Textiles and cordage from the seventeenth century English shipwreck of the London

The London was an English Second Rate ship of the line built in 1656. The ship served in both the Cromwellian and Restoration navies and formed part of the fleet that brought the future King Charles II back from exile in the Netherlands. The London sank in the Thames estuary in 1665 whilst preparing for the second Anglo-Dutch war. The site was re-discovered in 2005 and was designated in 2008 under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973. A program of archaeological excavation, geophysical survey, and finds assessments was undertaken on the site of the London in 2014–2015. Among the hundreds of finds are textile fragments, numerous elements of rigging, and other fibrous materials, which constitute an important collection of closely dated artefacts from a context with a well documented history. The paper presents the results of the conservation and systematic structural and fibre analysis carried out on this material. The finds are contextualized within the broader 17th century developments in textile consumption.