Several designs for Fulham Bridge were submitted, including one for a bridge of boats, which was possibly inspired by the 1642 crossing constructed by the Earl of Essex. The commissioners chose a design by Sir Jacob Ackworth, who had designed a number of bridges on the upper Thames, including the bridge at Kingston. However, according to Thomas Faulkner, this design was considerably modified by Mr Chiselden, who was surgeon to Chelsea Royal Hospital and one of the 30 subscribers.11 Another subscriber, Thomas Phillips, was given the construction contract. He completed the 768-foot-long wooden structure with its 26 narrow openings in only 8 months. The central span was built wider than the rest so as to allow more room for boats to pass through. It measured 30 feet and was known as Walpole’s Lock in honour of Robert Walpole, who had helped ensure the passage of the Act in face of continuing opposition from vested interests.
The compensation paid to those whose income was affected amounted to over £9,000, which was nearly as much as the actual cost of the bridge itself. The Bishop of London, who had owned the ferry, received only £23. However, he and his household were granted free use of the bridge. This was open to abuse by people who were not actually members of the Bishop’s household. Thomas Crofton Croker, in his A Walk from London to Fulham, wrote that: ‘People were very much astonished at hearing the exclamation “Bishop!” shouted out by the stentorian lungs of bricklayers, carpenters or others who may be going to the palace, that being the password for going over free.’ Others to receive compensation included the ferrymen who had lost their jobs. It is also recorded that Walpole agreed to recommend them for employment at the Custom House. This seems a generous gesture from the Prime Minister, who had a reputation for arrogance and corruption, especially in view of his anger at the behaviour of the ferrymen who had ignored his calls to take him across the river on a previous occasion.
1760 engraving of Fulham Bridge showing the southern tollhouse
Fulham Bridge was opened without ceremony on 29 November 1729. The first person to cross in a coach was the Prince of Wales, when going to and from Richmond Park for one of his regular hunting expeditions. The Prince had long been a supporter of the bridge and showed his delight to the workmen by donating five guineas. He could have had free passage across the bridge, since the King paid an annual £100 fee to the company to cover all crossings by members of his household. On the introduction of the new Gregorian calendar in 1752, when the Government abolished the dates between 3 and 14 September, the King deducted £1 10 s. from the £100 to compensate for the 11 lost days. However, the King was the loser in the following year. London bankers had always been liable to pay their taxes annually on 25 March, but they delayed their payment for 11 days until 5 April, which has marked the end of the tax year in Britain ever since.
Amazingly, the wooden bridge was to last for over 150 years, which was longer than many of the later stone bridges on the tidal Thames. Although the maintenance costs were high, the bridge proved a reasonable investment for the subscribers. By the time it was eventually sold, the income from the tolls had doubled, as had the value of the shares. Regarding the profitability of the bridge, Archibald Chasmore relates the following anecdote about Theodore Hook, a writer of farces, who owned a villa just upstream of the bridge:
A friend was looking at the bridge from Hook’s garden and said he had heard that the bridge was a good investment. ‘I don’t know,’ said Theodore, ‘but you have only to cross it and you are sure to be tolled.’12
The Fulham Bridge Company’s profitability was threatened both by competition from other existing bridges and by proposals for new bridges. The original proprietors had promoted the benefits of their new bridge when their proposal had been attacked by the City Corporation, which had an interest in preserving the monopoly of London Bridge. But now that they owned a virtual monopoly themselves, they opposed every proposal for other new bridges upstream from Westminster. They failed to win these arguments, and they were no more successful in a dispute with the proprietors of Hammersmith Bridge over a directional sign they had put up outside the coach stand at Knightsbridge. This claimed that the shortest route to Richmond was via Fulham Bridge. The Hammersmith Bridge Company objected on the grounds that its own measurements showed that the route via Hammersmith Bridge was half a mile shorter. The Metropolis Road Office, which was responsible for road signs, came down on the side of Hammersmith, and the Fulham proprietors were forced to change their sign accordingly.
The profits from the bridge clearly depended on the amount of traffic, but also on the efficiency of the toll collectors. Tollhouses were located at both ends of the bridge and were normally manned by a resident manager, his assistant and three tollmen. From 1801, when Nathaniel Chasmore was appointed manager, until the freeing of the bridge from tolls in 1880, the managers all came from the same local family of builders. The last of them was Archibald Chasmore, who wrote The Old Bridge, which covers the history of Fulham Bridge until it was demolished in 1882. Before 1801, there were a variety of managers, not all of whom proved satisfactory to the proprietors. In 1739, the current manager, Robert Rawson, resigned after being hurt in a fight on the bridge. The proprietors refused to pay him compensation because they noted that income from the tolls increased substantially after he left. Since the manager was responsible for keeping accounts and checking the honesty of the tollmen, there was a great temptation to commit fraud, and the company may have suspected this. His successor seems to have devised an improved system of checks, and this resulted in increased takings. Unfortunately, the new manager in turn was later dismissed for using £86 of the company’s money for his own purposes.
The tollmen worked day and night shifts seven days a week. Until 1835, they had no regular leave of absence. Absence due to sickness was treated relatively well for the time. It is recorded that in 1877 a Mr Robinson received half pay until he was fit to return to work. In 1761, a Mr Slane was killed by falling timber and his widow was allowed ten shillings a quarter towards her rent and two guineas towards her support. In fact, the secure wages and regular Christmas bonuses made the job comparatively attractive, despite its long hours. Tollmen did cause a variety of problems, and cases of absenteeism, dishonesty and drunkenness were not infrequent.
Problems also arose from rows between the tollmen and the public, not all of which were the tollmen’s fault. In 1739, three young officers beat up the tollmen when crossing the bridge. A committee met to examine the tollmen’s complaint. When the officers apologised and paid 20 guineas’ compensation, it was decided not to prosecute them ‘in consideration of their youth and the ruin that might follow in the course of prosecution against them’. During another incident, as recorded by the London Evening Post of December 1740, it was tollmen who were the aggressors, and two of them were indicted for assaulting two ladies and their servants. The prosecution alleged that the tollmen had tried to charge the ladies for more horses than they were taking over the bridge. The tollmen resorted to violence when the ladies refused to pay. They were found guilty, but their counsel ‘moved for Mercy till next Term so that they could apologise and obtain pardon from the ladies’. The prosecution agreed as ‘the aim was to make the Fellows an Example only for the Benefit of the Public’.
The eighteenth century was an unruly time and the tollmen were especially exposed to danger since the bridge led to Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common, both of which were notorious for highwaymen and robbers. The tollmen were armed with copper-headed staves, and bells were hung on top of the tollhouses so that they could warn each other of trouble. On one occasion, a tollman did benefit from criminal action when a coachman called Daniel Good threw him his coat as he passed through the toll-gate and asked him to keep it until his return. In fact, Good had just murdered his girlfriend in Putney; he was hanged for it and so never returned. Archibald Chasmore states that the tollman wore the coat until it was worn out.
Fulham Bridge was the scene of the attempted suicide of Mary Wollstonecraft in 1795. She suffered depress
ion because of the neglect of her lover, the American writer Gilbert Imlay, and wrote him a suicide note stating her hope that she would not be rescued. She jumped from the bridge and lost consciousness when she hit the water but was resuscitated by some watermen who were passing at the time. After her rescue, she repeated that she had wished to die. She later married William Godwin, but died shortly after giving birth to a daughter, Mary, who married Percy Bysshe Shelley. It is thought that Mary Shelley was influenced in her creation of Frankenstein’s monster by her mother’s attempted suicide at Fulham Bridge, since the monster, like Mary Wollstonecraft, had life breathed into him against his will.
One of the most successful days for the tollmen was on 20 July 1867, when the Sultan of Turkey accompanied the Royal Family to a review of the Volunteers at Wimbledon Common. Carriages stretched from Hyde Park Corner over Fulham Bridge to the camp on Wimbledon Common in an unbroken line. Over £100 was collected and, according to Archibald Chasmore, not one base coin was taken in. Since counterfeiting was prevalent at the time, this was a considerable achievement.
Wimbledon Common reviews by royalty were popular, and very profitable for the proprietors of Fulham Bridge. On 11 June 1845, an advertisement appeared in The Times, announcing a grand review of the Life Guards on Wimbledon Common on 23 June at twelve o’clock. On 25 June, a letter appeared, signed ‘A Volunteer’, describing how he had crossed Fulham Bridge and arrived at Wimbledon Common to find 5,000 other people there in expectation of a royal ceremony. It seems that the advertisement was a hoax. There is suspicion, but no proof, that the proprietors of Fulham Bridge were responsible for the hoax. Their takings for the day will have been vastly enhanced by the tolls collected from so many people crossing the bridge for an attraction that did not materialise, and having to return disappointed only to find they had to pay the tolls for the second time that day.
At the opposite extreme, when the Thames froze over during the severe winters of 1739–40, 1788–9 and 1813–14, people could cross the river on the ice and avoid the tolls altogether. Frost Fairs were held stretching from Rotherhithe to Putney, with entertainments including bonfires, puppet shows, roundabouts and live animal shows. Even as late as 1870, after the removal of Old London Bridge effectively stopped the Thames freezing in the centre of London, the river was iced over at Putney. Two barges which were stuck in the ice at Hammersmith broke free with a large body of ice, sped through the narrow channel of water in the middle of the frozen river and smashed into one of the wooden piers of Fulham Bridge. The barges both sank and the pier was severely damaged. As pressure was mounting to improve navigation through Fulham Bridge, the proprietors decided to remove the pier and so double the width of the opening at this point.
In 1855, the Chelsea Waterworks Company presented a Bill to Parliament requesting permission to construct an aqueduct over the Thames 100 yards upstream of Fulham Bridge. The purpose was to carry water from its reservoirs in Kingston and on Putney Heath over the river to supply subscribers in west London. The proprietors of Fulham Bridge opposed this Bill on the grounds that it would spoil the beauty of the river by Fulham Bridge and would obstruct navigation. In fact, the bridge by now was looking more and more dilapidated, and the argument about navigation was exactly the same as that used unsuccessfully by the opponents of the original Fulham Bridge Bill. The proprietors went on to suggest that the waterworks company could use Fulham Bridge as a basis for the aqueduct. The objections were not successful, and the aqueduct was completed in 1856. As can be seen from the illustration below, it was a peculiarly ugly structure.
Fulham Bridge with the aqueduct in 1860
By the middle of the nineteenth century, complaints about the old wooden bridge were growing, both from the shipping companies, which found it difficult to pass through, and the general public, who were met by increasing delays in trying to cross the river as the population of London moved westward. Control of Thames navigation from Staines to the sea had passed from the City of London Corporation to the Thames Conservancy in 1857. After many failed attempts at persuasion, the conservators obtained passage of the Thames Navigation Act in 1870, which gave the Fulham Bridge proprietors powers to borrow money to widen the centre span and also to obtain compensation if the bridge were later subject to compulsory purchase. Eager to save money on their project for widening the centre span, the proprietors were tempted by an offer by John Dixon to use the ironwork from the temporary bridge constructed during the building of the new Blackfriars Bridge. He tendered to widen the arches for £2,800, claiming that the ironwork was still in good condition. However, when the ironwork was examined by a railway engineer, he said it was in fact in very poor condition. The proprietors were forced to turn down the tender and eventually the work was completed in 1872 for £5,492. The new, wider iron central span improved navigation but did nothing to ease congestion and certainly spoiled the quaint appearance of the bridge.
At least two attempts were made to set up companies to build a new bridge to replace the old wooden one. Acts of Parliament were in fact passed, but the companies failed to raise sufficient money. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Board of Works was set up by the Government, with powers over the improvement of London’s transport systems, among other things. The board introduced the Metropolis Toll Bridges Bill in 1877, enabling the purchase of all privately owned bridges in the metropolitan area, with a view to freeing them from tolls. For the first time in their history, all the companies cooperated as they tried to oppose the Bill, but, despite this, it was passed. As described in Chapter 4, the Prince of Wales freed Hammersmith, Fulham and Wandsworth bridges from tolls to wild celebrations on 26 June 1880. This effectively signalled the end of the 150-year-old Fulham Bridge and also the 80-year connection of the Chasmore family with the collection of tolls.
Sir Joseph Bazalgette, as head engineer of the MBW, produced a report in 1880 on the state of all the bridges that had come under his control. Regarding Fulham Bridge, he concluded:
Scarcely any of the piers are in sound condition; nearly all the piles of which they are formed have been repaired and many of these are now more or less again decayed, so that as a matter of safety it is necessary that early attention should be given to the condition of this bridge.13
This damning report signalled the end of Fulham Bridge, as it did for the old Hammersmith Bridge. In the following year, an Act was passed to enable the demolition of Fulham Bridge and the construction of a 44-foot-wide stone bridge in its place. The new bridge, like Hammersmith Bridge, was designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, and it was built at a cost of £240,433 by the contractor John Waddell. Its site is where the Chelsea aqueduct crossed the river, and the water mains were incorporated into the bridge, under the pavement. The Prince of Wales laid the memorial stone on 12 July 1884. This can be seen on the west side of the abutment on the Putney side of the bridge. His words expressed a common feeling at the passing of the old in favour of the new industrial age:
Much as we may regret the disappearance of the bridge with which so many old associates are connected, it is undoubtedly requisite that more extensive facilities should be afforded to render the means of transit across the river easier and safer.14
Bazalgette’s new Putney Bridge could hardly have looked more different from his ornate Gothic structure at Hammersmith. He chose a classical design, consisting of five segmental arches made of granite from Aberdeen and the Prince of Wales’s own quarries in Cornwall. The centre arch is the widest, at 140 feet, and the total width of the river here is 700 feet. John Waddell completed the project in four years. To secure the timber piles of the cofferdams, he used steam-powered pile-drivers, which had been invented by James Nasmyth and were first used by him for the construction of the High Level Bridge at Newcastle upon Tyne in 1849.
Bazalgette’s Putney Bridge, opened in 1886
The bridge was opened as Putney Bridge in May 1886 by the Prince of Wales, who seems to have been extraordinarily active in ceremonies connected with London’s Tham
es bridges. By now, there were few real regrets at the destruction of the old bridge. However, the Bishop of London decided to raise the height of the wall surrounding his garden because the new approach road was much nearer the palace and disturbed his peace. The proprietor of the Eight Bells was displeased for the opposite reason, since the new approach road bypassed his inn. He claimed and received £1,000 compensation from the MBW for the resulting loss of business.
The population of Fulham had increased from about 2,500 in 1729, when the old bridge was built, to well over 40,000 in 1886. Traffic increased considerably over the much more convenient stone bridge, and in 1909 it had to be widened to cater for a tramway. By the time of the 1926 Royal Commission on Cross-river Traffic, Putney Bridge was the busiest bridge to the west of Westminster. The Commission recommended further widening. Unfortunately, All Saints Church stood just to the west of the bridge on the Fulham side, and part of the churchyard was needed for the widening.
All Saints had been the parish church of Fulham since the original church had been built in 1154. In 1880, it had been largely rebuilt by Sir Arthur Blomfield, although the fifteenth-century Kentish ragstone tower was left standing. The churchyard was the burial place of no fewer than eight bishops of London, as well as many local people, before burials ceased there in 1863. The bridge-widening scheme required 15 bodies to be disinterred and moved, much to the displeasure of the vicar. The matter went before the St Paul’s Consistory Court, which decided that the Church could not stand in the way of a project that was in the public interest. The bridge was therefore widened to 74 feet at the expense of a small piece of the churchyard and the disturbance of 15 souls, who were reinterred in Fulham Cemetery in Sheen. The tombstones were moved within the churchyard, where they remain today. One of them dates back to 1654.
Crossing the River: The History of London's Thames River Bridges From Richmond to the Tower Page 9
