About: Embanking of the tidal Thames

The Embanking of the tidal Thames is the historical process by which the lower River Thames, at one time a broad, shallow waterway winding through malarious marshlands, has been transformed into a deep, narrow tidal canal. With small beginnings in Roman Londinium, it was pursued more vigorously in the Middle Ages. Mostly it was achieved by farmers reclaiming marshland and building protective embankments or, in London, frontagers pushing out into the stream to get more riverfront property. The Victorian civil engineering works in central London, usually called "the Embankment", are just a small part of the process. Today, over 200 miles of walls line the river's banks from Teddington down to its mouth in the North Sea; they defend a tidal flood plain where 1.25 million people work and live.