‘It turned out, however, that the swimfeeder was not holding its ground at all, but was instead being held fast by a mid-river snag which soon became apparent when I began trying to retrieve it. I pulled for a break, miraculously the line held and whatever it was I was stuck on, began to shift‘
“This will do”, my uncle announced sharply as we approached the Thames at Hampton Court Bridge. Four of us stood on the ‘NO FISHING’ sign stencilled on the concrete bank, looking out across a conveyor-belt of fast-moving, brown water under a leaden sky. It was the final stop after a morning of him driving us three boys around to all of his childhood fishing haunts from forty years previous, trying to find somewhere to fish. The trip down memory lane hadn’t gone to plan; the river Mole was way out of its banks and Burgh Heath was not as he remembered, with a quick plumb of the pond revealing it to be shallower than a paddling pool. Then, lastly, Blue Gates pond in Ewell had been replaced by a housing estate which looked like it had been there for years. So off to the Thames it was…
Regardless of the dire conditions, my two older brothers and I tackled up with great enthusiasm next to the bridge. It was the early 1990s and fishing trips were a rare treat due to any river or pond being way out of our reach for us to explore alone and an over-worked dad who had little in the way of free time. Fishing was therefore restricted to a two-week holiday every year and on the rare occasions when our uncle would visit from Swanage. These visits always seemed to be perfectly timed with terrible fishing conditions, especially for a ten-year-old, and we would inevitably end up going home fishless.
On that day, however, I got my six-foot, telescopic, maroon coloured spinning-rod out of its plastic case, and attached my newly acquired Mitchell 240 with added excitement because we were employing a new technique my uncle referred to as ledgering. My oldest brother seemed to already know a lot about this ledgering and told me that the further out you get the bait, the bigger the fish. Both of my brothers were on their umpteenth cast before I finally finished the complex process of tackling up. And, once I was ready, despite using the heaviest leads my oldest brother reluctantly shared out, every cast ended up swinging straight back into the bank with the current.
“Here, try this, laddie” my uncle said, revealing a plastic tube with holes in it. “It’s a swimfeeder” remarked my oldest brother with a wise, authoritative tone. So, after a bit more fiddling about, I performed a heroic overhead cast, firing the great weight of a large swimfeeder bursting with maggots right out, far in front and under one of the bridge arches. Somehow it managed to hold its ground in the middle of the river.
There I stood on the concrete bank, grasping my poor little spinning rod which was now bent double by the force of the unrelenting current, with so much misguided expectation and never a chance of ever getting a bite.
It turned out, however, that the swimfeeder was not holding its ground at all, but was instead being held fast by a mid-river snag which soon became apparent when I began trying to retrieve it. I pulled for a break, miraculously the line held and whatever it was I was stuck on, began to shift. It gathered momentum in the current and a wave of relief came over me as I started winding it back in, thankful I wouldn’t have to go through another long-winded hook-tying session. A great wodge of debris and mud eventually surfaced, which I proceeded to try and knock off the end of my line back into the river, so I didn’t have to grapple with it on the river bank. But my uncle, who had spent the best part of the 1970s and 80s diving in the English Channel on wrecks, was rather used to seeing long lost treasure emerge from the depths. He grabbed the lump of mud off the end of my line and began cleaning it up.
There on the bank it was revealed: a rather waterlogged, silted-up purse and inside – believe it or not – were four, soaking wet, very tatty but salvageable ten pound notes, plus a handful of loose change. A great roar erupted and I danced about on the bank like a drunken punter at the Derby. For a kid in the 1990s, this was well over a year’s pocket money and I felt like I had hit the jackpot!But then my uncle spoiled my party and suggested I split it three ways with my two rather bewildered looking siblings. On the drive back home, with the notes fluttering under the blow heaters in the rusty old Escort, I carefully thought long and hard about how much my brothers should receive. Taking into account my uncle’s very generous suggestion, I settled on a fiver each. The very next week I went down to my local bank with my mum and, with little fuss, exchanged the notes along with two crisp five pound notes that I grudgingly gave to my brothers.
So here’s the bit that still cracks my uncle up (thirty-five years later)…I lost the lot! The remaining thirty quid fell out my pocket on a walk back from the shops on a Saturday afternoon sometime afterwards. The person who found it could never have guessed the journey that money had taken to end up lying there on the pavement – not in a million years.
I hadn’t given that event any thought for a long time, until this Christmas when my uncle brought it back up. He sees it from the perspective of the greedy boy who wouldn’t share and got his just desserts. I like to think that whoever found that money lost it soon after as well, and so the journey of that money continued in being lost and found time and time again, in hopefully more and more elaborate ways. Who knows – maybe I’ll cross paths with it again one day.
And if you happen to be that person who lost a purse off Hampton Court Bridge at some time in the early 1990s, then please feel free to get in touch with my two brothers, because they both still have a fiver each with your name on it.
Writing Edward Barrett, Image Phillip Tanner Dorset, March 2026
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