The Ferryman's Seat

The lowdown

Set into a wall on Bankside, beside a busy riverside walk, is a small worn stone seat that thousands pass without a second glance. This is the Ferryman's Seat, where the watermen who once ferried Londoners back and forth across the Thames would rest between fares, in the days before the bridges when boats were the way to cross the river.

Bankside was the city's pleasure quarter of theatres, taverns and worse, and the ferrymen did a roaring trade carrying revellers over from the City. Polished smooth by centuries of use, the seat is free to find, a humble and direct link to the army of boatmen who were once London's taxi drivers.