THE BRIDGES OF LONDON.
LONDON may well be proud of her bridges. Fifteen of the finest
structures of their kind in the world span with mighty and enduring
arches, the surface of the Thames; in a distance of seven miles on the
river from London Bridge, to the Suspension Bridge, at Hammersmith.
Paris alone can rival London in her super-aqueous structures, but in
massiveness and grandeur there is no bridge covering the Seine, and
having such a magnificent roadway and arches as Waterloo Bridge.
Of all the bridges which span the Thames, none have a history like
that of London Bridge; although the present structure dates only from
1825. The history of old London Bridge is that of London itself, for
the bridge was coeval with the overthrow of the Saxon dynasty, and the
death of Richard Coeur de Lion.
The first bridge erected on the site of the present London Bridge,
was a wooden one by Ethelred III., in 994, and the tolls were paid by
boats bringing fish to "Bylingsgate," which was then a water-gate of
the city. The next bridge here was constructed by the pious brothers of
St. Mary, Southwark, which house was originally a convent, established
by a young girl named Mary, daughter to a ferryman, who plied at this
point, and from the profits of the ferry the bridge was constructed.
This bridge was almost totally destroyed by the Norwegian King Olave in
1008, and was rebuilt by Canute in 1016, swept away by a flood 1091,
rebuilt 1097, burnt 1136, and a new one was erected of elm timber in
1163 by Peter, a priest and chaplain of St. Mary's, Colechurch, in the
Poultry.
This bridge did not satisfy the pious architect, however, and he began
with great zeal to build a stone one, the first in England, a little to
the westward of the timber bridge in 1176, when Henry II. gave toward
the construction the proceeds of a tax on wool, from which originated
the saying, "London Bridge was built on woolpacks," a phrase that has
often been taken in its literal meaning. Priest Peter died in 1205 and
the bridge was finished in 1209.
This bridge consisted of a stone platform 926 feet long, and 40
feet wide, standing about 60 feet above the level of the water, and
comprehended a draw bridge and nineteen pointed arches, with massive
piers raised upon strong oak and elm piles covered by thick planks
bolted together, so that after all, the famous stone bridge had a
wooden platform. There was a gate-house, with turrets and battlements
at either end, and toward the centre, on the east side, was built
a beautiful gothic chapel of stone to the memory of St. Thomas (à
Becket), of Canterbury. In a crypt of the chapel was placed a stone
tomb over the body of Priest Peter, the founder of the bridge. This
bridge, in the time of Elizabeth, is described as having "sumptuous
buildings, and stately and beautiful houses on either side," making
one continuous street from end to end and having an archway under
the houses and dwellings through which vehicles, sedan-chairs, and
pedestrians passed. The river could be seen at intervals in the gaps of
masonry, and, in fact, this bridge was as much of a thoroughfare and
causeway besides, having all the characteristics of a street on solid
ground, as any open space in London. Some of the buildings had shops
and beer-houses in the lower stories.
The chronicles of this stone bridge during six centuries, form,
perhaps, the most interesting episodes in the history of London.
The scenes of fire, siege, insurrection, and popular vengeance, of
national rejoicing, and of the pageant victories of man and of death,
of fame or funeral, which have transpired on and about the bridge, it
were vain for me to attempt to describe. In 1212, four years after the
completion of the structure, a terrific conflagration took place on
the bridge, and 3000 persons perished in the flames, both ends being
on fire at the same time. De Montfort repulsed Henry III., on this
bridge, and the populace attacked and stoned his Queen in her barge as
she prepared to shoot the bridge. Wat Tyler, the popular rebel entered
London by this road to be struck down by Sir William Walworth in 1381.
Richard II. was received here by the citizens in 1392. In 1415 Henry
V., fresh from Agincourt, passed the bridge, and seven years after his
corpse was carried over it to be buried at Westminster Abbey. In 1450
Jack Cade attempted to storm London Bridge, but he was defeated and
his head placed on a pole over the gate-house. In 1477 the Bastard of
Falconbridge attacked the bridge, and fired several houses. In 1554 Sir
Thomas Wyatt crossed the bridge at the head of 2000 men, to dethrone
Queen Mary, and lost his head for it. In 1632 more than one-third of
the houses on the bridge were destroyed by fire, and in 1666 the whole
labyrinth of dwellings, shops, and edifices, were swept away by the
Great Fire; the entire street being rebuilt within twenty years after.
The houses were entirely removed and parapets and balustrades were
erected on each side in 1732, and one hundred years after, in 1832,
the venerable structure was demolished to make way for the new London
Bridge now standing. Holbein, the painter, lived on the bridge, book
publishers occupied shops on it, and the London tradesmen believed
it to be one of the Seven Wonders of the world. Hogarth lodged here,
and Swift and Pope visited Tucker, a bookseller who had a shop on the
bridge.
[Sidenote: GRINNING SKULLS.]
The most terrible reminiscence of the bridge is connected with the fact
that its gate-houses at either end were garnished for many hundreds
of years by the heads of many great and good men as well as of bad
and depraved villains, whose skulls were exposed on spikes to dry and
bleach in the sun.
The heads of Sir William Wallace, 1305; Simon Frisel, 1306; four
traitor knights, 1397; Lord Bardolf, 1308; Bolingbroke, 1440; Jack Cade
and his rebels, 1451; the Cornish traitors of 1497, and of Fisher,
Bishop of Rochester (displaced in fourteen days after by that of Sir
Thomas More, 1335), have adorned this ghostly bridge. From 1578 to
1605, it was a common sight to see the heads of Roman Catholic priests
exposed on this bridge, their offence being that they sought to preach
their doctrines in London. Finally, in the reign of Charles II., this
display of bare, grinning skulls was transferred to Temple Bar.
[Illustration: TEMPLE BAR, FLEET STREET.]
Temple Bar, as it is called, is a large, gray archway, which spans
Fleet street in its busiest traffic and jam. The archway was formerly
the limit of the City of London, and when a sovereign came westward
from Westminster, or eastward from the Tower, to make a formal entry,
the Lord Mayor and the City Councils, in robes of state, were present
under its historic archway to offer the keys and admit the Sovereign.
The rusty gates were then rolled back, and on such occasions the
pageants were very fine.
For over a hundred years the London traders and shopkeepers, and the
students of the Temple, were regaled with the daily and ghastly sight
of a row of grinning and socketless skulls, which were ranged in lines
on cruel spikes above the architrave of Temple Bar. There is an empty
room in the upper story which has a terrible history, for here heads
were boiled in pitch before being exposed.
In 1737, Eustace Budgell, a cousin of Addison and a contributor to the
Spectator, when reduced to poverty, took a boat at Somerset Stairs, and
ordering the waterman to row down the river, threw himself into the
flood as the boat shot London Bridge. He had filled his pockets with
stones, and he left behind him a slip of paper on which was written,
"What Cato did and Addison approved cannot be wrong." This was a great
puff for Addison's tragedy. Edward Osborne, an apprentice of Sir
William Hewet, afterwards Lord Mayor, jumped from the window of one of
the bridge houses, in 1536, to save his master's daughter, an infant,
and years afterwards he was rewarded with her hand in marriage, and
became Lord Mayor himself. The grandson of the apprentice became Duke
of Leeds and the founder of the present ducal house of that name. No
bridge ever constructed had such a history as that of Old London Bridge.
[Sidenote: THE TRAFFIC ON LONDON BRIDGES.]
The flow of traffic on some of the principal bridges by actual
computation during twelve hours, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., was:
Pedestrians, London Bridge, 96,080; Southwark Bridge, 2,500;
Blackfriars Bridge, 48,095; Waterloo Bridge, 12,000; Westminster
Bridge, 38,015. Equestrian traffic: London Bridge, 211; Southwark
Bridge, 93; Blackfriars, 91; Waterloo, 38; Westminster Bridge, 311.
Vehicular traffic: London Bridge, 26,800; Southwark Bridge, 516;
Blackfriars Bridge, 6,384; Waterloo Bridge, 2,603; Westminster Bridge,
7,300. From these figures it will be seen that the traffic on London
Bridge which leads from the heart of the business portion of the city,
and is toll free, exceeded that on all of the others put together. Some
of the bridges are owned by companies and a toll of half a penny per
passenger is taken for revenue by them.
London Bridge was designed by Sir John Rennie and built by his son.
The first pile was driven March 15th, 1824, government contributing
£200,000 toward the undertaking. Altogether the bridge cost £2,000,000
before it was finished. It is built on coffer-dams, and the bridge has
five semi-elliptical arches. The centre arch has a span of 152 feet,
and a rise above high water mark of 24 feet 6 inches; the two arches
next the centre are 140 feet span, and the two abutment arches have 130
feet of span. There is a parapet four feet high and the length between
the abutments is 782 feet, while the width between the parapets is 53
feet. The bridge was nearly eight years in construction, and 120,000
tons of stone were used in its erection.
Southwark Bridge is constructed of iron with three colossal arches, and
was built by Rennie. The middle arch has a span of 240 feet and a rise
of 24 feet. Its height above low-water mark to the roadway is 55 feet.
The cost was £800,000 and the bridge was opened in 1819. Its length is
700 feet, and the roadway is 42 feet wide.
The new Blackfriars Bridge is 1,000 feet long, 42 feet wide, and the
cost will be £300,000.
Waterloo Bridge is the finest in the world. Its dimensions are: Length
between abutments 2,456 feet, water-way, 1,326 feet. The carriage-way
is 28 feet wide with a pathway on each side of seven feet. There are
nine arches, each of which are 120 feet in span with a rise of 35 feet.
Waterloo Bridge has a level grade from one end to the other. Canova,
the sculptor, said of this bridge, "It was alone worth a journey from
Rome to London to see it." The cost was £1,000,000.
[Sidenote: WATERLOO BRIDGE.]
As a set-off to what Macaulay has prophesied in regard to London Bridge
and the future New Zealander, Baron Charles Dupin, the great French
publicist, speaks of Waterloo Bridge as follows:
[Illustration: THE NEW BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE.]
"If from the incalculable effect of the revolutions which empires
undergo, the nations of a future age should demand one day what was
formerly the New Sidon, and what has become of the Tyre of the West,
which covered with her vessels every sea?--most of the edifices
devoured by a destructive climate will no longer exist to answer the
curiosity of man by the voice of monuments; But Waterloo Bridge, built
in the centre of the commercial world, will exist to tell the most
remote generations--'here was a rich, industrious, and powerful city.'
The traveller, on beholding this superb monument, will suppose that
some great prince wished, by many years of labor, to consecrate forever
the glory of his life by this imposing structure. But if tradition
instruct the traveller that six years sufficed for the undertaking
and finishing the work--if he learns that an association of a number
of private individuals was rich enough to defray the expense of this
colossal monument, worthy of Sesostris and the Cæsars--he will admire
still more the nation in which similar undertakings could be the fruit
of the efforts of a few obscure individuals, lost in the crowd of
industrious citizens."
Charing Cross is the next bridge on the Thames, being built of iron and
used by a railway company. It was built by Brunel, and is a graceful
structure, but does not permit of pedestrian traffic.
Westminster Bridge is nearly level in its grade, and has seven arches.
It is 1,220 feet long. The cost was £400,000.
Lambeth Bridge is of iron with three arches, each of 280 feet span, and
the width is 54 feet. Cost, £100,000.
Vauxhall Bridge is of iron with nine arches of equal span--each 78 feet
wide. The breadth of the roadway is 36 feet, and the total length of
the bridge is 840 feet.
Pimlico Railway Bridge is built of iron, with four openings or spans of
175 feet each. The bridge is 900 feet in length, and has a width of 24
feet.
Chelsea Chain Suspension Bridge is 922 feet long and 45 feet wide.
Cost, £75,000.
Hammersmith Suspension Bridge is 841 feet long and 32 feet wide. Cost,
£180,000.
Scott, the American diver, lost his life while performing acrobatic
feats on Waterloo Bridge. The season he chose for diving from a
height of twenty feet above the parapet of the highest London bridge
was during an intense frost, when the river was full of ice, and the
enormous masses floating with the tide scarcely appeared to leave a
space for his reckless plunge into the river or his rise therefrom. He
watched his moment, and the feat was performed over and over again with
perfect safety. But he had been told that the Londoners wanted novelty.
It was not enough that he should do day after day what no man had ever
ventured to do before.
[Sidenote: DEADLY ACROBATICS.]
To leap off the parapets of the Southwark and Waterloo bridges into
the half-frozen river had become a common thing; and so the poor
fellow must have a scaffold put up, and he must suspend himself from
its cross bars by his arm, his leg and his neck, in succession. Twice
was the last experiment repeated; but on the third attempt the body
hung motionless. The applause and laughter that death could be so
counterfeited was tumultuous; but a cry of terror went forth that the
man was dead. He perished for catering to a morbid public appetite.
Every one who saw this voluntary hanging went away degraded and
disgusted at the terrible result of the show.
[Illustration]