Mudlarking: Riches of the Orient
By Peter Wollweber
The seal moments after discovery (Peter Wollweber).
About a year ago, I was drawing to the end of an early morning’s mudlarking session on the Thames foreshore. While the finds had been unremarkable, church bells had been chiming for much of the previous hour, and the river was quiet and free of boats — an oddly transporting experience. It was a day when buried Londons of the past felt close. And as I turned to leave, a fragment of one of those lost cities made itself known.
The seal showing the numbers (Peter Wollweber).
It was a dull grey disc, stuck firmly in a small bank of black Thames mud, and I quickly recognized what it was. Cloth seals were ubiquitous in medieval, Tudor, and early Georgian London, lead discs verifying the quality and size of a piece of fabric. They’re rarely the most beautiful objects the Thames offers, but some can be rich in history.
The seal after cleaning (Peter Wollweber).
And as I dipped it in the river to loosen the mud, I knew this particular seal had a story to tell. It bore an unfamiliar emblem, and the other side showed a number in Arabic numerals—a sign that it had probably been made in the seventeenth century or later. Initial research provided little progress, beyond revealing that a commonly used merchant’s mark sat at the top of the symbol and that the number likely referred to the length or weight of the cloth being sold.
The “VEIC” coin, British United East Indian Company token, emitted in 1783, copper based (Rachmat04). Post Medieval copper alloy trade token, or possibly a coin, of the United East India Company (Alex Whitlock).
The key question was what the letters within the symbol meant. But eventually, after conversations with those who knew more than I ever would about lead seals and a forensic search of archaeological records, I had my answer. It read VEIC, an earlier form of the U/E/I/C mark, seen on buttons, uniforms and buildings across the eighteenth-century world. It was the mark of the United East India Company.
London’s docks, likely some decades after the cloth seal was lost. “Commercial Docks,” 1827 (George Cooke; J. and A. Arch; Longmand and Co; S. Hawkins).
So, let’s go back about three centuries, standing on that patch of foreshore. The glass office blocks towering over us disappear, replaced by warehouses and bombsites as we speed past the Second World War. At the same time the river is changing, tourist boats replaced by coal barges and tugs. Soon enough the Victorian embankment itself vanishes, the river reverting to its natural wider course and the banks filling with deep, thick mud. Wooden jetties protrude out over it, each one leading to a warehouse receiving goods of every kind, including metals, timber, and cloth. By the time we reach the mid-nineteenth century, the river is packed with merchant vessels, ferries darting between them. Still further back the Victorian warehouses give way to earlier Georgian buildings on the same site, lost dockside pubs springing back to life—although this stretch of river is still firmly given over to commerce.
And here we are, in the eighteenth-century London that produced our cloth seal—a city where the East India Company is at its height. The twenty-first century foreshore is invisible, hidden under layers of mud and shingle. The river is a forest of masts with Company ships arriving from the far corners of the world, from China and India to Arabia and the Ottoman Empire. Dock workers mechanically load and unload ships and cart goods into warehouses, officials noting the cargoes and the duties paid. Narrow medieval streets lead back from the docks into the city proper, starved of light by the tall brick buildings on each side. A few children fish from the edge of a jetty, others listening nearby for any news from overseas or the arrival of new ships. As soon as something is heard several of them turn and disappear into the streets, heading for the coffeehouses that are ubiquitous across the city and where traders are always willing to pay for reliable-sounding information.
But where is our seal in all this? There are two possibilities. The first is linked to the ships out in the river queueing for access to the Pool of London, many being the Company’s eponymous East Indiamen weighed down with cotton, dyes, tea, and myriad other treasures. In recent decades the Company has risen from a vulnerable, risky trading operation to the de facto ruler of Bengal, with palatial London headquarters by the Bank of England. In a decade or so Robert Clive, commanding an army comprised of both British and Indian soldiers, will enthrone the Company’s preferred candidate as Nawab of Bengal and make this dominance semi-official.
The Company has historically made a fortune from the import of cheap Indian cotton calico, chintz, and other fabrics, and the British public have proved a ready market—so much so that back in 1700, the government enacted protectionist legislation to guard against job losses due to the market dominance of Indian cloth. However, this has not stopped the Company trading however they can, and even here, in the mid-eighteenth century, ships still arrive laden with it. Each piece of cloth is marked as a Company product, both to designate ownership and to show to buyers and government officials that customs duties have been properly applied. Lead is the ideal material for this, being malleable and easy to cast and mark.
Each seal is made up of several discs, some bearing information about the product. When the time comes to apply it, the seal is clamped in place with one half on each side of the cloth and, most likely, the disc with the Company’s logo facing up. The Company is one of thousands of entities to attach these seals, from rival corporations to individual London dyers, so it is little surprise that the Company goes to such lengths to ensure its goods are recognizable.
Indian cloth like this was highly prized by the British public and often manufactured for export markets. Embroidery; silk on linen, fragment, India, 18th-19th century (Cleveland Museum of Art).
It’s possible that our seal is one of those markers, attached to a piece of imported Bengali cloth deep in the hold of an East Indiaman. It will have traveled the world, around India and Ceylon, along the east coast of Africa and the Cape of Good Hope, and finally up the stormy Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay, crossing paths with other ships bringing cotton from the Americas. Indeed, many of the Company’s light, airy Indian cottons find ready buyers in the southern American colonies and the Caribbean, coping well with sweltering heat and humidity.
Detail of “East India Company ships at Deptford,” circa 1683 (Royal Museums Greenwich).
It’s equally possible, however, that to spot our seal you should look to the docks. Because it’s here that goods are loaded onto empty ships for export to Britain, Europe and the world, and the Company’s wealth is not just from importing Indian goods. Its market dominance is now allowing it to remodel the Bengali economy for its needs, and the first steps towards industrialization in Britain are helping it build a new, profitable trade. To evade the government’s import restrictions, Company ships have started to import raw cotton, processing it in English mills and re-exporting it to Asia. English wool is also traded alongside it, a mainstay of the economy since medieval days. And for each of these exports, the same process applies. Amid the chaos of numberless tons of cargo, each piece of English cloth is marked with the Company’s lead seal and a number dictating the size the buyer should expect. Look closely at a shipment being taken out of one warehouse and you might even see the silvery glint of freshly stamped lead. Maybe, just maybe, you saw our seal in the rough hands of an eighteenth-century dock worker.
And in an instant, we’re back in modern London, with seagulls overhead and the rickety wooden jetties having gone the way of most of the Georgian city. The East India Company too is gone, having been absorbed by the British crown in 1857 after a rebellion led by groups of its own Indian Sepoy troops in Bengal. Its legacy, however, is everywhere. The site of its Leadenhall Street headquarters is now occupied by Lloyd’s of London, the very firm that insured many of those ships crossing the Indian Ocean. The East India Company’s cut-throat commercialism, which ultimately paved the way for the British Raj, had the effect of enduring cultural links and movement of people between Britain and India—including the start of a long and enduring love affair between the British people and South Asian cuisine. But most of all, organizations like the East India Company laid the foundations for a system that governs almost every part of life in Europe, America, and the wider world today. Its global trade networks, interaction with national governments, and unparalleled reach into everyday life through its products made it one of the world’s first mega-corporations, a phenomenon which birthed the global, trade-based economy every one of us depends on today.
And as for that tiny cloth seal? It sits proudly on display alongside other fragments of Georgian London I have since found on the foreshore. It might be small and even unremarkable to some, but it, and the piece of Company cloth it marked, forms part of a story that changed the world.
Learn more about mudlarking
Learn more about the experiences of mudlarks, who search the shores of rivers, bays, and seas for historical finds and other objects. Articles ›
Mudlarking on the Thames Foreshore requires a permit. Learn about rules for mudlarking in London ›
This article appeared in Beachcombing Magazine Volume 49, the July/August 2025 issue.
