Thames
River
The Thames in London
Country	England
Counties	Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Surrey, Essex, Kent
Metropolitan County	Greater London
Towns/Cities	Cricklade, Lechlade, Oxford, Abingdon, Wallingford, Reading, Henley on Thames, Marlow, Maidenhead, Windsor, Staines-upon-Thames, Walton on Thames, Kingston upon Thames, Teddington, London, Dartford
Source
- location	Thames Head, Gloucestershire, UK
- elevation	110 m (361 ft)
- coordinates	51°41′39″N 2°01′47″W / 51.694262°N 2.029724°W / 51.694262; -2.029724
Mouth	Thames Estuary, North Sea
- location	Southend-on-Sea, Essex, UK
- elevation	0 m (0 ft)
- coordinates	51°29′56″N 0°36′31″E / 51.4989°N 0.6087°E / 51.4989; 0.6087
Length	346 km (215 mi)
Basin	12,935 km2 (4,994 sq mi)
Discharge	for London
- average	65.8 m3/s (2,324 cu ft/s)
Discharge elsewhere (average)
- entering Oxford	17.6 m3/s (622 cu ft/s)
- leaving Oxford	24.8 m3/s (876 cu ft/s)
- Reading	39.7 m3/s (1,402 cu ft/s)
- Windsor	59.3 m3/s (2,094 cu ft/s)

[ v t e ] Thames route map

Legend 235.84 Source of the Thames 235.06 Thames Head Bridge (A433 - Fosse Way) 233.97 A429 Bridge 216.81 A419 Bridge, Cricklade 200.96 Limit of navigation 200.83 River Coln 199.72 Ha'penny Bridge, Lechlade (A361) 199.65 St John's LockLast lock on the river; 71 m ASL 173.18 River Windrush 159.34 River Evenlode 155.46 Thames (Oxford By-pass) Bridge (A34) 148.88 River Cherwell, Oxford 146.83 Isis Bridge - Oxford Ring Road (A423) 143.34 River Thame, Dorchester-on-Thames 136.47 Abingdon Bridge, Abingdon (A415) 131.02 Appleford Railway Bridge (GWR to Birmingham) 115.41 Wallingford Bridge, Wallingford 110.10 Moulsford Railway Bridge (GWR to Bristol) 105.94 Goring Bridge (GWR to Bristol) 89.74 Caversham Bridge, Reading (A4155) 87.41 River Kennet & Kennet and Avon Canal 79.24 River Loddon, Wargrave 73.72 Henley Bridge (A4130) 60.04 Marlow By-pass Bridge, Marlow, (A404) 49.10 Maidenhead Railway Bridge (GWR to Bristol) 46.67 M4 Bridge 38.91 Windsor Bridge, Eton & Windsor 28.46 River Colne (Upper mouth) 28.45 Runnymede Bridges, Staines-upon-Thames (A30 & M25) 27.70 River Colne (Lower mouth), Staines-upon-Thames 21.34 M3 Bridge, Chertsey 11.08 River Wey and Wey Navigation, Weybridge 7.82 Hampton Court Bridge (A309) 7.45 River Mole, Hampton Court 0.64 Teddington Lock, Weir & BridgesTidal limit 0.0 Teddington Boundary Stone (PLA / DoE) -4.52 Twickenham Bridge (A316) -4.80 Richmond Lock and Footbridge -7.71 River Brent/Grand Union Canal -8.80 Kew Bridge, South Circular Road (A205) -10.86 Chiswick Bridge (A316) -17.84 Putney Bridge, (A219) -18.95 River Wandle -20.84 Battersea Railway Bridge -21.88 Battersea Bridge, (A3220) -23.66 Victoria Railway Bridge -25.24 Vauxhall Bridge (A202) -27.35 Charing Cross Bridge & Station (South Coast) -28.63 Blackfriars R'way bridge/station (Thameslink) -29.80 London Bridge (A3)8.7 m headway -30.69 Tower Bridge (A100)42.5  m headway -33.65 Regent's Canal -40.08 Blackwall Tunnel (A102) -41.06 Bow Creek, River Lea -43.51 Thames Barrier x20px x20px -45.24 Woolwich Ferry (Links A406 and A205 ) -48.55 Barking Creek/River Roding -59.25 River Darent / Dartford Creek -61.96 Dartford Tunnel (A282 (N)) -62.04 Queen Elizabeth II Bridge (A282 (S))(54.1 m) -64.76 Channel Tunnel Rail Link -69.66 Tilbury Docks -87.72 Holehaven Creek -99.42 Southend Pier, Southend-on-Sea -103.9 River Medway and Sheerness Docks -110.6 Foulness Pt/Warden Pt(PLA limit) Thames Estuary leading into the North Sea Note Distances are in kilometres. Waterway distances are shown, not footpath distances. When using imperial units, it is normal to use statute miles (1609 m) upstream of Teddington and sea miles (1853.3 m/6080 ft) downstream from Teddington.

The River Thames (ⁱ/ˈtɛmz/ TEMZ) flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford, Reading, Henley-on-Thames, Windsor, Kingston upon Thames and Richmond.

The river gives its name to several geographical and political entities including the Thames Valley, a region of England around the river between Oxford and west London, the Thames Gateway, the area centred on the tidal Thames, and the Thames Estuary to the east of London. The tidal section of the river is covered in more detail under Tideway.

Summary[link]

With a total length of 346 km (215 mi), the Thames is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. It rises at Thames Head in Gloucestershire, and flows into the North Sea at the Thames Estuary. It has a special significance in flowing through London, the capital of the United Kingdom, although London only includes a short part of its course. The river is tidal in London with a rise and fall of 7 metres (23 ft); tides reaching up to Teddington Lock. The catchment area covers a large part of South Eastern and Western England and the river is fed by over 20 tributaries. The river contains over 80 islands, and having both seawater and freshwater stretches, it supports a variety of wildlife.

The river has supported human activity from its source to its mouth for thousands of years providing habitation, water power, food and drink. It has also acted as a major highway through the Port of London for international trade, internally along its length and by its connection to the British canal system. 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”. It has been a physical and political boundary over the centuries and generated a range of river crossings. More recently, the river has become a major leisure area supporting tourism and pleasure outings as well as the sports of rowing, sailing, skiffing, kayaking, and punting. The river has had a special appeal to writers, artists, musicians and film-makers and is well-represented in the arts. It is still the subject of various debates about its course, nomenclature and history.

Etymology[link]

The Thames, from Middle English Temese, is derived from the Celtic name for the river, Tamesas (from *tamēssa),^[1] recorded in Latin as Tamesis and yielding modern Welsh Tafwys "Thames". The name probably meant "dark" and can be compared to other cognates such as Sanskrit tamas, Irish teimheal and Welsh tywyll "darkness" (Proto-Celtic *temeslos) and Middle Irish teimen "dark grey",^[1] though Richard Coates^[2] mentions other theories: Kenneth Jackson's^[3] that it is non Indo-European (and of unknown meaning), and Peter Kitson's^[4] that it is IE but pre-Celtic, and has a name indicating muddiness from a root *tã-, 'melt'.

Statue of Old Father Thames by Raffaelle Monti at St John's Lock

Note also other river names such as Teme, Tavy, Teviot, Teifi (cf Tafwys).

The river's name has always been pronounced with a simple t /t/; the Middle English spelling was typically Temese and Celtic Tamesis. The th spelling lends an air of Greek to the name and was added during the Renaissance, possibly to reflect or support a claim that the name was derived from River Thyamis in the Epirus region of Greece, whence early Celtic tribes were erroneously thought to have migrated.

Indirect evidence for the antiquity of the name 'Thames' is provided by a Roman potsherd found at Oxford, bearing the inscription Tamesubugus fecit (Tamesubugus made this). It is believed that Tamesubugus' name was derived from that of the river.^[5]

The Thames through Oxford is sometimes given the name the River Isis. Historically, and especially in Victorian times, gazetteers and cartographers insisted that the entire river was correctly named the River Isis from its source down to Dorchester-on-Thames, and that only from this point, where the river meets the River Thame and becomes the "Thame-isis" (supposedly subsequently abbreviated to Thames) should it be so called. Ordnance Survey maps still label the Thames as "River Thames or Isis" down to Dorchester. However since the early 20th century this distinction has been lost in common usage even in Oxford, and some historians suggest the name Isis—although possibly named after the Egyptian goddess of that name—is nothing more than a contraction of Tamesis, the Latin (or pre-Roman Celtic) name for the Thames.

Richard Coates suggests that while the river was as a whole called the Thames, part of it, where it was too wide to ford, was called *(p)lowonida. This gave the name to a settlement on its banks, which became known as Londinium, from the Indo-European roots *pleu- "flow" and *-nedi "river" meaning something like the flowing river or the wide flowing unfordable river.^[2]

Another theory of the origin of the name was published in 2009.^[6] Many ancient watery words and river names begin with a vowel, especially A. Examples include Latin amnis (big stream) and aqua, rivers Avon, Amber, Amstel, etc. Among those many rivers is the one variously called Ems (German), Emme (Switzerland), Eems, Ames (Dutch) or Amnis (Latin). The latter rivers are characterised by a big estuary or water body. From around its mouth people migrated up the Thames estuary, as early Anglo-Saxon settlers. People also left that area in the period of sea level rise before 100 BC and known as the Dunkirk 1B transgression, about when Belgae arrived in Britain according to Julius Caesar. In their region of origin they would have spoken a Germanic language, in which a locative preposition 'te', ancestral to English "at", could have supplied an initial T to 'eems' creating Temse or Temese. If so, Thames originally meant ‘at the place where the estuary begins’ and would originally not refer to the river itself but to the place where people settled (actually: London) just upstream of the dangerous tidal zone. There, travellers could be ferried to the other side. Therefore some travellers began to speak about the 'Tems' ("at the eems") as a specific (ferry-) section of the river, extending later the name to the whole river.

Tamese was referred to as a place, not a river in the Ravenna Cosmography.

For merchant seamen, the Thames has long been just 'the London River'. Londoners often refer to it simply as 'the river', in expressions such as 'south of the river'.^[7]

Physical and natural aspects[link]

Course of the river[link]