About the Book
Some of the most beautiful views of London are those from the many bridges which span the River Thames. Millions of people cross over the Thames every day but most are too concerned with reaching their destination to notice the structures they use, let alone consider their history or the risks taken in building them.
Triumphs of architecture and engineering, London’s bridges have inspired artists as diverse as Dickens and Monet. From the elegant Richmond Bridge to the Gothic, quintessentially British Tower Bridge, they have formed the backdrop to battles, rebellions, pageantry and mysteries for two millennia. Crossing the River tells these stories, including the assassination of a dissident with a poisoned umbrella on Waterloo Bridge; the apparent suicide of ‘God’s Banker’, an Italian financier with links to the Vatican, the Masons and the Mafia; and the Marchioness tragedy and its controversial aftermath.
Featuring illustrations and photographs old and new, this book will undoubtedly increase the reader’s knowledge and appreciation of the bridges and the people who built them, and thereby enhance the pleasure of seeing them, whether at leisure or stuck in a traffic jam.
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Map
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction
1. Richmond and Twickenham
2. Kew
3. Chiswick and Barnes
4. Hammersmith
5. Putney and Wandsworth
6. Battersea and Chelsea
7. Vauxhall and Lambeth
8. Westminster
9. Charing Cross
10. Waterloo
11. Blackfriars
12. Millennium Bridge
13. Southwark and Cannon Street
14. London Bridge
15. Tower Bridge
Picture Section
Appendix 1: Thames Bridges Summary
Appendix 2: Bridge Basics
Notes
Sources
Index
About the Author
Copyright
Dedicated to Richard and Sarah, and their families
Illustrations
1780 view of Richmond Bridge
Richmond Bridge with boats
Flooded towpath by Richmond Bridge
Richmond Railway Bridge
Twickenham Road Bridge
Richmond Footbridge, Lock and Weir
Wooden Kew Bridge of 1759
Stone Kew Bridge of 1789
Kew Bridge of 1903
Kew Railway Bridge
Chiswick Bridge
Barnes Railway Bridge
William Tierney Clark plaque
Hammersmith Bridge of 1827
Boat Race crowds on Hammersmith Bridge
Bust of Joseph Bazalgette
Coat of arms on Hammersmith Bridge
Hammersmith Bridge today
Fulham Bridge
Fulham Bridge with the aqueduct
Bazalgette’s Putney Bridge
Putney Railway Bridge
Wandsworth Bridge
Battersea Railway Bridge
Old Battersea Bridge
Bazalgette’s Battersea Bridge
Albert Bridge at night
The notice to troops at Albert Bridge
Old Chelsea Bridge
Chelsea Bridge of 1937
Grosvenor Railway Bridge
Vauxhall Bridge of 1816
Vauxhall Bridge of 1906
Vauxhall Bridge overlooked by the MI6 building
Old Lambeth Bridge
Lambeth Bridge of 1932
Pineapple obelisk at Lambeth Bridge
Sixteenth-century map of London
1750 engraving of the old Westminster Bridge
Westminster Bridge of 1862
Westminster Bridge’s Coade stone lion
Brunel’s Hungerford Suspension Bridge
Statue of Brunel
Hungerford Railway Bridge
The 1951 Festival of Britain site under construction
Golden Jubilee Bridge
Waterloo Bridge of 1817
Old Waterloo Bridge and Hungerford Suspension Bridge
Waterloo Bridge with Somerset House
City skyline viewed behind Waterloo Bridge
Blackfriars Bridge of 1769
Blackfriars Bridge with St Paul’s Cathedral
Blackfriars Bridge river-pier capital
Blackfriars Railway Bridge
Old station plaques preserved in Blackfriars Railway Station
Millennium Bridge under construction
Southwark Bridge of 1819
Southwark Bridge today
1864 view of Cannon Street Railway Bridge
Cannon Street Railway Bridge today
1814 Frost Fair with Blackfriars Bridge
Seventeenth-century engraving of Old London Bridge
London Bridge old and new in 1832
Remaining arch of Rennie’s London Bridge
London Bridge with City skyline
Ships crowding by London Bridge
Tower Foot Tunnel entrance
Tower Bridge’s high-level footways
The raising of Tower Bridge’s bascules
The operation of the bascules
Tower Bridge’s engine house
Plates
Richmond Bridge
Richmond Footbridge, Lock and Weir
Chiswick Bridge
Tierney Clark’s Marlow Bridge
Ornamental shields on Battersea Bridge
Lambeth Palace from Lambeth Bridge
Chelsea Bridge galleon lamp-post
Albert Bridge
View from Westminster Bridge
Embankment Place and Hungerford Bridge
Golden Jubilee Bridge
Headless columns of the former LCDR Bridge
Insignia of the LCDR by Blackfriars Bridge
Millennium Bridge
George III’s coat of arms from Old London Bridge
Tower Bridge suspension chains
All the illustrations are from the collections of Susan and Brian Cookson, except for those listed below, for which acknowledgement for the permission to reproduce them is gratefully made:
Sylvia Claydon (p. 36)
Guildhall Library, City of London (pp. 165, 175, 186, 257, 263, 273, 275, 283, 289)
Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London (p. 229)
London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham (pp. 81, 85, 99, 104)
London Borough of Lambeth Archives Department, www.landmark.lambeth.gov.uk (pp. 146, 156, 196, 208, 210)
London Borough of Richmond (pp. 31, 53, 56)
Wandsworth Local History Service (pp. 119, 133)
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the staff of the British Library and of all the local libraries which have been so helpful to me in my research. I would especially like to mention Jeremy Smith of the Guildhall Library, City of London; Jane Baxter of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames Local Studies Collection; Jane Kimber of the Hammersmith and Fulham Archives and Local History Centre; and Meredith Davis of the Wandsworth Local History Service, who have given generous help in providing the fascinating illustrations of historical bridges. The other local libraries whose help I wish to acknowledge are the City of Westminster Archives Centre, the Kensington and Chelsea Local Studies Collection, the Chiswick L
ibrary Local Studies Collection and the Lambeth Archives. Without the dedication of so many people who have collected and catalogued the magnificent range of local history material held in these libraries, this book would not have been possible. I would also like to express my thanks to the following for providing specific expert information: Patrick Connolly of the Marine Support Unit of the Metropolitan Police; John Ormsby, Chairman of the Strand on the Green Association; and Dana Skelley, Head of Central London Street Management. On a personal basis, I wish to thank Carol Smith and my agent, Charlie Viney, for putting me up to writing this book. Finally, I am proud to acknowledge the help of my daughter, Sarah, who has spent many hours improving the quality of the text, and of my wife, Susan, who has spent almost as long proofreading it.
Preface
Thousands of us cross over the River Thames in London every day. Most often we are too concerned with traffic congestion and the need to reach our destination to notice the structures of the bridges we use, let alone consider their history or the efforts and dangers that went into building them. However, as a London Blue Badge Guide, I am frequently made aware that when people do have time to look around, it is the views of the river from the bridges and many of the historic bridges themselves that most inspire them. London’s Thames bridges constitute an irresistible subject of study, combining history with the romance of the imposing structures bestriding the powerful flow of England’s longest river. There is something about the concept and appearance of a bridge that excites the human imagination. John Betjeman once wrote that it is difficult to make a bridge look ugly, although he did add wryly that this was achieved in the case of the iron railway bridge over the Thames at Charing Cross.
Lengthy books have been written about individual Thames bridges. Other books cover all the bridges from the source to the sea, or include other types of crossing, such as tunnels and ferries, and so have to limit their descriptions of each bridge to the basic facts. In this book, I have devoted a full chapter to each of the main bridges or groups of bridges on the tidal Thames within the area of Greater London, starting at Richmond and ending at Tower Bridge. Each chapter covers the historical background, why the bridge was built, problems in obtaining finance and approval, bridge design and construction, and, finally, subsequent developments up to the present day. I have also included historical illustrations as well as current photographs to show how the bridges and the river itself have changed over the years.
The book is aimed at the enquiring layperson rather than the professional engineer. I do, however, include what I hope will be intelligible descriptions of some of the technical aspects of bridge design along with the important statistics on each bridge in the appendices.
The diversity and vibrancy of modern London seems to be reflected in the idiosyncratic variety of its river bridges, from the eighteenth-century classicism of Richmond Bridge and the nineteenth-century Gothic extravaganza of Tower Bridge to the streamlined elegance of the twenty-first-century Millennium Bridge. My aim is to increase the reader’s knowledge and appreciation of these bridges, their rich history and the people who built them, and thereby enhance the pleasure of experiencing the bridges, whether at leisure or stuck in a traffic jam.
Introduction
Half a million years ago during one of the many ice ages that beset the British Isles, glaciers dammed the flow of a massive river to the north of present-day London. This caused the river to burst through the Goring Gap in the Chiltern Hills, pursuing its way to the North Sea roughly along the course of the current River Thames. Archaeological excavations provide evidence of many prehistoric human settlements on the north and south sides of the river. Even more fascinating are finds of elephant and hippopotamus bones in Trafalgar Square. These animals would have been able to cross the river by wading or swimming, and people would doubtless have used fords and boats to do the same from early times.
Until recently, it was assumed that the ancient Britons had not built any bridge crossings and that the first bridge to be constructed over the Thames was the Roman wooden bridge sited just downstream of today’s London Bridge. However, in 2001 Channel 4’s Time Team in conjunction with the Museum of London Archaeology Service (MoLAS) investigated some wooden stakes that had emerged from the river-bed upstream of Vauxhall Bridge and established that they were almost certainly the remains of a Bronze Age walkway over the Thames. This early bridge must have disappeared by the time Julius Caesar invaded Britain in 55 BC, as Caesar describes in his Commentaries how his army had to ford the Thames – the name given to the river by Caesar himself. He states that it was fordable in only one place, and although historians believe this was at Westminster or Brentford, there is no way we can be sure exactly where it was. What is certain is that the Thames was much wider, and in places shallower, than it is today and that much of the flood plain through which it flowed was marshy. The Romans finally conquered Britain in AD 43 and established Londinium on the firm stretch of high ground on the north bank of the river, opposite a low area of dry ground on the south bank. There they built a wooden bridge across the river just downstream of the present London Bridge.
The fate of the bridge after the Romans left Britain in 410 is unknown. From the tenth century, records start to appear with references to a wooden London Bridge at this site. In 1209, the wooden bridge was finally replaced by a stone one – the world-famous inhabited Old London Bridge with its houses, shops and even a chapel. Supported on 19 arches, amazingly it lasted over 600 years. It has often been said that the history of London is inextricably bound up with the river and, as we will see, it is also strongly reflected in Old London Bridge and its successors. This was the only bridge over the Thames in the central London area until the completion of Westminster Bridge in 1750. A wooden bridge had in fact been built in 1729 at Putney, but this was not really part of London at the time. The overcrowding of Old London Bridge suggested there was a dire need for a new bridge from at least the seventeenth century, when London started its massive expansion to the west.
The reason why it took so long to construct any other bridge was down to politics and finance rather than need or technology. Although Old London Bridge was always the preferred method of crossing between the north and south banks of the Thames, it also presented difficulties for those who used the river for transporting people or cargo. For centuries, watermen had offered their services from the many stairs on both sides of the river, taking people across the Thames as well as from place to place along its banks. In general, river transport was popular well into the nineteenth century compared with the dirty, smelly and often dangerous roads. However, Old London Bridge proved especially dangerous to river traffic because of the swift flow of the tide through the narrow gaps between its arches, and many watermen and their passengers drowned in the passage. So the watermen saw bridges as obstructions, and to protect their interests they formed the powerful Company of Watermen, which received the Royal Charter in 1555. In addition, the City Corporation, which owned Old London Bridge, wished to preserve its monopoly on a bridge crossing so as to prevent trade from moving westwards. A combination of these vested interests managed to delay the approval of a new bridge at Westminster for nearly a century.
Once the precedent of a new crossing had been established at Westminster in 1750, several stone bridges across the Thames were approved and built in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including Robert Mylne’s Blackfriars and James Paine’s Richmond bridges. A great change occurred in bridge building with the coming of the Industrial Revolution and the construction of the world’s first iron bridge, over the River Severn at Coalbrookdale, in 1779. Following the construction of London’s first cast-iron bridge at Vauxhall in 1816, there was a profusion of bridge building using a variety of materials including cast iron, wrought iron, traditional stone and, later in the nineteenth century, steel. The coming of the railways contributed to this activity although it must be said that most of the railway bridges were utilitarian rather than be
autiful. Many of London’s bridges were initiated and financed by private enterprise and tolls were charged to recoup the investment. In 1879, the last bridges to charge tolls were finally bought out and all came under some form of public ownership.
The result of all this bridge building was that by 1900 there were eighteen road bridges, nine railway bridges and two footbridges over the Thames in London. As with London itself, there was no strategic plan and the pattern of crossings was somewhat haphazard. Moreover, all the road bridges had been built for the age of the horse and so most were inadequate for modern traffic. The other major problem was that, despite the involvement of famous engineers such as Brunel, Rennie and Bazalgette, most of the bridges failed to stand up to the fierce battering they received from the ebb and flow of the twice-daily tides, which reach speeds of up to 14 mph. Up until 1832, the tidal effect would have been much less severe because Old London Bridge, with its 19 arches, acted as a sort of weir. In fact, the flow of the tide was reduced to such an extent around Old London Bridge that the Thames often froze over in winter, leading to a succession of Frost Fairs, during which booths were set up on the frozen river, oxen were roasted and printing presses produced certificates for customers to record their attendance. The year 1814 saw the last of the Frost Fairs. Rennie’s five-span replacement London Bridge of 1831 no longer slowed the tide enough for the river to freeze over, nor indeed to protect the upstream bridges from the tide’s onslaught.
Apart from the eighteenth-century Richmond Bridge, made of stone, and the much later, nineteenth-century Albert and Tower bridges, all these early bridges have had to be rebuilt over the years, sometimes more than once. Often there has been considerable public protest when these historic structures have had to be pulled down. For instance, in the 1940s, there was outrage when the decision was taken to rebuild Rennie’s popular Waterloo Bridge, which had been described by the sculptor Canova as the noblest bridge in the world. However, like the others, it finally had to come down and be replaced by today’s more stable and traffic-friendly bridge of reinforced concrete.
Crossing the River: The History of London's Thames River Bridges From Richmond to the Tower Page 1
