The Environment Agency uses the Thames Barrier to manage surge tide water levels. When the barrier is closed against high tides, there is a difference of up to 2 metres (m) either side of the barrier. To accommodate this difference in water levels, the flood defences downstream of the Thames Barrier are up to 2m higher than those upstream. Several central London road bridges were built in the 19th century, most conspicuously Tower Bridge, the only Bascule bridge on the river, designed to allow ocean-going ships to pass beneath it. The most recent road bridges are the bypasses at Isis Bridge and Marlow By-pass Bridge and the motorway bridges, most notably the two on the M25 route: Queen Elizabeth II Bridge and M25 Runnymede Bridge. River Ecology". Reconnecting London with the River Thames. Tideway. Archived from the original on 18 February 2018. Dix, Frank L. (1985). Royal river highway: a history of the passenger boats and services on the River Thames. Newton Abbot; North Pomfret, Vt.: David & Charles. ISBN 978-0-7153-8005-5. OCLC 14355016. Source of the River Thames moves fives miles for first time in its history". Gloucestershire Live. 5 August 2022 . Retrieved 12 August 2022.

Environment Agency - 1947 floods Thames". Archived from the original on 6 December 2007 . Retrieved 19 April 2011. Oliver, Stuart (June 2010). "Navigability and the improvement of the river Thames, 1605–1815". Geographical Journal. 176 (2): 164–77. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4959.2010.00354.x. ISSN 0016-7398.

The first commission concerned with the management of the river was the Oxford-Burcot Commission, formed in 1605 to make the river navigable between Burcot and Oxford. Until the middle of the Victorian era malaria was commonplace beside the River Thames, even in London, and was frequently lethal. Some cases continued to occur into the early 20th century. Draining of the marshes had to do with its eradication, but the causes are complex and unclear.

Lamdin-Whymark, H. (2001). "Neolithic activity on the floodplain of the River Thames at Dorney". Lithics. 22. Science-fiction novels make liberal use of a futuristic Thames. The utopian News from Nowhere by William Morris is mainly the account of a journey through the Thames valley in a socialist future. The Thames features in H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. The Thames also features prominently in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, as a communications artery for the waterborne Gyptian people of Oxford and the Fens, and as a prominent setting for his novel La Belle Sauvage. Thames and Waterways". London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham. Archived from the original on 15 April 2015 . Retrieved 17 April 2015. As early as the 1300s, the Thames was used to dispose of waste matter produced in the city of London, thus turning the river into an open sewer. In 1357, Edward III described the state of the river in a proclamation: "... dung and other filth had accumulated in divers places upon the banks of the river with ... fumes and other abominable stenches arising therefrom." [53]

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The head of Sea Reach–the Kent / Essex Strait–south of Canvey Island on the northern ( Essex) shore. This reach and all more eastern zones (a mixture of channels and shoals) have a width that contributes to the large, archetypal, internal but mainly submerged sandbanks. These come from a combination of silt-borne fluvial and tidal scouring and deposition ( silting). In 1751 the Thames Navigation Commission was formed to manage the whole non-tidal river above Staines. The City of London long claimed responsibility for the tidal river. A long running dispute between the City and the Crown over ownership of the river was not settled until 1857, when the Thames Conservancy was formed to manage the river from Staines downstream. In 1866 the functions of the Thames Navigation Commission were transferred to the Thames Conservancy, which thus had responsibility for the whole river.

Throughout early modern history the population of London and its industries discarded their rubbish in the river. [56] This included the waste from slaughterhouses, fish markets, and tanneries. The buildup in household cesspools could sometimes overflow, especially when it rained, and was washed into London's streets and sewers which eventually led to the Thames. [57] In the late 18th and 19th centuries people known as mudlarks scavenged in the river mud for a meagre living. In the early 1980s a pioneering flood control device, the Thames Barrier, was opened. It is closed to tides several times a year to prevent water damage to London's low-lying areas upstream (the 1928 Thames flood demonstrated the severity of this type of event).

Ordnance Survey map". English Heritage. Archived from the original on 24 April 2012 . Retrieved 11 December 2018. The most sedimentary-hosted Hg pollution in the Thames estuary occurs in the central London area between Vauxhall Bridge and Woolwich. [90] The majority of sediment cores show a clear decrease in Hg concentrations close to the surface, which is attributed to an overall reduction in polluting activities as well as improved effectiveness of recent environmental legalisation and river management (e.g. Oslo-Paris convention). Two rowing events on the River Thames are traditionally part of the wider English sporting calendar: History of the major rivers of southern Britain during the Tertiary". Quaternary Palaeoenvironments Group. 2006. Archived from the original on 11 October 2007 . Retrieved 28 November 2007. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, first published in 1889, is a humorous account of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford. The book was intended initially to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history of places along the route, but the humorous elements eventually took over. The landscape and features of the Thames as described by Jerome are virtually unchanged, and the book's enduring popularity has meant that it has never been out of print since it was first published.