice that would often rise to the surface bringing gravel and stone with it. In times of extreme cold, before the building of the bridges, the surface of the river would also entirely freeze. It was a matter of celebration rather than of wonder, however, and the Thames was transformed into the home of an extravagant market and entertainment known as “frost fair.” The first “fair” was reported as taking place in AD 695, when booths were erected and a market was held upon the ice. Between the seventh and seventeenth centuries the river froze on eleven separate occasions, the worst being the winter of 1434–5 when it was immobile from 24 November to 10 February and when pedestrians could walk from London Bridge to within a mile of Gravesend. Holinshed recorded that, in 1565, “some played at foot-ball there as boldly as if it had been on the dry land; diverse of the court shot daily at pricks set up on the Thames.”

Then in 1683 an anonymous pamphleteer spoke of the “unheard of rendezvous” kept upon the frozen river, with rows of tents and booths and shops, with sledges and caravans and coaches and wagons sliding over the ice, with bull-baiting and bear-baiting being instigated in makeshift arenas, with coffee and ale and brandy and wine for sale together with baked, boiled and roasted meats. There were bakers and cooks and butchers and barbers and prostitutes. There were hawkers with their news, costermongers with their fruit, and fishwives with their oysters. There were also “several amours, intrigues, cheats and humours”: honest men were robbed and rogues profited. Hackney coaches continued a handsome trade, and a coach and six horses was driven on “the white path” from Whitehall to London Bridge. There was even a fox hunt. It was a little city on ice estimated to be 18 inches (45 cm) thick. It was considered to be a second Bartholomew’s Fair, and was called “Freezeland Fair” or “Blanket Fair.” The meat sold was called “Lapland Mutton.” Verses were written to commemorate it:

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