The Thames is England’s longest archaeological landscape and thousands of the objects that fill our museums have come from its foreshore. Among them are numerous Bronze and Iron Age swords, shields and spears that were found along the stretch between Vauxhall and Teddington and include the famous Battersea Shield.

The Dover Boat was discovered in September 1992 as part of the building of the A20 Dover bypass.5 It’s probably no exaggeration to say that she’s one of the best, earliest and most completely preserved of prehistoric seagoing vessels. Radiocarbon dates carried out on the outer growth rings of the timbers suggest that she was built sometime between