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A Right Royal River?

The Crown Estate and the River Thames

A history

PART ONE - BACKGROUND

1. In 1961 the Crown Estate Act repealed and consolidated all previous existing Crown lands legislation and forms the definitive legislation that governs the activities of The Crown Estate today.

2. During the passage of the 1961 Bill through Parliament, Lord Lucan was quoted as saying, “There is a curious old-world flavour about some of the Bill. It traces the Crown Estate back to the Domesday Book, the Schedule to the Bill repeals part of a Statute of Charles II, and the part about the Crown ownership of the foreshore and the seabed up to the three-mile territorial limit has an old-world ring about it.”

3. The Crown Estate today is a modern, forward-looking commercial property company but it is also steeped in nearly 1,000 years of English history, which is one of the reasons it is often considered to be unique. The relationship that The Crown Estate has had with the River Thames in some ways mirrors the long history and evolution of The Crown Estate from the medieval period right through to today and beyond.

4. In this talk I will trace briefly the history of how the Crown came to be regarded as the owner of foreshore, its ownership and management of the River Thames in particular and then tell a few stories about The Crown Estate and the River Thames, which, I hope will illustrate the rather colourful and unusual dealings we have been involved in over the years.

The Crown Estate – ownership of foreshore

5. In 1569, at the age of 23, Thomas Digges, astronomer, mathematician, parliamentarian and engineer in charge of Dover docks, first put forward the theory that foreshore remained with the Crown unless it could be shown that following the Norman Conquest there had been an express grant of foreshore by the Sovereign. Thus came about the theory of foreshore ownership by The Crown, and in Digges’ time the Crown of Elizabeth I. Digges was very much a man of his time and in many ways was not unconventional in his thinking. For example, he had also served in the Netherlands as a muster-master and his remedy for young English social delinquents was to pack them off to fight for Queen and Country in foreign wars.

Digges’ theory concerning ownership of the foreshore was supported in the seventeenth century by the great jurist Sir Matthew Hale and Robert Callis. It was Callis, incidentally, who had also advocated that "Flotsan, Jetsan and Lagan” were goods on or in the Sea, which belonged to the King.

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6. Digges’ theory was resurrected in the nineteenth century, when the land and properties of the Sovereign were transferred to the management of the Commissioners of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues by the Crown Lands Acts 1810 and 1829.

7. His theory was given the highest judicial seal of approval in the case of A-G v Emerson in 1891 when the House of Lords confirmed that the Crown is prima facie the owner of the foreshore. Lord Herschell stated that:

"It is beyond dispute that the Crown is prima facie entitled to every part of the foreshore between high and low-water mark, and that a subject can only establish a title to any part of that foreshore, either by proving an express grant thereof from the Crown, or by giving evidence from which such a grant, though not capable of being produced, will be presumed."

In other words, it’s the Crown’s unless you can prove otherwise. And just to put this beyond any further doubt, since the Land Registration Act of 2002, The Crown Estate has, for the first time, been able to register its ownership of foreshore at the Land Registry and now has registered title to virtually all its foreshore in England and Wales. What is rather interesting about this is that the land held by the Crown is technically demesne land. In simple terms since the Norman Conquest all the land of England (i.e. the demesne) has been held by the Crown, out of which freeholds have been granted. Demesne land cannot be registered at the Land Registry, so the Queen has first to grant herself a freehold, known as an estate in fee simple, before the land can be registered. So when registering Crown Estate foreshore, each application is accompanied by a certificate noting that the Queen has granted to herself the freehold of the foreshore!

8. The Crown's right to the territorial sea bed is also beyond dispute and although it has not been judicially decided, Lord Dunpark stated in the case of Crown Estate Commissioners v Fairlie Yacht Slip Ltd in 1977:

"the seabed within the territorial limit and the foreshore are ... the property of the Crown…”

The Crown Estate – ownership of The River Thames

9. Until 1197, the Crown would have held all the rights to the River Thames. However, at that time King Richard I was desperate to raise funds for his war against King Phillip of France, having already bled the country dry through taxes to support his crusades and collection of the 150,000 marks ransom required for his release from captivity by the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI. It is popularly held that as a consequence Richard sold by Royal Charter his rights in the River for 1,500 marks to the Corporation of the City of London to raise funds. It is far from clear, however, that this so called Thames Charter actually sold anything at all. Rather it seems that it was a proclamation at large against weirs in the Thames. Nevertheless, as a result, the Corporation assumed the role of conservators of the river from as far east as Yantlet Creek and as far west as Staines. Today, the London Stones mark the present

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limits of jurisdiction of the Corporation’s modern day successors, the Port of London Authority.

10. Unencumbered navigation of the river remained a matter of Royal concern, however, for in 1350 Edward III passed an Act of Parliament prohibiting the obstruction of the River, a fact that had previously been enshrined in Magna Carta in 1215 and which had echoes of the 1197 Proclamation. Paragraph 33 of the famous Great Charter had stated, “All fish-weirs shall be removed from the Thames, the Medway, and throughout the whole of England, except on the sea coast.”

11. In the ensuing years, a number of Commissions were appointed with conservancy functions to manage various parts of the river but ownership of the river itself remained a moot point. However, the simmering uncertainty engendered by Richard’s original Charter / Proclamation, finally boiled over nearly 650 years later.

12. In 1844, the Attorney General filed an information in Chancery against the Corporation of London, charging that the Crown was seised of the foreshore and bed of the Thames and that the Corporation, while acknowledged as being conservators, had no estate or interest in the ground and soil of the River. The claim arose following the Corporation’s proposals to embank the river between London and Vauxhall bridges and specifically the grant of licences by the Corporation to William Cubbitt to embank the river opposite to the Isle of Dogs. Essentially, the Crown advanced the argument that as the Thames was a navigable river it was an arm of the sea and consequently there was a prima facia case that the bed and soil, as far as it ebbed and flowed, belonged to the Crown by virtue of the Royal Prerogative.

13. Mr Serjeant Mereweather on behalf of the Corporation contended that the prima facie claim of the Crown did not exist. He challenged the Attorney General to quote a single case in support of the doctrine, submitting that there was no ground in law for the prerogative right and that it couldn’t be maintained.

14. Suffice to say that the Court was not impressed with the Corporation’s defence and allowed the Crown to press its claim. However, that was by no means the end of the dispute and with neither party being able or willing to lightly toss aside 650 years of history, the case dragged on for a further 13 years. Finally, in 1856, the parties came by a compromise to end the litigation and on 1st March 1857 the Crown sold to the Corporation for £5,000 all its estate and interest in the Thames except in front of, or adjacent to, any Crown property. At the same time the Thames Conservancy Act was passed that created a new body, the Thames Conservators, which took on the relevant rights and powers of the Corporation of London. In addition to the £5,000 consideration, the Crown reserved a one third share of proceeds of any sales or grants of the river that might be made by the Conservators in future years. This overage provision was later bought out by the Conservators’ successors in title, the Port of London Authority, on 1st January 1913 for £235,000.

15. Apart from the subsequent Embankment works and a few small sales of land, for example at Thurrock, Plumstead and Thamesmead, the Crown’s reserved ownership essentially remains to this day as per the 1857 grant.

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16. That said, the precise boundaries of the Crown’s ownership have been called into question in recent years. In 1975, the PLA and The Crown Estate concluded a boundary agreement in relation to two tributaries of the Thames, the Channelsea and Roding and in 2009, The Crown Estate received a further payment of £500,000 from the PLA by way of a deed of compromise that resolved for all time the precise extent of the Crown reserves along the river. It had become apparent that the original 1857 definition was unclear as to whether the Crown’s land extended only to the mid-point or right across to the other side of the river and the deed confirmed that the mid-point was the agreed line.

17. The total area of the River Thames as measured from the estuary mouth (a straight line across the water from Crow Stone to London Stone) up river to the non-tidal section at Sunbury Well is around 1,080 hectares. The area of Crown Estate owned foreshore and bed is around 48 hectares, which works out at approximately 4.5% of the total area.

18. The Crown Estate’s ownership of the Thames appears somewhat random but for historians it provides a permanent marker as to wider Crown ownership of riparian land and buildings in London in the mid-19th century. This includes the Houses of Parliament, the Tower of London, Somerset House, the Customs House, Battersea Park, Kew Gardens, Hampton Court Palace and several military installations, including Coalhouse and Tilbury Forts, the Woolwich Arsenal and Purfleet Barracks.

19. In his recent book, “Thames – Sacred River”1, Peter Ackroyd commented on the Crown v Corporation litigation questioning whether Queen Victoria could, in any meaningful sense, be said to own the River. “She might own the land upon which it flowed but did she have any proprietorial rights over the water that ran into the sea and fell from the sky?” The answer is, of course, no but the land itself remains a valuable asset nonetheless.

20. As at March 2009, The Crown Estate’s annual income from around 100 leases and licences on the River Thames stood at some £355,000 and was valued at over £4.1M. These dealings include various piers and jetties, floating restaurants, moorings, pipes, tunnels and bridge supports, and there remains plenty of un-let foreshore fronting historic buildings.

The Crown Estate – management of the River

21. In 1866, management of most of The Crown Estate’s foreshore was transferred to the Board of Trade. During the Second World War, the Transport departments took over management as part of the emergency war measures (for example, for much of the war it was managed by the Ministry of War Transport) and it wasn’t until 1949, under the Coast Protection Act, that management reverted to the Crown Estate Commissioners. However, throughout all this time, exceptionally the Thames remained with the Commissioners.

22. In 1889, as a way of resolving another dispute with the Thames Conservators concerning their navigational rights over the Crown’s land, in what was effectively an

1 Page 153, Vintage 2008, ISBN 9780099422556

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agency contract, an agreement was entered into, whereby the Conservators would manage The Crown Estate’s interests in the River in return for a one third commission on any revenues. Management consisted primarily of administering the granting of joint licences for works on Crown Estate foreshore, covering both navigational and proprietorial consent. In 1909, with the coming into being of the Port of London Authority, the agreement was split into two, whereby the Conservators continued to manage the formally tidal parts of the Thames above Teddington Lock and the PLA managed the river downstream.

23. The agency arrangements remain in place today upstream of Teddington, with the Environment Agency, through statutory succession, acting as The Crown Estate’s agent. In 1995, however, The Crown Estate and PLA agreed to terminate the arrangements for the river downstream of the Lock. From that time onwards, the PLA has only granted navigational consents in respect of works on The Crown Estate’s land, with The Crown Estate managing the proprietorial aspects.

24. The Crown Estate generally runs its property portfolio on an outsource model and when the PLA agreement ended, The Crown Estate put management of its interests in the Thames out to external agents. The current agents are Carter Jonas. The one exception to this is the granting of permits to search the foreshore, which the PLA continues to issue in respect of Crown Estate foreshore on its behalf.

PART TWO – STORIES FROM THE ARCHIVES

The Victoria Embankment controversy

25. In 1862, an Act was passed for the embankment of the Thames from Westminster to Blackfriars bridges, under the design of Joseph Bazalgette. Although the Conservators were compensated for the compulsory acquisition of their foreshore for the reclamation, the Crown received no compensation for the taking of foreshore in its ownership, which extended to around 11 acres, fronting Somerset House and Scotland Yard. Instead, the Act allowed the Crown to retain ownership of 5 ½ acres. In 1870, the land having been reclaimed and laid out, the Crown announced that it wished to build on around 2 acres of it. Given that the general intention of the Act was for the land reclaimed to be retained in perpetuity for the purposes of public recreation, widespread public concern was expressed about the Crown’s wish to develop part of the land. Indeed, such was the outcry that a certain W H Smith, a future leader of the Commons, raised a motion in the House to prevent the development taking place, even though the Crown’s rights were enshrined in the very Act that the House had passed only 8 years before. The motion led to a lively debate, which culminated in the defeat of the Liberal Government of the day through the passing of Mr Smith’s motion by a majority of 50.

26. The debate was widely reported in the popular press. For example, the Spectator reported that, in light of the debate, the Eighth Commandment – Thou Shalt Not Steal – clearly did not apply as far as Crown property was concerned! The Morning Post, however, took a contrary view, reporting on the original deal that better things

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might have been hoped from a Liberal administration and that the Crown had become possessed of a property for which it had not paid a farthing. Bearing in mind the origins of the Crown’s foreshore, this comment was technically correct although one might argue that the price had been paid previously in the lives of those who fought and died for William the Conqueror back in 1066.

27. The records are not clear as to the eventual outcome of the Embankment Controversy. It appears that the Crown retained its ownership of the soil in the reclaimed land but withdrew any proposals for development on the 2 acres. What is not in doubt is that the site remains public open space to this day, and is known as the Victoria Embankment Gardens. The gardens have many statues of notable British citizens, including war heroes and great figures in history including the Prime Minister Mr Gladstone. A nice touch, since it was Gladstone’s government that had been defeated by W H Smith’s motion. I guess there were no hard feelings!

28. One of the main historical features of the Embankment Gardens is the water gate in the north west corner, built in 1626 as the triumphal entry to the Thames for the Duke of Buckingham. The water gate was part of York House, the home to the Archbishops of York, which once stood on the site, before becoming the Duke's residence. Although the water gate is in its original position, because of the embanking of the Thames, it is now some 330 feet from the edge of the river. So it stands as silent testimony not only to the skills of the Victorian engineers who reclaimed the land from the river but also perhaps to the day that Parliament broke the Eighth Commandment!

Deportation

29. In 1816, Millbank Prison situated just downstream of Vauxhall Bridge was opened for business. It was used largely as a holding facility for people convicted of a crime who were being transported to Australia. The prison itself closed in 1890, was demolished shortly afterwards and is now the site of the Tate Britain. Although The Crown Estate owns the estate at Millbank next door, including properties in Ponsonby Place, Ponsonby Terrace and John Islip Street, it never owned the prison site itself, which was acquired by the State from the Marquess of Salisbury. However, because of this, the foreshore all along the front of the Millbank estate and the former prison is owned by The Crown Estate. The presence of the former prison is marked by a single buttress by the river. It has the inscription, "Near this site stood Millbank Prison which was opened in 1816 and closed in 1890. This buttress stood at the head of the river steps from which, until 1867, prisoners sentenced to transportation embarked on their journey to Australia."

30. So while The Crown Estate wasn’t involved in the imprisonment and deportation of the many thousand poor souls that passed through the prison, its land was the last bit of England to be crossed by them before departing the country for ever. The buttress inscription suggests that the convicts would have descended some steps fronting the prison and been rowed out to a vessel moored just offshore. Old plans also indicate the presence of a jetty next to the nearby Vauxhall Bridge and a Crown Estate licence is still in place for the remains of the jetty stumps. A pier once stood slightly further downstream, known as Vauxhall Road Pier but the records for this

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appear to have been lost. It is possible that this jetty and/or the pier could also have been used as a berthing facility for the transportation ships.

31. Just a little further downstream from the former pier is the new Millbank Pier, which opened in 2002. So instead of convicts leaving the prison for Australia, we now have art lovers departing the Tate perhaps for the other gallery at Bankside, but both in their different ways availing themselves of Crown Estate land.

Off to the Tower!

32. Since at least as early as 1810, The Crown Estate has been administered not by the Sovereign him or herself but by independent surveyors and Commissioners. Indeed, under the current legislation apart from receiving the Annual Report, the present Queen has very little interaction with the Estate and certainly would not seek to interfere in its day to day management. Any leases, sales or grants may be in the joint names of the Sovereign and the Commissioners but it is the Commissioners solely who undertake all the transactions and sign any agreements. However, there is an instance where this was not the case and it involved George V and the famous “Children’s Beach” at the Tower of London.

33. In 1934, the Council for Tower Hill Improvement applied for the use of The Crown Estate’s foreshore fronting the Tower as a beach area for children and also for use of an access ladder from the Tower Wharf to the beach. At that time no one other than the Sovereign could use the Queen’s Stairs and other methods of access were deemed to be too dangerous. The written consent of the Constable of the Tower, in respect of the access, and of the Commissioners of Crown Lands, in respect of the foreshore, would have been required. However, the Constable of the Tower having first sought the personal approval of King George himself, issued a letter of consent to the Trust expressly on behalf of the King in respect of both the access and the foreshore. Only almost as an afterthought did he add that any conditions of the Commissioners should be complied with but the consent itself came straight from the King!

34. The Times reported the opening of the beach in the summer of 1934. Apparently there were buns, chocolate and unlimited lemonade for the children playing on the beach. Although King George was not present at the opening ceremony, which was held on Tower Wharf, a letter written by the King’s Private Secretary on the King’s behalf was read out to the congregation. “His Majesty”, it said, “was pleased to give his entire approval to the plans for the children’s playground and felt that the children of the district would thus be provided with a much needed and health-giving playground”. Perhaps because the King had long suffered from a variety of ailments including emphysema, bronchitis, chronic obstructive lung disease and pleurisy, he was only too pleased to be able to assist in providing a health facility for London’s children …. and could be excused for overlooking the minor matter of the protocols concerning management of Crown Estate assets.

35. Curiously, amongst the notable guests at the ceremony reported in the Times article, there is no mention of any Crown Estate Commissioner being present!

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36. Sadly, the beach fell into disuse and despite attempts in the early 1990s to restore the beach for children, nothing came of the idea although it is now a site for the annual Archaeology Week held every year in July, which comes with the blessing and written permission of the Crown Estate Commissioners!

The Festival of Britain

37. Battersea Park was acquired by the Commissioners of Woods in 1846, the same Commissioners, it will be recalled, who once managed The Crown Estate. Ownership passed shortly afterwards to the Commissioners of Works and through statutory succession the Park is now owned by Wandsworth Borough Council. Because of the Crown connection, the foreshore formed part of the 1857 Crown reserves and is part of The Crown Estate today. The park itself has had a long association with the river.

38. In Victorian times steamboats would stop at Battersea Park Pier, a modest structure consisting of a single access brow. The pier was later developed into the more substantial structure known as the Festival Gardens Pier, which comprised three access brows and housed the Pierhead Restaurant. Construction of this facility was sanctioned by a private Act of Parliament.

39. In 1951, the post-war feel-good Festival of Britain was held in London and various locations around Britain. The principal exhibition site was on London’s South Bank but other exhibitions were held at different sites around London including Battersea Park.

40. Here, a temporary landing stage known as Bounty Jetty was constructed just upstream of the Festival Gardens Pier. Unfortunately, despite good attendances at the Festival, the Gardens were a financial disaster. The Company responsible went into liquidation and the London County Council had to step in. The Bounty Pier, re-named “Showboat Pier” was retained but the Festival Gardens Pier was substantially dismantled leaving just a simple landing stage. Showboat Pier was removed subsequently in 1969 and in the 1990s new owners, the PLA, resolved to demolish the remains of the Festival Gardens Pier, having failed to attract a buyer.

41. Seeing an opportunity to recall the heyday of the Park’s riverside facilities, The Crown Estate joined with Wandsworth Borough Council to promote a replacement pier, with a restaurant, but Environment Agency concerns about development on the foreshore prevented any proposals getting off the ground. The existing remains of the pier were finally removed in December 1998 and with them went around 150 years of association of the park with the river. The local paper reported the sad outcome under the inevitable headline, “End of the Pier”.

The Garrison sale

42. I referred previously to The Crown Estate selling small parts of the Thames subsequent to the 1857 grant to the Corporation. One example of such was at Thurrock. In the 1760s, Purfleet Garrison was built to service 5 powder magazines, arising from concern that powder stored at Woolwich, some 7 miles further upstream, presented a potential danger to London in the event of an explosion. Apparently each magazine could hold more than 10,000 barrels of gunpowder. The

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map shows the location of the Garrison but as was the practice in times past the facility has been blanked out. The establishment fell into disuse in the 1960s and was sold by the MoD to Thurrock Council. In 1970, The Crown Estate sold some additional areas of reclaimed foreshore. Following the sale, much of the site was demolished for redevelopment as a housing estate, which was called the Garrison Estate. A few of the original garrison buildings and parts of the inner security wall survive. The buildings include the clock tower, which still contains a working clock. The former Crown Estate portion of the site remains as open space fronting the Estate and overlooking the river.

The ferry dispute

43. One more unusual form of property that involves The Crown Estate is known as Old Land Revenue. Essentially, this is Crown land that has been occupied rent-free by another government department, usually the military, since before 1702. When the department ceases occupation the land and property can revert to The Crown Estate.

44. This has resulted in a number of unusual properties and rights coming back to The Crown Estate. An example on the Thames is Tilbury Fort, which used to be occupied by the War Department. In 1931, when it ceased to be used for military purposes, it was handed back to The Crown Estate. An unusual property for any major commercial landowner to acquire but more so as the Fort also came with rights to the Tilbury to Gravesend ferry. Stranger still, the rights were for the Ferry to travel only one way. This was because although the ferry had been running back and forth for centuries in 1694 the rights from Gravesend to Tilbury were sold by the Crown in perpetuity as a franchise. However, the rights the other way were retained by the Crown, in the guise of the War Department. When the rights reverted to The Crown Estate in 1931 they were subject of a lease granted by the War Department in 1880 to the London Tilbury and Southend Railway Company. Back in Crown hands and following expiry of a further lease granted in 1951, the rights were for many years dealt with by way of an annual licence.

45. These arrangements continued happily in obscurity until in 1992 The Crown Estate and the ferry hit the headlines! In attempting to negotiate a new agreement following the transfer of the ferry licence to White Horse Ferries, the Company took umbrage at the terms being offered by The Crown Estate. Indeed, as a consequence, the Company managers proceeded to suspend the ferry from Tilbury to Gravesend, instead laying on a bus service to take passengers from Tilbury to Gravesend via the new QE 2 Bridge at Dartford. Needless to say, there was much public consternation and once again, The Crown Estate found itself the subject of questions in the House as well as headline news on prime time television. The suspension of the ferry had the effect of concentrating minds and the parties quickly negotiated an amicable resolution to the dispute. Nowadays the ferry is run under subsidy from Thurrock and Kent County Councils with the benefit of a 150-year agreement from The Crown Estate and normal service has been resumed – in both directions!

46. There is a post script to this tale in that in March 2010 it was reported in the press that the ferry was at risk due to potential funding cuts. However, with over 2,000 members from around the world supporting a Facebook campaign and petitions

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galore on the government website, the Port of Tilbury stepped in with some £20,000 to help the cause and Thurrock Council then “found the money” to keep the ferry afloat.

47. Meantime, Tilbury Fort itself, which was built by Charles II in 1672, and the adjoining foreshore remains in the ownership of The Crown Estate. After it was handed back in 1931, the Fort remained unoccupied for several years although the surrounding grazing land was let out on an annual tenancy. In 1935, it was subject of a Question in the House. The local Council had expressed interest in buying the Fort. When asked if the Commissioners of Crown Lands would favourably consider a reasonable offer for the sale of the Fort, the Minister replied, “certainly”.

48. The Crown Estate today is obliged to obtain best consideration in all the circumstances for the sale of any part of its estate – even forts!

49. But a sale was never agreed and nowadays although the fort remains part of The Crown Estate, it is managed by English Heritage and archaeologists are currently producing a new survey of the whole site to provide an up-to-date analysis of how the fort has developed and changed over time.

Boats on the River

50. All tidal waters are subject to the public rights of fishing and navigation. In the 1865 case of Gann v Free Fishers of Whitstable the Courts confirmed that anchoring in the course of navigation was ancillary to the public right of navigation. However, any mooring with ground tackle which is not intended to be taken on board by the vessel using it in the ordinary course of navigation can be considered as a permanent mooring outwith the public right of navigation and thus requires the permission of the landowner.

51. On the Thames there are a number of permanently moored vessels, probably the most famous being HMS Belfast. This is not on Crown Estate land and because The Crown Estate has relatively little land compared with the PLA, it has only few vessels on its patch. Nevertheless, the ones it has had are of some historical interest.

52. In 1972, the paddle steamer Old Caledonia was moored alongside the Victoria Embankment at the Savoy Pier as a floating pub. She was granted an annual licence at a fee commencing at £3,150 pa. Constructed in 1934, she had previously seen service as a ferry ship on the Clyde and during the war as a minesweeper, under the name HMS Goatfell. She avoided being scrapped in the 1960s when Charrington acquired her and converted her into the floating pub. However, her days were numbered and after only 8 years on the Thames, she was gutted by fire and had to be scrapped.

53. Nevertheless, the business had been profitable, and Charrington decided to replace Old Caledonian with the TSS George V. This would have been a fitting vessel for The Crown Estate in light of the late King’s previous association with the Tower foreshore but tragedy struck again when the vessel caught fire during refit in Swansea and was a total loss.

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54. Unperturbed, the Company applied instead to use the Old Caledonian berth for the TS Queen Mary. A nice touch that, Queen Mary following George V. The Queen Mary had a not dissimilar history to the Old Caledonian but at 258 ft long was a larger vessel, and when occupying the berth, around one third of her strayed across onto PLA land. A 40-year joint licence was therefore granted and the PLA and Crown Estate shared the one-off payment of £500,000. She arrived in 1987, underwent a major refurbishment in 1997 but last year she was towed away and will be moored in La Rochelle in France as a floating restaurant and fitness centre. Meanwhile, the Woods family, Watermen on the Thames since 1866, have plans to re-open the Savoy Pier, for use with its luxury Silver Fleet river yachts.

55. A little further upstream, along the Embankment, another floating restaurant and pub, the PS Tattershall Castle, arrived in 1976 to moor. Constructed in the same year as the Old Caledonian, the Castle used to ply her trade on the Humber and during the war found service as a tether for barrage balloons. This steamer has fared better than its rivals downstream, however, and following a major refit a few years ago, remains as a permanent and familiar fixture to the Thames riverside scene. When The Crown Estate used to occupy its old HQ at Carlton House Terrace, a number of its employees would often be found of a Friday lunchtime enhancing The Crown Estate’s income from the mooring by way of purchasing a beer or three from the Castle’s bar.

Mind the Step!

56. In 2006, The Crown Estate and Greenwich Foundation joined forces to complete the restoration of the historic grade II listed Queen’s Stairs on the banks of the River Thames at the Old Naval College, which forms part of the Greenwich World Heritage Site. These are the steps over which Admiral Lord Nelson’s coffin was carried before and after his lying in state in the Painted Hall of the Greenwich Hospital in January 1806 prior to the Grand River Procession that saw his body taken by royal barge to Westminster. The £160,000 restoration was paid for by The Crown Estate and was commissioned as part of the 200th anniversary celebrations of the Battle of Trafalgar. Restoration of the steps formed part of the Greenwich Foundation’s landscape restoration project for the Old Naval College. The steps provide access to the ‘beach’ that appears at low-tide, where, amongst other things, supervised parties of local school children have performed archaeological digs.

Living Walls

57. In 1999, The Crown Estate established its Marine Communities Fund to provide support to initiatives and programmes which contribute to the development of best practice, and make a significant contribution to the good management and stewardship of the marine estate. It has already distributed nearly £2 million to a wide range of practical projects around the coast.

58. Through the Fund, The Crown Estate has supported the Greenwich-based National Maritime Museum’s Marine Environment Education Initiative. This 4-year initiative engaged teachers, educators, students and industry in developing museum and classroom-based resources to teach and learn about marine environmental issues, and their social, economic and political impacts.

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59. In February this year, The Crown Estate was pleased to announce its first award of funds for a project related directly to the Thames itself. Since being declared ‘biologically dead’ in 1957 the River Thames through central London has experienced improved water quality and associated biological recovery, though the river is characterised by a lack of riparian habitat that restricts the biodiversity it can support.

60. Recent investigations of the biodiversity of the river between Teddington Lock and Woolwich have demonstrated that the river walls and embankments are the most biodiverse habitats along the river, particularly for plants and invertebrates, and that biodiversity is primarily related to the complexity of the wall surface, with brick, boulder and stone walls supporting the most species, and concrete and sheet piling supporting the least.

61. The project being run by Thames21 and which The Crown Estate will be funding aims to evaluate whether it is possible to improve the diversity of river walls and embankments along the River Thames on Crown Estate foreshore by using modular living wall technology. Such technology has been successfully utilised in terrestrial urban areas. Within an urban river context it has the advantages of allowing a soil substrate to be embedded, within which desired species can be planted. Natural colonisation of the walls will also take place. This can be done while maintaining the integrity of the flood defence function of the walls. It is also easily replicable, so scientific hypotheses can be tested.

62. The Crown Estate looks forward to working with Thames21 on this exciting project.

63. Perhaps it is fitting that the stories from the archives began with the construction of the Victoria Embankment walls that took away large parts of the river, and ends with a project seeking to make use of walls along the Thames as sites for the promotion of biodiversity.

Conclusion

64. I have tried to demonstrate that although the extent of The Crown Estate’s ownership and interests in the Thames today are fairly modest, nevertheless the Estate has enjoyed a long and interesting association with the River over the years.

65. The Crown Estate has owned and sold off most of the River. Its land has seen citizens deported; it has been the subject of a debate in the House that defeated the Government of the day and it has re-acquired a fort and a one-way ferry. It has also encouraged public enjoyment and scientific study of its land, helped to restore part of a World Heritage Site and is now helping to encourage biodiversity of the river. And it continues to own and manage an estate in the heart of London that provides an annual boost to the Nation’s coffers.

66. The Crown Estate has been involved in the River in one way or another for nearly 1,000 years. I cannot predict whether it will still have a role to play in 1,000 years hence but in the coming years at least The Crown Estate will continue to play an important role in the life of the Thames, one of the world’s great rivers.

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67. The Crown Estate – a Right Royal River?

68. I will leave you to decide.

This talk was prepared by Neil Jacobson for presentation at a meeting of the archaeology group, Thames Discovery Unit, in March 2010. It was revised for presentation to The Crown Estate as part of its Learning at Work week in May 2010. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Crown Estate.