London Bridge

LONDON BRIDGE

In early September of 2010, musician Nick Franglen made London Bridge create its own unique musical sound. Over an uninterrupted twenty-four time period, Nick Franglen positioned a theremin beneath an arch on the south side of the bridge. The instrument created washes of sound, partly formed by pedestrian traffic that changed in density throughout the day until it almost ceased in the early hours.  A hidden light beam on the bridge registered each passing person and it momentarily muted the gentle ululations of the theremin. A filmed loop of the performance, titled 'Hymn To London Bridge' will be shown during the Thames Festival on the eleventh and twelfth of September 2010. Those walking over the bridge were as oblivious to their participation in this project as they likely were to much of London Bridge's long and extraordinary history.
A river crossing at London Bridge dates back to Roman times, making it the oldest bridge over the Thames in London and one that has rebuilt time and again over its two thousand year old history. It is forty miles from the open sea. Previous bridges have either sunk into the Thames mud, destroyed by a tornado, pulled down by warriors, partly burned down by rioting peasants and even sold and transported stone by stone to a location on the other side of the world. Every time the bridge has been rebuilt, as down the centuries it was always known that London Bridge is perhaps the most important single factor contributing to the existence of London itself.

A wooden bridge across the Thames existed by about half way through the first century AD and it was probably a military pontoon bridge. The Roman trading settlement of Londinium was built alongside their bridge on the north bank. There are several theories as to why the Romans bridged the Thames here. It is known that the river at that time was significantly wider and shallower at this point. It may have been tidal to that point only, or there may have been a usefully positioned midstream islet. What is certain, is that the bridge was where two Roman roads met, the great highways of Watling Street and Stane Street. After the Romans left, it is thought that the bridge fell into disrepair.

In the Saxon period, the bridge was repaired and formed a political boundary between the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex. The Norwegian Prince Olaf pulled down the bridge in 1014, giving rise to the ancient and still popular rhyme, “London Bridge is falling down” and a new bridge was built by 1016. From this time the bridge’s history is well documented, with the Norman’s building their own bridge after the Conquest, only for it to be destroyed by the destructive London tornado of 1091. It was rebuilt by slaves belonging to William II, then destroyed yet again by fire in 1136. The replacement was not deemed suitably permanent and construction of the strongest and largest bridge yet, began in 1176 and was only finished in 1209 during reign of King John.

Of the many London bridges, it is this, the 1209 bridge that is the most famous. Numerous paintings and drawings provide a useful insight as to how the bridge looked and remarkably, had the bridge survived a few years longer, it would have been recorded on an early form of photography. King John licensed the building of wooden houses on the bridge to bring in useful revenue for the bridge’s upkeep. There were soon many shops at street level with the storekeepers living above. Some buildings were up to seven stories high, with the top floors connected to the buildings on the opposite side, creating a tunnelled effect. The roadway between the houses became very congested and sometimes it took an hour to pass over, so many still chose ferrymen as they offered the quickest crossing.

In the centre of the bridge stood St Thomas’s Chapel, complete with a river level entrance for those arriving to worship by boat. Curiously, the ferrymen usually avoided going under the bridge itself. The bridge had nineteen arches, which  restricted the water flow, acted as a barrage. Ferocious rapids formed between piers and many drowned whilst attempting to navigate between them. There was sometimes a two metre difference to the water level on either side. The barrage effect made the river more susceptible to freezing over in winter, leading to the popular frost fairs.

At each end stood a fortified gate with spikes, on which the heads of traitors were exposed. William Wallace’s head was the first to be displayed in 1305, starting a tradition that was to last for three hundred and fifty-five years. The heads of Thomas Moore and Thomas Cromwell also at one time adorned the gates. The bridge was considered a safe place to live because the gates were shut at curfew. The inhabitants were healthier too, the river air gave them some protection from pestilence. People continued to live on the bridge all the way through until 1758 when, after a fire, the surviving buildings were demolished for ever. Fires destroyed the buildings on the bridge many times but never the bridge itself. London Bridge was much loved and it was not uncommon for widows to leave their wedding rings towards its upkeep. Records survive that in the year 1300, one Johanna Bytheweye left twelve pence in her will towards the upkeep of London Bridge.  Surviving from 1209 until its demolition in 1830, London Bridge served the citizens of London for over five centuries.

It had been the lone crossing over the Thames in London until 1729, when in that year Putney Bridge opened. By the turn of the nineteenth century, it was clear a new bridge was needed. Work began in 1825 to designs by the engineer John Rennie. The new bridge was positioned one hundred feet upstream, allowing the old bridge to keep open during construction. Rennie’s bridge was opened in 1831 by King William IV, with finishing touches only completed the following year. New approach roads cost three times the sum of the bridge itself, with the entire project costing a whopping two and a half million pounds, which is almost two hundred million today. HMS Beagle, the ship used by Charles Darwin on his voyage of discovery, was the first ship to pass beneath the new London Bridge.

After widening work in 1901, the increased weight of traffic on the bridge started it to slowly but steadily sink into the mud of the Thames basin. By the nineteen sixties, 20,000 vehicles and 110,000 foot passengers were crossing it daily which exasperated the situation. The bridge had survived less than one hundred and fifty years. John Rennie’s bridge was dismantled in 1967 with the novel idea of selling it. The 10,276 numbered granite blocks were reconstructed and it now stands in Lake Havasu City, in Arizona, crossing the diverted waters from the Colorado River. Rumours that they thought they had purchased London’s Gothic castellated Tower Bridge at a bargain price were strenuously denied for years. However, Stan Usinowicz the managing editor of Lake Havasu City local newspaper admitted, shortly before he died, that C.V. Wood, an architect involved with building Lake Havasu City, admitted it was true.

The current London Bridge was opened on the seventeenth of March 1973 by Queen Elizabeth IIThe bridge cost only four million pounds to build, a fraction of the cost of the previous bridge and the funding was met entirely by the City Bridge Trust. It is less decorated than many other of London’s crossings, but despite being built at the height of modernism, it is fortunately an attractive looking bridge. It is borne on three arches of pre-stressed concrete faced with granite. It carries 38,000 vehicles on the A3 road across the Thames and 25,684 pedestrians on a daily basis, meaning that in forty years the foot traffic has halved and the vehicular traffic has doubled. Whether the bridge meets with a fate similar to some of its predecessors, only time will tell. For certain, as long as there is a London, there will be a London Bridge.  

Where to view 'London 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. They are available to browse through by simply visiting the ‘London 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.