Last time we talked about London Bridge
But this time, let's talk about...
Tower Bridge.
In the 19th century, London became the biggest city on the planet.
Its population skyrocketed from 1 million in 1800 to 5 million in 1890.
To accommodate the growth on both sides of the river Thames
the number of bridges shot up too from 3 to 14.
So far, all of these bridges were appearing to the west of London Bridge.
Crossings were badly needed to the east as well but none had been built.
Why was this?
Victorian London was the biggest and most important shipping port in the world.
This part of the Thames was known as the Pool of London
packed with docks and warehouses welcoming boats of all different shapes and sizes
from all over the empire to supply britain with quite literally everything
from coal to sugar to dog kennels to mattress protectors to fortune cookies.
Any bridge built east of London Bridge would have to somehow keep access open to the Pool of London
for the thousands of very very tall ships.
As the famous saying goes, when you can't build a bridge, build a tunnel, stupid.
But in the 19th Century, this wasn't so easy.
No one had ever managed to dig a tunnel under a river anywhere in the world before.
But if anyone was up to the job
it was the terrific Richard Trevithick.
Mining expert, inventor of the steam train
and a tunneling superstar in his native Cornwall.
In 1807 Trevithick made a good start on a test tunnel in Rotherhithe.
But he learnt the hard way that London wasn't Cornwall.
London sits on top of a layer of soft squishy clay that gets extremely sloppy when wet.
Under the river, the clay gets extremely sloppy and extremely squishy indeed.
Trevithick had only got halfway across the river when the whole thing flooded and collapsed
and the project had to be abandoned.
Experts all agreed that digging a tunnel under the Thames was impracticable.
But the problem would eventually be solved by a half-English half-French inventor
called Marc Isambard Brunel.
Not Isambard Kingdom Brunel - his father.
Marc Isambard Brunel didn't know the meaning of impracticable and neither do I.
Brunel had just invented an invention called Brunel's tunneling shield.
A massive tunnel sized frame that protected miners while they built brick walls around them.
Perfect for solving London's sloppy problem.
Brunel's tunneling shield made the job possible
but it didn't make it easy.
The project was beset with problems from day one to day 6,512
with constant delays, floods and dead miners
very nearly including his son Isambard.
In 1843, Brunel's Thames Tunnel was finally opened to the public.
But it wasn't what Brunel or anyone had had in mind.
It was decades late and decades over budget
and it wasn't even suitable to use.
With no money left for the massive ramps required for road access
they had to make do with spiral staircases at both ends.
Its only possible use was as a very pedestrian tourist attraction
which tourists got very tired of very quickly.
It became known in the newspapers as The Great Bore.
Oh, I get it.
Brunel's tunnel did eventually get turned into something useful.
In 1865 the East London Railway bought it and started running their trains under it.
You can still visit today on the underground section of the Overground.
So with Brunel's tunnel full of trains, not traffic
It was time for Thames tunnel take two.
In 1869, the Tower Subway was built.
And while this one was completed much faster - 14 weeks rather than 20 years
it too was a failure.
This isn't it by the way.
The nightmarishly claustrophobic Tower Subway was open for just 28 years
before closing to the public in 1898.
It's still there today, but you're only allowed to use it
if you're a utility pipe.
Tunnels in a nutshell were not up to the job
and neither were tunnels under the Thames.
So just how could the City Corporation solve the unsolvable problem
of getting traffic across the Pool of London?
Get the public to solve it!
The City Corporation's chief architect Sir Horace Jones
was put in charge of setting up a competition
calling for ideas for a crossing that was open to both road and river traffic.
More than fifty of Britain's best engineers submitted ideas
but Horace found something wrong with all of them.
I've designed a swing bridge with two rotating roadways.
So at any time, either one of these two paths will be open
and road traffic literally never has to wait.
But every ship would literally always have to wait.
Well, road traffic's more important.
Not in the 19th Century it's not. Next!
My idea is basically the same
but the road slides out instead of spinning.
It's much more complicated and probably isn't going to work. Sorry.
Good man.
My design is a transporter bridge
lifting people and horses high up on dangly platforms
Like the one in Middlesbrough?
Yeah.
Eurgh.
Oh.
My solution is we make the bridge...
very tall.
And how will vehicles get up there?
Massive spiral ramps like the ones you get in car parks.
That's hideous. You'll ruin the whole area.
Well, that's what I do. I totally ruined the Embankment.
So, start building on Monday yes?
No.
Alright, well how about this one?
No.
Alright, how about this one?
No.
You don't seem to understand... I am Sir Joseph Bazalgette.
But we're arch enemies.
I built the sewers!
I'm muting you.
You have no authori....
Gentlemen and gentlemen, thank you for your submissions.
I have considered them all carefully and decided that the winner is...
Me! Hooray!
Horace Jones picked his own entry and then died.
His design was a bascule bridge
with flippy bits that raised up to allow ships to pass underneath.
it was a brilliantly simple and actually quite old-fashioned idea.
But to build it on such a big scale would take some serious engineering expertise.
So, Jones's design was improved upon by a proper engineer
John Wolfe Barry
who got rid of the arches, and added two walkways up top
so pedestrians could cross without waiting.
Genius!
Despite its ultra modern engineering
the new bridge was designed to look a thousand years older than it really was
so that it would forever fit in sensitively with the surrounding architecture
matching the Gothic style of its next-door neighbour
the Tower of London
which is how the bridge got its name, Tower Bridge.
Tower Bridge opened in 1894 and the public fell in love with it immediately.
And who can blame them?
I mean... look at it!
The bridge became an icon of London
and is today arguably the most famous bridge in the world, citation needed.
It's so iconic that lots of tourists, mostly Americans
mistakenly call it London Bridge.
It's a compliment really.
It feels like it's been here forever
but it's actually so modern we have photos of its construction.
It was built for cars. It's newer than the Brooklyn Bridge.
Beautiful though it was, the bridge was by no means perfect.
The foot crossing up top was never very popular.
With such a long journey up the stairs, it was usually quicker and always less faff
just to wait for the bridge to come down.
It also had a reputation for pickpockets and muggers
giving criminals a scenic backdrop for their seedy business.
So the pedestrian walkways were closed in 1910
and stayed closed right up until 1982
when they became part of the Tower Bridge Experience.
With Tower Bridge being such a beloved icon
it's incredible to think that this nearly happened to it.
In 1943, famous painter WFC Holden put forward a proposal
to encase Tower Bridge in an art deco frame of steel and glass.
it would bring the structure up to date and protect it from German bombs.
Cover it in glass to protect it from bombs?
Thankfully, no one at the time thought this was a good idea
and Tower Bridge has remained entirely unchanged... almost.
In 1977 the exterior was painted in patriotic red white and blue
to celebrate the Queen's Silver Jubilee.
It was meant to be a temporary job, but it actually
looked kind of nice so they kept it.
This means that Tower Bridge has the unique honour of being the only bridge in central London
that's never been rebuilt.
Every other bridge has been replaced and modernised at some point in the last 200 years.
As well as the structure being unchanged, remarkably its status hasn't changed either.
Tower Bridge still opens to let big boats through around 800 times a year.
But it's still one of the most important road links in London.
Partly because it forms part of the Inner Ring Road around the Congestion Charge zone,
and partly because, more than 120 years after it was built,
it remains to this day the only bridge in Greater London east of London Bridge.
Wait... that's weird isn't it?
It's the 2020s. Surely we've got better bridge building technology by now.
Is there really no demand for any bridges in east London?
and hasn't all the shipping gone away?
In fact why don't they just build loads of tunnels?
Well not that it's any of your business
but if you want to know the answer to these questions
tune in next time for another thrilling installment
of Unfinished London.
Hello there, well I'm very excited because today
we're going to look at something I've always wanted to get my hands on.
It's an original 1984 Megatronics DCX-450 Mark 2 from Japan.
Slightly bad news though, after years of not being used
and possibly some damage in transit
it seems to have perished into a fine dust.
But not to worry, I do like a challenge, so let's see if we can't get it working again.
Well, 48 years later I haven't managed to repair it
but I did manage to turn it into something much more useful.
It's a subscription to Surfshark.
Now Surfshark, if you don't know, is a VPN.
An app and browser extension that virtually places your device in another country
so you can view streaming services and discounts that are only available in a different country.
It's got servers in more than 60 countries
and it allows you to use one account on an unlimited number of devices.
and there are security benefits too.
Surfshark masks your IP address
so you can switch it on whenever you don't want to be tracked by advertisers or hackers.
Now there are two ways you can get Surfshark
You can either take a 1984 Megatronics DCX-450 and go at it for 48 years with a screwdriver
Or if you don't have a screwdriver
simply click the link in the description below and use the code jayforeman
to get 83% off Surfshark plus an extra three months for free.
And there's a 30-day money-back guarantee, which effectively makes it a free trial.
I used my Surfshark to get money off flights to Japan.
And I brought back with me a 1984 DCX-450 Mark 2.
And...
It works!
Oh Surfshark!
Oh well.
And now it's time for the big surprise.