Crossing the River: The History of London's Thames River Bridges From Richmond to the Tower

by Brian Cookson

  Old London Bridge was always an inhabited bridge. It consisted of 20 arches, one of which was a drawbridge, and spanned 905 feet of treacherous tidal water. There has been much speculation as to how it was constructed with the limited technology available to the twelfth-century bridge builders. Writing in the sixteenth century, John Stow’s theory was that the course of the Thames had been diverted to the south while the bridge was being constructed,51 but this idea has been rejected by later historians as virtually impossible. Excavations on the foundations carried out when Old London Bridge was demolished in 1832 showed that it was likely that the bridge was built in the river without the use of cofferdams or caissons. Progress was slow, as it involved driving short piles into the riverbed at low tide and then filling in the area around where the piers were to be built with rubble. A large piling machine was then placed on the rubble to drive in additional long piles to surround the inner piles. Finally, the gap was filled in with more rubble. The result was a pointed oblong structure known as a starling, on top of which the piers and arches could be constructed. No wonder the project lasted 33 years. Many lives would have been lost in the course of construction. Gordon Home estimated that as many as 200 men would have been killed working on the building and maintenance of Old London Bridge between the start of construction in 1176 and final demolition in 1832.52

  The essence of Old London Bridge was its irregularity. Unlike later bridges, its arches were of many different widths and shapes. The only thing they had in common was that they were all Gothic pointed arches, apart from the drawbridge. Since the average gap between the arches was less than 30 feet, the resulting concentration of the tidal flow caused excessive strain on the starlings, which were in constant need of repair. Over the years, they tended to grow in size as more rubble was added to bolster them, and this only made matters worse. As well as causing damage to the structure, the concentrated flow of the water proved a danger to passing river traffic. The 19 starlings of the bridge acted almost like a weir, producing a drop in the water level of up to 6 feet, and it was really only safe to pass under the bridge when the flow of the water was slower, at either side of the turning of the tide. At this point, the watermen would race forward to be the first to ‘shoot the bridge’.

  Apart from running the risk of being capsized by the rushing water, boatmen were subject to other hazards. The starlings were submerged in water during high tide and boats could easily be washed onto their surfaces, where they could be stuck until the next tide arrived to refloat them. Less dangerous but nevertheless unpleasant was the risk of streams of urine or lumps of faeces dropping onto you as you passed under the many public and private latrines that disgorged their contents into the river from the houses above.

  Many people were drowned or seriously injured when passing through Old London Bridge and this gave rise to the proverb ‘London Bridge is for wise men to go over and fools to go under’. Some people sensibly refused to go under the bridge. Cardinal Wolsey, on his frequent river journeys from his palace at Hampton Court to visit Henry VIII at the royal palace of Placentia in Greenwich, would disembark from his ceremonial barge before reaching Old London Bridge. There he would mount a mule which he rode along Thames Street to Billingsgate, where he returned to his barge to continue on to Greenwich. There is no record that Henry VIII himself avoided passing under the bridge on his equally frequent journeys from Westminster to Greenwich, but Henry was a much bolder man than the cautious cardinal.

  The dangers of passing through the arches of Old London Bridge were increased in 1581 when the Dutchman Peter Morice installed a waterwheel in front of the northernmost arch in order to pump water to a cistern on the north bank and supply water to subscribers in the City. According to John Stow, he obtained permission to do this by holding a demonstration of how his wheel could pump a jet of water over the steeple of the Church of St Magnus the Martyr. His wheel was made of wooden struts and used an ingenious system of pulleys so that it automatically raised and lowered itself with the tide. So successful was the enterprise that it was incorporated as the London Bridge Waterworks. Four more wheels were later installed by the northern arches, and two at the Southwark end of the bridge. The result was to concentrate the flow of the tide at the central arches, which became even more difficult to navigate. The other effect was to increase the action of Old London Bridge as a sort of weir, allowing the river to freeze in many of the much colder winters prevalent at the time and inspiring the watermen to set up the first Frost Fairs.

  A particular feature of Old London Bridge, and replicating its earlier wooden predecessor, was the drawbridge, which was sited near the middle of the bridge. The drawbridge was originally designed both to allow tall ships to pass through to land their cargoes at the upstream harbour of Queenhithe and to prevent an enemy from crossing the river to the City. An ornately decorated wooden gate, known as Drawbridge Gate, stood at its northern end. This provided a third line of defence against attack from the south, after the formidable stone gate at the Southwark end and the drawbridge itself.

  Drawbridge Gate also became the site for a gruesome tradition started in 1305 when the head of the Scottish patriot William Wallace was displayed there on a spike. Wallace had fought for Scottish independence against the English King Edward I, known as the ‘Hammer of the Scots’. After his eventual defeat, Wallace was captured, having been betrayed by another Scottish lord. Edward I had him convicted of treason for his rebellion and condemned him to death. The punishment for treason at that time was the utterly cruel method by which the condemned man was hanged, drawn and quartered. After a torturous process, Wallace was decapitated and his body divided into four quarters. To deter other rebels, his body parts were displayed in various northern cities: his right arm in Newcastle, his left arm in Berwick, his right leg in Perth and his left leg in Aberdeen. His head was parboiled to inhibit the process of rotting and impaled on a spike on the Drawbridge Gate of Old London Bridge.

  The 1814 Frost Fair with Blackfriars Bridge in the background

  From this time until the seventeenth century, heads of convicted traitors were displayed in several places around London, including on Temple Bar, but the most distinguished or notorious found themselves impaled at Old London Bridge. Executed royals never suffered this indignity, but even the head of Sir Thomas More, one-time friend and Chancellor of Henry VIII, was put on a spike on Drawbridge Gate after he was executed in 1535 for refusing to acknowledge the King as supreme head of the Church of England. Legend has it that his daughter, Margaret Roper, prayed that his head should fall into her lap as she passed under the drawbridge and so it did. More probably, she obtained the head through bribery. She had it buried in the Roper vault in St Dunstan’s Church in Canterbury.

  After the demolition of the Drawbridge Gate and its replacement by Nonsuch House in 1577, heads were impaled at the Great Stone Gate at the Southwark end of the bridge. Since treason and executions were all too common, there would often be a number of heads on display. One German tourist even counted 34 heads on the Great Stone Gate on his visit to London in 1592.53 The end of this barbaric custom came in 1678. The last head to be spiked on the Great Stone Gate was that of William Stayley, who was falsely accused by Titus Oates, the concocter of the ‘Popish Plot’ conspiracy, of plotting to murder Charles II with the aim of putting the King’s Catholic brother James on the throne. After this, the heads of traitors were demoted to Temple Bar, where Samuel Johnson frequently noted this disgusting practice, which was finally ended altogether in 1746.

  Just like its wooden predecessor which was at the centre of the battle for the control of London in 1014, Old London Bridge played its part in many historical events which decided the fate of the kingdom. One of the most surprising incidents occurred in 1216, only seven years after Old London Bridge was opened. King John, who has been described as England’s worst king, was extremely unpopular because of his arbitrary rule, the continual defeats in wars against France and the high taxes imposed to finance
these wars. In 1215, he was forced by the barons to sign Magna Carta at Runnymede. This famous document defined the rights and responsibilities of the monarch and of his subjects for the first time in history. However, the Pope was not pleased to hear of this challenge to royal supremacy and he declared Magna Carta invalid. The barons then turned for help to Louis, the Dauphin of France, who had been at war with King John for most of his reign. They went so far as to invite Louis to become King of England in place of John. Louis was only too pleased to take over France’s long-standing enemy so easily, and in 1216 he crossed the Channel with his army and marched unopposed to London. There, he was greeted with applause by the citizens as he crossed Old London Bridge on his way to St Paul’s Cathedral. John died of dysentery soon afterwards and the barons had second thoughts about being ruled by a French king. They bribed Louis to renounce the throne and return to France, where he later succeeded his father as Louis VIII. John’s son Henry, who was a mere child and therefore likely to be more easily manipulated than his father, was crowned Henry III. Never again would France take control of England throughout the long history of warfare between the two countries.

  C.J. Visscher’s seventeenth-century engraving of Old London Bridge

  When he reached maturity, Henry III proved a weak king. Like his father, he fell out with the barons, and for similar reasons. This time the barons declared war, and in 1264 their leader, Simon de Montfort, marched on London. He was quartered with his army in Southwark, but the royalist party raised the drawbridge on Old London Bridge, closed the gates and threw the keys into the Thames. However, most of the citizens of London sided with de Montfort. They managed to force open the gates and raise the drawbridge to let de Montfort’s army cross the river and take control of London. In the following year, de Montfort was defeated and killed at the Battle of Evesham by the royalist army led by Henry III’s son, the future Edward I. The rebellion soon ended and Henry III regained his throne.

  The next major uprising resulted not from the discontent of the barons, but from the anger of the common people, who were forced to pay a series of poll taxes to finance the continuing wars with France, known as the Hundred Years War. In 1381, Wat Tyler instigated the rebellion which became known as the Peasants’ Revolt. He was assisted by John Ball, a vagrant preacher who made famous the two-line verse expressing his basic principles of humanitarian egalitarianism:

  When Adam delved and Eve span,

  Who was then a gentleman?

  Under the leadership of Tyler and Ball, a vast crowd of peasants and other low-paid workers from Kent marched on Southwark. There they found that the Lord Mayor, William Walworth, had raised the drawbridge to prevent them attacking the City. However, as so often, the citizens of London mainly sympathised with the rebels. When Wat Tyler threatened to burn down the houses at the Southwark end of Old London Bridge, the citizens agreed to lower the drawbridge and let the by now very threatening mob cross the river. The Kentish peasants were then joined by another crowd from Essex. No one in authority was safe. Simon Sudbury – the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor – had taken refuge in the Tower of London, but the constable of the Tower was a rebel sympathiser and opened the gates. The peasants seized Sudbury as he was at prayer in St John’s Chapel, dragged him to Tower Hill and executed him to loud acclaim. His severed head was paraded through the streets and displayed on a spike at Drawbridge Gate.

  The revolt ended when William Walworth stabbed Wat Tyler at Smithfield while the child king, Richard II, was offering to meet the peasants’ grievances in a negotiated settlement. Richard then bravely offered himself as captain to the remaining rebels, agreed to abolish the hated poll tax and led them to the open countryside north of Smithfield, from where they eventually dispersed. As they crossed Old London Bridge on their way home, the men from Kent would have been devastated to see their leader’s head impaled at Drawbridge Gate in place of the head of the Archbishop, which they themselves had so recently put up there on a spike.

  A number of other rebellions took place during the life of Old London Bridge. Since this was for so long the only river crossing in central London, any attack from the south had to be directed towards this point. The most vicious rebellion after the Peasants’ Revolt occurred less than 70 years later when the men of Kent again rose up, this time against the ineffective rule of Henry VI and the oppressive taxes raised to indulge the extravagance of his arrogant French wife, Margaret of Anjou. In July 1450, Jack Cade led a motley crowd of around 30,000 men to Southwark, where they encamped while Cade negotiated with sympathisers in the City to allow him to cross Old London Bridge. Eventually, the keys of the bridge gates were handed over and the initially peaceful rebels entered the City. Cade submitted his demands to the King in writing, so he must have had a number of more educated supporters.

  Once in control of the City, however, the mob became increasingly violent. They captured and beheaded Lord Saye, who had become the focus of their hatred as a leading landowner in Kent. Following increasing incidents of looting and rape, the citizens of London turned against the invaders. When the mob retired to Southwark for the night, the Londoners gained control of the bridge. When Cade found out that the bridge was barred against him, he attacked with full force and a fierce battle raged all night. Many of the bridge inhabitants perished as their houses were burned down while they were trapped inside. By morning, the mob had been repulsed, and the rebellion ended with Jack Cade’s death in a skirmish after he had been pursued into Kent on the following day. His head was severed from his corpse and, just like Wat Tyler’s before, it was impaled on Drawbridge Gate.

  There were two later unsuccessful attacks on Old London Bridge: one in 1471 by Thomas Fauconberg, who tried to restore Henry VI to the throne after he had been deposed by Edward IV in the Wars of the Roses; and the other in 1554 by Sir Thomas Wyatt, who opposed Queen Mary’s intended marriage to the Roman Catholic Philip II of Spain. The last time Old London Bridge saw military action was during the Civil War. In 1642, Charles I set up his headquarters in Oxford while General Fairfax led the Commonwealth New Model Army to Southwark with the intention of gaining control of London. No force was needed, as Londoners supported Cromwell and the army was allowed to cross Old London Bridge peacefully. The Civil War ended with the defeat of the King, who was executed in Whitehall in 1649. No king’s head has ever been displayed at Old London Bridge. Following his execution, the head of Charles I was sewn back onto his corpse before he was eventually buried in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.

  Old London Bridge reached the pinnacle of its fame in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Tourists came from all over Europe to admire what was considered a wonder of the world. It must be admitted that many visitors were fascinated by the display of heads as much as by the bridge’s other charms. However, the centuries-old bridge was steeped in history, was the longest inhabited bridge in the world and possessed an extraordinary mixture of architectural styles that made it typically English at a time when the rest of Europe was embracing the classical baroque.

  The most astonishing feature of Old London Bridge was the number and variety of the houses that lined both sides of the roadway. There were other inhabited bridges, such as the Ponte Vecchio in Florence and the much later Pulteney Bridge in Bath, both of which still exist and give some idea of the appearance and atmosphere of Old London Bridge. However, none of these bridges approached the size and idiosyncratic magnificence of Old London Bridge. The houses lining the bridge were three storeys high. The ground floors housed various businesses, mainly shops, while the upper two floors and attics provided living accommodation. All the buildings apart from St Thomas’s Chapel were constructed of wood in order to lighten the load on the superstructure. As the shoppers, traders and passing vehicles thronged the bridge, the overall impression was of a busy, claustrophobic and top-heavy thoroughfare. This impression was heightened because the three-storey-high buildings were supported on a narrow roadway only twelve feet wide and we
re built without gaps, apart from the drawbridge. The feeling of enclosure created by the tall houses lining the dark, narrow roadway was exacerbated by the fact that many houses had hautpas, wooden platforms joining the top floors of two houses on opposite sides of the road. These provided extra accommodation and also helped strengthen the buildings, which had a tendency to lean outwards over the river.

  The most impressive structure on the bridge was St Thomas’s Chapel, which stood on the downstream side of the bridge, resting on the wide starling of the ninth pier from the City end. From there, it rose as high as the neighbouring houses. It could be approached by boat as well as from the roadway. Built of stone in the early English Gothic style by Peter de Colechurch in the twelfth century, it was reconstructed in the perpendicular Gothic style in the fourteenth century. As a chapel, it did not survive Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s, especially as it was dedicated to St Thomas Becket, who had opposed an earlier King of England. The building, however, remained in a simplified form as a shop until the final removal of all the houses in 1762.

  The pre-eminence of St Thomas’s Chapel was succeeded by the exotic Nonsuch House, which was constructed next to the drawbridge in 1577. Nonsuch House was named after Nonsuch Palace, the name of which implies that it was without compare. Henry VIII had built this palace in the form of a Tudor extravaganza in 1538 near Sutton in Surrey for hunting expeditions and to entertain foreign visitors. Although built of wood, Nonsuch House was turreted like a castle, decorated with elaborate carvings and painted to look like stone. Needless to say, it became the most desirable residence on the bridge, one which only the richest merchants could afford.