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Climatic deterioration in the later middle ages was associated with an increasing frequency of marine storm surges affecting the coasts of the southern North Sea. This paper investigates the impact of storm surges upon the lands bordering the Thames estuary and tidal river between the mid-thirteenth and mid-fifteenth centuries. Land use in the coastal and riverine marshes is reviewed, and the means and costs of defence against marine flooding explored. The impact of flooding upon human use of the marshlands, upon the suburbs of medieval London and upon the Thames fisheries are all investigated. Stress is placed upon the complex interaction of economic and environmental factors in determining the response to the threat of marine flooding. 1 This paper is a product of ongoing research, funded from January to June 2006 by the Crown Estate–Caird Fellowship scheme at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and from March 2008–February 2010 by the Economic and Social Research Council in the project 'London and the Tidal Thames 1250–1550: Marine Flooding, Embankment and Economic Change' (Grant Ref: RES-000-22-2693), based at the Centre for Metropolitan History, Institute of Historical Research, University of London. I am grateful to the Centre's Director, Matthew Davies, for his support and advice and to Patricia Croot, Graham Dawson, Mark Gardiner, Derek Keene, Maryanne Kowaleski and Jonathan Potts for help and encouragement. Paul J. Clark kindly gave me access to his unpublished M.A. thesis '"London's lifeblood": control of the Thames, 1086–1485' (Fordham University, 2003). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

London is a city that stands, for many, at the pinnacle of neoliberal global urbanization and market-led residential and commercial property investment. Its iconic River Thames has become a focus for much of this development, particularly of luxury apartments. There has been an emerging sense that the river increasingly has been captured by a specific set of class interests and its edges privatized to the exclusion of other claims on the Thames' identity, usage and meaning. Although cognizant of the power of private and property interests and the leverage they may exercise through state mechanisms, this paper interprets London's 'waterspace' policy and planning in a way that rejects interpretations of the river that simplistically foreground the will of capital and global neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1745 and his death in 1772, Samuel Scott (1710-1772) completed a series of at least sixty-two paintings in oil that depict scenes of the Thames and its environs within London. This paper examines a group of these paintings depicting views of the Pool of London, of the quay, and of bridges and bridge-building, placing them in the context of discourse on the river and the Thames in the mid-eighteenth century. Scott's works adapt the conventions of topographical painting through their distinctive concentration on the ordinary world of the river labourers, especially boatmen, sailors, porters, and customs agents, as well as their passengers and customers. The paper examines how eighteenth-century poetry, especially georgic and descriptive verse, elaborates a discourse on the virtue of labour and commerce. These poetic tropes help identify within Scott's paintings a celebration of trade and the prosperity that it brings London, but also his recognition that the river was a mixed social space, in which the grandeur and wealth of the city was contrasted with the everyday commerce and labour of ordinary river people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers some of the circumstances associated with the archaeological study of the Thames river system in south-east England. It focuses on work related to the 95km reach of the river below Teddington, examining Holocene archaeological issues in the floodplain, on the urban waterfront and on the foreshore. Plotting the complex development dynamics of the river system itself, over a 10,000-year period, and the correlation of that information with an understanding of the changes in the patterns of settlement, encroachment and exploitation calls for an integrated multi-agency, multidisciplinary approach if further progress is to be made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the processes of change in the area as landscape history as it highlights the importance of the Thames River east of the City of London in the industrial and social development of England, as well as focusing on the succession of forms of human/nature metabolic relationship. The author points out that historical materialism understands economic development as a process of social learning. She also points out that the outcomes of technological development of collective learning are embodied in physical infrastructure that creates the conditions for development in the phase that follows.

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The removal of the houses from London Bridge in the mid-eighteenth century was a highly symbolic moment in the capital's progress towards modernity. This article examines the causes behind this transformation of one of London's most iconic structures, and demonstrates that it was a series of crises in the finances of the Corporation of London that eventually drove the City of London to administer the last rites to its 'living bridge'. In pursuing such an argument, this article demonstrates that the state of London's local government finances could be an influential factor in determining the characteristics of the capital's built environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to find the most appropriate method of classification for the Thames intertidal habitat types at Crayford Marsh and Dartford Creek by using Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager (CASI ) data. Preliminary evaluation of commonly available classification algorithms produced two candidate techniques: the Maximum Likelihood Classifier (MLC) and the Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM). Pre-classification enhancements and the two different classifiers were compared. Ten different dataset combinations were created for two pilot sites: one at Crayford Marsh and one at Dartford Creek. These consisted of the original CASI bandset (15 bands in spatial mode from blue to near-infrared) and nine other combinations resulting from band subsets, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI ). Twelve classes were established for each site although only some of these were common to both. Each classified image was accuracy assessed using a combination of field mapping, field photographs and air photograph interpretation as reference data. The most accurate classification (68% for Crayford Marsh and 53% for Dartford Creek) for both sites comprised the use of MLC with a dataset created from PCs 2, 3 and 4 from a PCA carried out on the original 15 band data, combined with an additional NDVI band. CASI data proved useful for the mapping of salt-marsh vegetation and sediments especially in the Crayford Marsh site. In the Dartford Creek site, however, there was significant confusion between some classes. Further work is recommended to test the classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the strategic planning and policy guidance for the River Thames in England. Properties of waterspaces; Spatial planning frameworks for waterspaces; Problems of waterspace planning; Land-use planning and land-based policy for waterspace.