The River Thames

It's interesting how a river can have a personality, and how that personality can survive through millennia and countless waves of incoming people.
The Thames is Britain’s most important river. Today it is a reflection of Britain’s commercial might as it flows through the heart of London, and for millennia it has been central to trade, defence, invasion, sustenance and ritual.

‘Thames’ is perhaps Britain’s oldest place name. It derives from Tamesis, the name recorded by the Romans, which has a pre-Celtic origin and means ‘dark’. This is in common with other river names including the Thame, a tributary of the Thames, and the Tamar in Cornwall. Its flow is typically muddy and it is tidal for a large stretch of its course. 'Dark' may also reflect its spirit, which even now is said to demand human lives each year, to suck swimmers inexplicably beneath its surface, and to whisper to people on its banks and entice them to jump. 

The confluence of the Thames and the Windrush in Oxfordshire

The river's importance far predates the Romans who founded Londinium. The Thames has one of the highest densities of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments of any British river. These include the great henge monuments of Stanton Harcourt near Oxford, the Dorchester Rings, and the henges under the city of Oxford and at Abingdon. Many of these were situated at confluence points, which were perhaps used strategically for their landmark value or symbolically as a meeting point of waters and people.

The Devil's Quoits at Stanton Harcourt

The source of the Thames is disputed but often said to be at Seven Springs in Gloucestershire. The river Kennet which flows through Wiltshire is one of its earliest tributaries, and is suggested by some to be the original ‘source’ river. The Kennet is sourced at the springs which surround the world-famous monuments of Avebury and Silbury Hill. Perhaps some of these monuments’ prestige came from their location at Britain’s watery heart.

The ritual importance predates even the Neolithic period. Large numbers of human skulls and other bones, along with stone axes and tools, were deposited in the waters of the Thames during the Mesolithic period, long before the first farmers arrived. There is increasing evidence that many of Britain’s sacred sites had a sanctity thousands of years older than previously realised.

                 The River Kennet

Many rivers have a female identity. The Thames is one of the few that is considered male. ‘Old Father Thames’, a bearded old man, has long been the personification of the river. It is often linked to the Egyptian Goddess Isis. The Thames at Oxford is called ‘Isis’. This is suggested to be a cult brought by the Romans, or an esoteric mystery cult of much greater antiquity, but in fact this is a much more recent name, probably coined by Oxford students in the Medieval period, and is a truncation of the Latin ‘Tamesis’.

Unusually, there is little more folklore associated with this mysterious and long-revered river.

            Old Father Thames