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The Curious Gems of the River Thames

London's riverbanks are filled with treasures, including scores of deep red garnets with mysterious origins.

With a keen eye, you can spot blue-and-white shards of 19th-century pottery, delicate stems of 18th-century clay pipes, brass buttons from coats, and coins dating back to the Romans. Archaeologist and Professor Helena Hamerow of Oxford University found through a national survey that garnets, a stone prized by the Anglo-Saxons, have been discovered in a “major concentration” inlaid into metalwork in grave goods dating back to the sixth century across the Thames Valley. In her archaeological work, Hamerow could only date her stones via the surrounding metalwork, and the age of the gravesites they were laid in—meaning that even as the Thames garnets come to light, unadorned, they keep their secrets.

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