Don't forget about the Richmond Lock and Weird draw-off!

Both Tedd Lock and I (some 20 odd years ago) would always head into the weir on the falling tide and hoover up all of the lost fishing tackle and sell it from the chandlery by the bridge.

My daughter (not some 20 odd years ago) has found some lovely old bottles that must be several decades old and live in our garden.
 
Here's a fascinating account from WWII, when a Jerry bomb dropped on the weir island, resulting in the Thames emptying between Molesey and Teddington..
Full story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/25/a4615625.shtml

I awoke when he arrived home in the morning to hear him tell the family in amazed tones: “the river’s gone!” We got up to cross the green outside our front windows and stared in amazement. The Thames had disappeared. There was nothing but a tiny rivulet trickling between its broad banks.
Off came my socks and shoes and I walked across its bed, some 70 yards, to the Middlesex side. I was soon joined by scores of other sightseers, instant beachcombers of treasures at our feet. There were numerous handbags and handfuls of cash which had fallen, over the years, out of skiffs, rowing boats and punts which recreationally used the river.
Revolvers and rifles were also recovered, and beneath Kingston Bridge an empty safe, believed to have been dumped after a successful robbery. I came home with a typewriter, much to my parents’ disgust. Apart from its soiled and rusted condition none of us could type.
From Hampton Court Lock to Richmond, moored boats had been toppled and damaged, and though the daily tides rose and fell below Teddington Lock, sections upriver remained dry for weeks before the sluices were rebuilt. The bomb had destroyed part of the central island. The river was no longer navigable for wartime barges carrying coal and materials up to Oxford.
Petrol rationing had turned the Thames into a major highway and Vospers boatyards upriver at Walton, where they built motor torpedo boats (MTBs), could not dispatch their craft to the Royal Navy until the river was brought back to life. Not a word of the Thames’s humiliation ever appeared in the newspapers. Wartime security, denying the enemy satisfaction of publicity, saw to that.
 
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