Offerings to the gods could also be personal possessions. Many artefacts have been found in such watery contexts as the Thames, the Walbrook stream and wells and may be ritual deposits. From the Walbrook, an abundance of tools may have been casual losses by workmen but ornaments of every kind are thought to be votive evidence as many of them are bent, broken or rendered useless.
The section of the Walbrook between modern-day Cannon Street and the Bank of England has the largest accumulation of such deposits and combined with the presence of shrines on the banks of the stream in this area makes this an area of deep religious significance to Roman Londoners (see also Ritual practices).
Figures of deities were thrown into rivers, often after mutilation, and from the Thames near London Bridge, a number of bronze figurines may have been deliberately deposited in the water. The building of the Roman bridge, too, induced concentrated losses in the Thames at that point. They included thousands of coins, the commonest of small votive offerings.
There is also a darker side to the superstitious beliefs and votive offerings of Roman Londoners. Curses incised on lead tablets were direct detailed requests to deities; either reviling persons specified by name or demanding the recovery of stolen property, or else seeking revenge for an injury done.
Such tablets are most common in Britain, indicating it was something of a native phenomenon. They were either nailed to wooden posts at those shrines that may have stood on the banks of the Walbrook or they were folded or rolled into cylinders before being dropped into the sacred waters. Examples have been found from both the Walbrook and Thames.
One from the Walbrook stream at Princes Street, was fixed by a single nail and has the same inscription scratched on both sides cursing two men, while a longer curse found on the Thames foreshore is also written on both sides and calls upon the god Metunus, possibly Neptune, to avenge the writer on several men.