Tower Bridge

TOWER BRIDGE

Tower Bridge is one of the most iconic buildings in London and it is associated with the Untied Kingdom’s capital city by people who have never come close to setting foot on England’s shores. It is a much loved landmark, in part because of its ‘fairyland appearance,’ which has been copied in amusement parks from ‘Legoland’ in Windsor, to the ‘Beijing World Park’ in China. Delicate scale models have even been constructed from thousands of matchsticks by jailed drugs barons in Bogotá.

When Tower Bridge was first completed, the critics of the day were scathing and one said, “a more absurd structure than the Tower Bridge was never thrown across a strategic river,” never realising that its very absurdity would endear the bridge to many millions, across the globe and down the generations. Indeed, the initial widespread disapproval evaporated and Victorian hearts and minds soon warmed to the bridge. Tower Bridge is not as old as is commonly thought, particularly by tourists visiting London. It is actually one of the last major buildings of the Victorian era.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the traffic congestion over London Bridge could be ignored no longer and another bridge to cross the Thames, situated to the east, had to be constructed. Such a bridge had been needed for centuries but there was an enduring problem. Tall ships needed access to the world’s largest port, The Pool of London, which lay to the immediate east of London Bridge. By the late nineteenth century, technology and funding allowed for the construction of a bridge with moveable parts large enough to allow the safe passage of merchant vessels into the port.

In 1876, a design competition was opened to public competition for the new crossing. Over fifty design entries were submitted from across the four compass points of the British Isles. Eyebrows were raised when the eventual winner of the competition turned out to be one of the competition judges. The bridge was designed by Sir Horace Jones and built by Sir John Wolfe Barry, together with four hundred and thirty-two construction workers. The bridge took eight years to build and opened in 1894. Costing ninety-seven million pounds in today’s money, the internal structure is metal, using eleven thousand tons of steel. Clad in Cornish Granite and Portland Stone, the Victorian Gothic design was to compliment the neighbouring landmark, The Tower of London.

The most notable feature of the bridge is the two bascules, each weighing a thousand tons, that raise up to enable the river traffic to enter and leave The Pool of London. The bascules, deriving from the French for ‘see-saw,’ were operated by hydraulics, using steam to power the enormous pumping engines. The energy created was stored in six accumulators, so as soon as power was required to lift, it was always available. The accumulators supplied the driving engines that powered the bascules, taking only about a minute to raise to their maximum angle of eighty-six degrees. It was the largest and most sophisticated bascule bridge of the era.  Today, the bascules are still operated by hydraulic power, but steam was abandoned in the 1970’s and they are now driven by oil and electricity.

Navigational control consisted of red semaphore signals in daytime and coloured lights at night, to indicate whether the bridge was open. A tug was always on standby in the rare event of ships getting jammed in the middle. Today, twenty-four hours notice must be given before the bridge will be raised. It is now common for vessels to provide many weeks of notice. A ship entering or leaving gives a radio signal eight minutes away and the bridge master will prepare to open the bascules. The vessel needs to be thirty feet or taller to require opening and only the very largest require the bascules to lift for the full ninety seconds to reach their fullest extent. Since the introduction of electronics, the bridge has failed to open occasionally, which was never the case under steam.

The walkways at the top were designed with a duel purpose, primarily as a strengthening device to prevent the two towers pulling away from each when the bascules lift and secondly, to allow the uninterrupted flow of foot passage across the water when the bridge was raised. However, most people preferred to wait at street level for the road to drop, rather than climb up and down the hundreds of stairs. The walkways soon became a popular haven for prostitutes and pickpockets, leading to their closure to the public in 1910. 

Over its history, Tower Bridge has had a number of notable incidents. On a chilly December 30^th in 1952, the customary bell was not sounded that warned of an imminent bridge lift, leading to a crowded number seventy-eight bus being nearly half-way across Tower Bridge when it began to raise up. The driver slammed his foot on the accelerator and the vehicle crossed over a three feet gap, smashing its chassis as it landed on the other side. The following decade, Flight Lieutenant Alan Pollock flew past Big Ben and then beneath Tower Bridge in protest that senior staff were not going to celebrate the R.A.F.’s fiftieth anniversary. The service bigwigs had a sense of humour failure and it proved to be his final flight in uniform. In the late 1990’s, Bill Clinton’s presidential motorcade was unexpectedly divided in two by the bridge raising, with panicking security officials stranded on one side and Clinton on the other. The occurrence was a reminder that on Tower Bridge, shipping always takes precedence over vehicular traffic.

Tower Bridge is crossed by over forty thousand motorists, cyclists and pedestrians every day. Its popularity as a crossing point is partly to do with the bridge being just outside of the Congestion Zone, inside of which motorists are charged to drive. Currently, Tower Bridge is having all the paint stripped in a four million pound programme that is estimated to be completed by 2012. It is being repainted with twenty-two thousand litres of the same red, white and blue, which has adorned the metalwork since the Queen’s Jubilee in 1977, prior to which, the bridge was chocolate brown in colour.

The re-painting programme work will at times affect those visiting the Tower Bridge Exhibition, located inside the bridge. Allow at least an hour and a half to see The Tower Bridge Exhibition, where access to the high level walkways offers stunning views of London. The original Victorian pumping engines, accumulators and boilers are open for display. The Bridge Master’s dining room and the walkways may be hired for corporate hospitality, wedding receptions and private parties.

Tower Bridge

Tower Bridge Road

London SE1 2UP

Where to view Tower Bridge and video clips of London

London in motion has some of the best London Stock Footage and London Library Footage with moving clips of many of the above mentioned places to see, are available to browse through by simply visiting the ‘Tower Bridge’ category of this website.  New additions of London video clips are being frequently uploaded and further categories will be appearing over the coming months.