The document provides details about the River Thames, including its length, source, navigability, course through England, and contributions to trade, culture, and religion in England. It discusses the river's role in transportation and trade throughout history. It also summarizes efforts to clean the river from pollution in the 19th-20th centuries and modern uses of the river for leisure and tourism.

2. Length 346 km (215 miles)
Source is about a mile north of the village of Kemble,
near Cirencester.
The area of floodplain is 896 km2.
There are in all 47 locks,

3. INTRODUCTION ON RIVER THAMES
 The Thames has been frozen over at various times, the
earliest recorded occasion being AD 1150.
 There is a 23-ft (7-m) difference between low and high
tide at London Bridge.
 The Thames is navigable by barges is navigable for 306
km (191 miles) from Lechlade.

4. The source of the Thames is
a spring called Thames head. The spring is
supplied by water deep under the ground. It is
marked by an ancient ash tree and a stone engraved
with the words:

6. The Thames flows through or alongside Aston
Keynes, Cricklade, Lechlade, Oxford,Abingdon, W
allingford, Goring-on-Thames
and Streatley, Reading, Wargrave, Henley-on-
Thames, Marlow, Maidenhead, Windsor and Eton,
Staines-upon-Thames and Egham ,
Chertsey, Shepperton, Weybridge, Sunbury-on-
Thames, Walton-on-Thames, Molesey and Thames
Ditton
The Thames passes by some of the sights of
London, including the Houses of Parliament and
the London Eye.
Course

8. History of River Thames
The River Thames can first be identified as a
discrete drainage line as early as 58 million years
ago, in theThanetian stage of the
late Palaeocene epoch.
In the most extreme Ice Age of the Pleistocene,
theAnglian about 450,000 years ago, the ice sheet
reached its furthest extent south, Hornchurch in
north-east London.
 It dammed the river in Hertfordshire, causing large
ice lakes which eventually burst their banks and
caused the river to be diverted onto its present course
through London .

10. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONTRIBUTION
OF RIVER THAMES ON ENGLAND

11. TRADE & TRANSPORT
 The river has been an important trade and transport route since
prehistoric times.
 Barges and river boats brought fish, wood and wool to the City, while
hundreds of watermen in small rowing boats ferried people up and
down.
 Tea, silk and a fortune of spices came from the East.
 Sugar was brought from the Caribbean, timber from Norway and iron
ore from Sweden.
 The Thames was so busy that traffic on the river could hardly move.
 As trade with the East Indies increased, East India Company ships
with their cargoes of spices, tea and cloth had to moor at Deptford and
transported their goods on covered barges as there was no room for
the large ships upriver.
 Often goods were left on the wharves where they could be stolen or
damaged by the weather.

12. CULTURE
VISUAL ART
 The River Thames has been a subject for artists, great and minor, over the centuries.
 Four major artists with works based on the Thames are Canaletto , J. M. W. Turner, Claude
Monet, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.
MUSIC
 The Water Music composed by George Frideric Handel premiered on 17 July 1717, when King
George I requested a concert on the River Thames.
 The song 'Old Father Thames' was recorded by Peter Dawson at Abbey Road Studios in 1933
and by Gracie Fields five years later.
 The Sex Pistols played a concert on the Queen Elizabeth Riverboat on 7 June 1977, the
Queen's Silver Jubilee year, while sailing down the river.
 English musician Imogen Heap wrote a song from the point of view of the River Thames
entitled "You Know Where To Find Me". The song was released in 2012 on 18 October as the
sixth single from her currently untitled album.[56]
 Ewan MacColl's "Sweet Thames, Flow Softly", written in the early 1960s, is a tragic love
ballad set on trip up the river.

13. RELIGION
 Very few Thames-side parish churches have been the subject of
detailed archaeological investigation; the dedication, and location
of the church within the landscape, are therefore important
indicators of the possible origins of the building.
 the churches along the tidal Thames, over half are dedicated either
to St Mary the Virgin or to All Saints, (or All Hallows) which may be
an indication of an early foundation date.
 The location of the church within the landscape may provide clues as
to the shape of river during the Anglo-Saxon period.
 St Mary’s Batttersea Mention must also be made of the tributaries of
the Thames.
 In addition to further study of the origin and form of the churches, a
study of their associated churchyards may also prove rewarding.
 The importance of the church in relationship to the river is clearly
shown at Chiswick, where a causeway aligned with the east end of the
church runs across the foreshore.
 It is intriguing to note that on theRiver Fleet are located two of the
oldest churches in the Greater London area, St Pancras and St
Andrew’s Holborn.

15. Edmund Spenser wrote Prothalamian (1596)
William Wordsworth-On Westminsters Bridge
Alwyn Marriage-Charting the Thames
Julian Colton -Thames River Odyssey
Fred S Thacker-Mortlake Bridge (1920)
Rudyard Kipling-The RiveR’s Tale (1911)
Oscar Wilde-The Burden of Itys
John Betjeman-Henley On Thames (1948)
 T.S.Eliot-The Waste Land
Jerome K JEROME THREE MEN IN A BOAT

17. Let poets rave of Arno’ stream
And painters of the winding Rhine
I will not aska lovelier dream,
A sweeter scene, fair Thames, than thine;
An ‘neath a summer’s sun’s decline
Thou wanderest at thine own sweet will
Reflecting from thy face divine
The flower-wreathed brow of Richmond
Hill.

20. Human activity along points from its source to its mouth
is evidenced for thousands of years in places; now it
provides dwelling places, water power, food and drink
The river’s strategic position has seen it at the centre of
many events and fashions in British history, earning it a
description by John Burns as “Liquid History”.
More recently, the river has become a major leisure area
supporting tourism and pleasure outings as well as the
sports of rowing, sailing, sniffing, kayaking, and punting.
Habitation

21. IN VICTORIAN TIMES, The Thames became very
polluted. Filthy water from factories and newly invented
water, Toilet poured straight down drains into the river
killing all the wildlife. Londoners still drank river water due
to which thousands of people died because of cholera.
Some people use a drain road or outside in their garden to
dispose oil or dirty water . This generally goes straight into
the river. In the 1960s,a big clean up began : sewage system
and many more things was improved. Due to this Thames
is now one of the most cleanest river in the world

22. [Image: 1855 Punch cartoon of Father
Thames greeting Faraday.]

24. The £220,000 prize, awarded at the International River symposium in
Australia, will go to the Thames Rivers Restoration Trust.
 Actor David Suchet, a keen boater and chairman of the River Thames
Alliance, said: 'I am fortunate in my life to have travelled extensively and
enjoyed many other rivers worldwide.
 Thames Water’s planning applications shows 24 building sites along the
Thames, including the main construction site at Carnwath Road on the
Fulham riverside.
 To clean the river Thames government of England has taken many steps
to stop the pollution.
Steps take n by the government to clean river Thames

25. Thames Valley flood of
1947
This period was the worse
period for the people of
Thames valley because a
worst kind of flood was
caused in the year 1947. The
precipitation of the flood was
117mm(4.9 inches) . It also
was caused in many parts of
England during the middle of
March 1947 after a severe
winter. The flood harmed the
property of total cost $12
million. Some significant
Thames floods since 1947
have occurred in 1968, 1993,
1998, 2000, 2003 and 2006.

26. The Thames Barrier is the
world's second-largest movable
flood barrier and it is located at
the downstream of central
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM. Its purpose is to prevent London
from being flooded by exceptionally high tides and storm
surges moving up from the sea. It is being raised only during
the high tides. Its northern bank is in Silver town, London
Borough of New ham and its southern bank is in the New
Charlton area of Charlton in the Royal Borough of Greenwich.