1.London Bridge:
1176 For centuries the only bridge across the Thames in the city, the first stone bridge was begun in 1176, replacing a wooden one which had been there since Roman times. The driving force behind the building of the bridge was a churchman called Peter of Colechurch but, from the beginning, he had difficulty raising the money to go ahead with his project. Eventually Henry II stepped in, imposing a tax on wool, the proceeds of which went towards the bridge, and it was finally completed in 1209. The old London Bridge is best remembered for two things – it had houses built on it and the heads of traitors were, for many years, impaled on the turrets of the gate at its southern end as a warning to those approaching the city of the fate of those who conspired against the king. The earliest record of houses on the bridge dates from 1201, during the period of its construction. They survived for centuries. According to a writer in Stuart times, the bridge was ‘adorned with sumptuous buildings and stately and beautiful houses on either side, inhabited by wealthy citizens, and furnished with all manner of trades, comparable in itself to a little city, whose buildings are so artificially contrived, and so firmly combined as it seemed to be more than an ordinary street, for it is as one continual vault or roof’. The houses were finally removed in the 1750s. Among those whose heads have adorned the bridge have been the Scottish hero William Wallace, the medieval rebel Jack Cade and Henry VIII’s minister Thomas Cromwell. The foundation stone of a new London Bridge was laid in 1825 by the Lord Mayor, who descended 45 feet beneath the Thames in a cofferdam in order to do so. George IV had turned down the opportunity of laying the stone because of ‘the injury he might sustain in his health by descending to such a depth surrounded by such an element’. Opened in 1831, this was the bridge sold to an American buyer who, according to legend, was under the impression he was buying the more distinctive Tower Bridge. It now stands in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. It was replaced by the present bridge in the late 1960s.
2.Putney Bridge:
1729 The first bridge to span the Thames between London Bridge and Kingston was built of timber in 1729. Putney Bridge had a toll house at either end with a bell to warn of approaching highwaymen. In 1795, Mary Wollstonecraft, the proto-feminist and mother of Mary Shelley, tried to commit suicide by throwing herself into the Thames close to the bridge after her partner, the American writer Gilbert Imlay, ran off with an actress. In 1870 the wooden bridge was severely damaged when a river barge struck it and the present bridge, designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, was finally opened in 1886. Since the mid-nineteenth century the bridge has been the starting point for the University Boat Race.
3.Westminster Bridge:
1750 The Swiss engineer Charles Labelye first submitted his designs for a bridge across the Thames at Westminster in 1738 but it was not opened until twelve years later. One of the difficulties lay in the opposition of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who owned the ferry that ran from Lambeth Palace to Horseferry Road and was concerned that the bridge would end his income from it. He was eventually given more than?20,000 to soothe his ruffled feathers. Another problem was shortage of cash, and money raised by state lottery had to be used to build the bridge. By-laws forbade dogs to cross the bridge and imposed the death penalty for anyone who defaced it. (There is no record of any graffiti artist suffering the ultimate penalty.) The bridge was the one on which Wordsworth recalled standing in his poem that declared that, ‘Earth has not anything to show more fair’ than the view of the city in the early morning. It was also the bridge beneath which Boswell entertained prostitutes. ‘At the bottom of Haymarket I picked up a strong jolly young damsel, and taking her under the arm I conducted her to Westminster Bridge… The whim of doing it there with the Thames rolling below us amused me much.’ There had been difficulties with the foundations of the bridge’s piers from the beginning – one MP, working on the assumption that, when in doubt, it’s best to blame a foreigner, accused Labelye of being an ‘unsolvent, ignorant, arrogating Swiss’ – but it was not until the 1850s that Labelye’s bridge was replaced by the present structure.
4.Blackfriars Bridge:
1769 Blackfriars Bridge was ready for pedestrians in 1766, for horses two years later and wheeled traffic finally crossed it in November 1769. When it was opened Boswell, according to his journals, was ‘agreeably struck with its grandeur and beauty’. The bridge, designed by Robert Mylne, was intended to be known as Pitt Bridge, after the politician William Pitt the Elder, but the public refused to accept this and referred to it as Blackfriars Bridge from the start. It was originally a toll bridge but the tolls were abolished in 1785, five years after the Gordon Rioters had unilaterally decided that they were an unnecessary imposition and broken down the toll gates. The present bridge dates from 1869. In 1982 the body of the Italian banker Roberto Calvi was found hanging beneath it. Calvi, known as ‘God’s Banker’ because of his close association with Vatican finances, is presumed to have been killed by the Mafia, who had been using his Banco Ambrosiano to launder money, but no one has ever been charged with his murder.
5.Battersea Bridge:
1772 Built of wood and designed by Henry Holland, who was the architect of many of the more elegant houses in the streets around Sloane Square, Battersea Bridge replaced a ferry that ran from Chelsea to Battersea. It was rebuilt as an iron bridge by the great Victorian engineer and architect of the London sewers, Sir Joseph Bazalgette, in the late 1880s. The old bridge survives in many of Whistler’s Thames paintings, which depict it looming out of the mists and shadows on the river. The climactic sequence of Guy Ritchie’s movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was filmed on Battersea Bridge.
6.Vauxhall Bridge:
1816 Opened by the Prince Regent and originally called Regent’s Bridge, this was the first iron bridge over the Thames in London. Like most other Thames bridges in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, it was a toll bridge. Pedestrians paid a penny and anyone wishing to drive a score of cattle across the bridge was obliged to fork out 6d. Tolls were finally removed in 1879. The present bridge dates from the last years of Queen Victoria’s reign. In 1966 the opening sequence of Alfie, the movie that did much to consolidate Michael Caine’s career as archetypal Londoner, was filmed on Vauxhall Bridge.
7.Waterloo Bridge:
1817 According to the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova, who saw it soon after it opened, Waterloo Bridge was ‘the noblest bridge in the world’ and ‘worth a visit from the remotest corners of the earth’. Designed by the Scottish engineer John Rennie and opened on the second anniversary of Wellington’s victory at the Battle of Waterloo, the bridge carried tolls for the first 60 years of it existence. The last day of the tolls, 5 October 1878, was treated as a high holiday with large crowds of pedestrians jostling one another for the honour of being the last to pay the halfpenny toll. Waterloo Bridge is the title of a twice- made film melodrama in which the betrayed heroine ends her life by throwing herself off the bridge. In the 1931 version, the bridge was reconstructed in Hollywood; only in the 1940 remake, starring Vivien Leigh, are some of the shots of the real bridge. It was on Waterloo Bridge that the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was stabbed by a poisoned umbrella in 1978. He died later in hospital.
8.Hammersmith Bridge:
1827 The first suspension bridge in London when it was originally built, the original Hammersmith Bridge was replaced by the present structure, designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, in the 1880s. An IRA bomb in 1996 resulted in the bridge being closed for four years and it was targeted again in 2000 almost immediately after it had reopened. These were not the first times that Hammersmith Bridge had been subjected to bomb attack. In 1939, during an earlier campaign of militancy, the IRA left a bomb under the bridge. A pedestrian found it and, acting with admirable speed and courage, threw it into the river where it exploded.
9.Chelsea Bridge:
1858 Excavations undertaken at the time the bridge was first built unearthed human bones and large numbers of discarded weapons which have led archaeologists to believe that a river-crossing here was the site of a battle, probably between ancient Britons and invading Romans. The present bridge was built in the 1930s. In the 1960s the Chelsea Bridge tea stall became a well-known gathering place for Rockers.
10.Albert Bridge:
1873 A still-existing sign on the bridge which states that, ‘All troops must break step when marching over this bridge’ is an indication that, when it was built, it was close to several barracks and that the authorities were concerned that too many soldiers stamping their way across it in unison would threaten its suspension. It was in danger of being officially rather than accidentally demolished in the 1950s but a campaign was mounted to save it, led by the poet John Betjeman who wrote that, ‘Shining with electric lights to show the way to Festival Gardens or grey and airy against the London sky, it is one of the beauties of the London river.’
11.Tower Bridge:
1894 One of the most familiar tourist sights of the city, Tower Bridge took eight years to construct and its co-designer was Sir John Wolfe-Barry, the son of the architect responsible for another very famous symbol of London, the Houses of Parliament. The upper span of the bridge, between the two towers, was originally a walkway, but it was closed in 1910 because it had become a haunt of prostitutes and thieves. It has recently been re-opened as part of the Tower Bridge Experience. When the port of London was at its busiest the bridge was raised several times a day but today, with markedly less traffic along the river, any ship wanting the bridge to lift must give 24 hours’ notice. In 1952 a London bus was caught on the bridge when it was opening and the driver was forced to accelerate his vehicle across the widening gap. Just below Tower Bridge, marked by a sign, is ‘Dead Man’s Hole’ where bodies thrown into the river from the Tower and surrounding districts were retrieved and stored in a mortuary before burial.
12. Millennium Bridge:
2000 Designed by Norman Foster, the pedestrian bridge linking Bankside and the City was closed within days of its opening in 2001 because of its inability to carry any more than a handful of pedestrians without wobbling alarmingly. Official statements talked of its ‘pedestrian-induced vibration’ and, in a flurry of mutual recrimination, architects blamed engineers and engineers blamed architects for the fault. The bridge was closed for more than six months while structural changes were made to stop the wobbling and it re-opened in January 2002. Need an accommodation London?! Search for short term rental London.
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