Fry's Island, Reading (sometimes known as De Montfort Island)
Pipers Island, Reading
Lock islands
It should be noted that the construction of almost all locks on the Thames involve one or more artificial lock islands separating the lock from the weirs. Depending on the circumstances of the lock, these may have been created by building an artificial island in the river, or by digging an artificial canal to contain the lock and turning the land between that and the river into an island. In many cases, the lock island contains the lock keepers house and can be accessed across the lock gates. Such lock islands are not generally listed above, but all Thames locks are listed in Locks on the River Thames.
The Thames (pronounced "temz") is a river flowing through southern England and connecting London with the sea.
By the 18th century, the Thames was one of the world's busiest waterways, as London became the centre of the vast, mercantile British Empire.
In return, the Thames has undergone a massive clean-up from the filthy days of the late 19th and early- to mid-20th centuries, and life has returned to its formerly dead waters.
The river itself rises in Gloucestershire, traditionally forming the county boundary, firstly between Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, between Berkshire on the south bank and Oxfordshire on the north, between Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, between Berkshire and Surrey, between Surrey and Middlesex and between Essex and Kent.
The serenity of the contemporary Thames is contrasted with the savagery of the Congo River, and with the wilderness of the Thames as it would have appeared to a Roman soldier posted to Brittania two thousand years before.
The Thames is the historic heartland of rowing in the United Kingdom.
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