Voice of the Thames

05/10/2026

Blue Plaques of the River Thames
Richard Dimbleby, Boulters Island, Maidenhead

Richard Dimbleby (1913–1965) — the great broadcaster who lived on a Thames island. The BBC's most trusted voice — the man who commentated the Coronation of 1953 and the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill — lived, when he could, on a small island in the middle of the Thames. Richard
Dimbleby CBE made his home on Boulters Island, Maidenhead, mooring his launch Heron alongside. He was often photographed at her wheel entering Marlow Lock or tied up at the Compleat Angler

A blue plaque on the pile of the footbridge that leads to the island — right beside Boulters Lock — was unveiled on 20 June 1991 by the Mayor of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. If you walk the Thames Path from Maidenhead you cannot miss it.

Image – Windsor Local History Group

RIver Thames Society - Voice of the Thames

03/10/2026

Historic Boats of the Non-Tidal Thames

The Punt: From Workboat to Summer Idyll

The punt began as a working boat. Fishermen, ferrymen and reed-cutters used flat, square-ended punts because they were stable and could work in shallow water.

By the 1880s the pleasure punt had arrived. It was longer, finer and often beautifully finished, with cushions and a backrest. Punting became a fashionable pastime, and the Thames Punting Club, founded in 1886, organised racing, which still takes place today

Standing at the end of a punt and working the pole is a skill that looks easy until you try it. Many of us have left a pole stuck in the mud and carried on without it.

Voice of the Thames (River Thames Society)

Image: White Hart Hotel Sonning-on-Thames (Wikimedia Commons)

01/10/2026

COOKHAM LOCK WOULD APPEAR TO BE BACK TO NORMAL WORKING.

Change made:
Update to Cookham Lock sluice works. Cookham Lock now open to navigation as normal.

Time updated:
4:42pm, 1 October 2026

01/10/2026

Blue Plaques of the River

Henry Taunt (1842–1922) — the man who photographed every inch of the Thames

Long before drone footage and Instagram reels, one man set out to photograph the entire River Thames from source to sea. Henry Taunt of Oxford spent fifty years doing exactly that, working from a houseboat
and cutting a familiar figure on the river in his "nautical garb and yachting cap."

In 1872 he published A New Map of the River Thames, illustrated with his own photographs — one of the first ever practical guides for the growing army of Victorian pleasure-boaters. It ran into edition after edition.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society for his mapping of the Thames, and his surviving glass-plate negatives — held at Historic England — are still one of the most important visual records of the river we have.

A blue plaque marks his house, Rivera (393 Cowley Road, Oxford) — a building he renamed after his beloved river. It was unveiled on 10 January 2008.

Image - Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Scheme

29/09/2026

CAVERSHAM LOCK CLOSED.

Caversham Lock is closed for emergency repairs until further notice. Further information will be provided as soon as possible.

Time updated:
3:13pm, 29 September 2026.

Just checked EA site at 5pm on Saturday 2nd October - STILL CLOSED

28/09/2026

Historic Boats of the Non-Tidal Thames

The Thames Skiff: Victorian Rowing for Everyone

In late Victorian times boating became hugely popular, and the clinker-built Thames skiff was the boat of choice. It was light, graceful and made of varnished wood, and it could be rowed by one, two or more people, often with passengers lounging on cushions in the stern.

Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat" (1889) followed a camping skiff from Kingston to Oxford. In a camping skiff, canvas covers stretched over hoops turned the boat into a floating tent at night. The book made the upper river famous.

On a summer Sunday, locks such as Boulter's at Maidenhead would be packed from bank to bank with skiffs, punts and canoes. Edward Gregory's painting "Boulter's Lock, Sunday Afternoon" (1895) shows the
scene beautifully.

Skiffs are still raced and rowed today, including during Swan Upping, keeping a real Victorian tradition alive.

Voice of the Thames (River Thames Society)

Image: Colin Smith Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.0

Painting: Boiulter’s Lock Sunday Afternoon – Edward John Gregory (1850-1909)

27/09/2026

Blue Plaques of the River

3 — Kenneth Grahame, Pangbourne and Cookham Dean

Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932) — the man who turned our river into a fairytale

If any writer belongs to the middle Thames, it is Kenneth Grahame. As a small boy, orphaned of his mother, he was sent to live with his grandmother at The Mount, Cookham Dean, where he spent what he later called "an idyllic childhood exploring the banks of the Thames." Half a century later he sat down and turned those memories into The Wind in the Willows — Ratty and Mole messing about in boats on a river that is unmistakably ours.

Grahame retired in 1908 to Church Cottage, Pangbourne (where he died in 1932) and, before that, spent his last productive writing years at Boham's House, Westbrook Street, Blewbury, a few miles from the Thames. A blue plaque on Boham's House was unveiled on 25 May 2012 by his biographer, Prof. Peter Hunt, together with the children of Blewbury Endowed School. English Heritage put a plaque on his London home in 1959.

Image – Oxford Blue Plaques Scheme

25/09/2026

COOKHAM LOCK - restricted hours for traversing.

Navigation on the River Thames may be restricted or closed in certain areas. Find out where and when these restrictions and closures are.

23/09/2026

A small Thames question for today…

We all have a stretch of river that feels particularly ours — perhaps where you learned to row, took family walks, kept a boat, watched a regatta, or simply stopped for a cup of tea.

If you could choose one place on the non-tidal Thames to revisit this week, where would it be — and what makes it special?

A favourite reach, lock, bridge, island, pub, towpath or village is welcome. We would love to hear your Thames memories.

Voice of the Thames — River Thames Society

Photo - Jim Donahue Images