Why is London Bridge called London Bridge?
Because it's in London.
But there are lots of bridges in London.
London Bridge was the first.
But it looks really modern.
Because it was rebuilt.
Are there lots of really interesting things about London Bridge and its history and its future that
unravel into a medium-sized documentary about the river Thames and its crossings in general?
Yes.
♫ ♫ ♫
The river Thames is the reason London exists.
Bck in the year 43 the Romans chose this spot to build a bridge and found their city of Londinium
connected by road to the rest of Britain and by sea to the rest of the world.
While there's nothing physical left of the Roman bridge itself
except this apparently
It's thanks to the Roman bridge that modern London is where it is today.
Here.
After the Romans left, various temporary wooden bridges came and went on this site.
Probably.
But it wasn't until 1209 when along came a proper permanent one made of stone
and it was a corker.
Like many bridges in medieval Europe, London Bridge was a living bridge
with shops, houses, a church
and tiny people made of plasticine.
The roadway was so narrow and the roofs on the
buildings stuck out so far that the dark passageway felt almost like a tunnel.
At its most congested it could take an hour to get across.
To manage congestion the City Corporation charged a toll to cross the bridge
and ordered that all northbound traffic used the west side and all southbound use the east side.
This may be the origin of why we now drive on the left in Britain.
I just checked and it isn't.
One disappointing thing about the otherwise brilliant bridge was its dull name.
But the reason for its dull name was quite interesting.
London Bridge was for many centuries the only bridge in London.
Which is surprising given how many thousands
of people lived and worked on both sides of the river.
So why was it like this for so long?
The Bridge House Estates which ran London Bridge on behalf of
the City of London Corporation made a great deal of money from the tolls
and they were keen to keep it that way.
In 1664 when King Charles II started making plans to build his own bridge over the Thames
the City Corporation persuaded him to forget about it with a free loan
open brackets massive bribe closed brackets
of a hundred thousand pounds.
Despite the stronghold the City Corporation strong held over the river
London got on absolutely fine with just the one bridge
because, rather bizarrely, most Londoners never used it.
Unless you had a horse and cart full of heavy stuff
why bother using the expensive and slow London Bridge
when you can simply hop on a wherry?
Wherries, pronounced werries, were long thin boats that could carry up to five people.
The streets of London were so congested that a wherry
was often the fastest way to get around town
whether you needed to cross the river or not.
The men who rowed the wherries, the watermen, were the taxi drivers of their day.
They had to know the locations of all the stairs and the times when the tide came in and out.
In their heyday there were more than ten thousand of them on the river.
And so London remained merrily monobridged
throughout the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th century
and that was fine by everybody
until...
In 1720 the Prime Minister Robert Walpole was in a rush to get back
to Westminster for an important debate in Parliament after visiting the king.
When he arrived at the Fulham horse ferry,
the watermen were having a pint on the opposite side of the river
and they refused to come across until they'd finished their drink.
Walpole missed the debate, and from that day declared war on the river.
This is all your fault!
Walpole presented a bill to Parliament making the
legislation to allow new bridges over the Thames for the first time
whether the City Corporation or the waterman liked it or not
which led to London finally getting its bridge number two right outside the Houses of Parliament.
Westminster Bridge opened in 1750
bringing London Bridge's centuries old monopoly to an end.
Not everyone was happy about this. The City Corporation demanded compensation.
So the crown gave them compensation
which they used to get revenge on Westminster Bridge by building Blackfriars Bridge in 1769
giving Londoners a whopping three bridges to choose from.
Crossing by bridge had now become a lot easier and faster and more normal than crossing by wherry.
This was bad news for the watermen
who were already having a really tough time with the closure of the theatres on the South Bank.
It was the beginning of the end for the wherries.
But amazingly they never disappeared completely.
Hundreds of years later the Company of Watermen and Lightermen is still around today
and they still stage a protest whenever a new bridge is proposed.
How's that going for you?
London was growing up.
And it was time to say goodbye to the old-fashioned traditional
things that were holding it back.
And that included London Bridge itself.
Over the centuries, London Bridge had become a
medieval relic that was far too narrow for 18th century traffic
The bridge needed a makeover.
So in 1761, to make a bit more room,
the Bridge Houses estates decided to remove the houses and shops from the bridge.
But it was no good.
The structure was still a crumbling death trap that needed repairing every five minutes
as made famous in the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty.
The whole thing had to go.
And so in 1831, Old London Bridge was replaced by New London Bridge
designed by a father and son team both called John Rennie.
To avoid disruption and ease construction
New London Bridge was built slightly to the left of where the old London Bridge was.
If you look carefully at a modern map, you can clearly see how the
old streets line up to show exactly where the Old London Bridge used to be.
London's bridge-volution was only just beginning.
In the 19th century with London's population
swelling faster than ever on both sides of the river
new bridges were being thrown across the thames one after the other like Kerplunk.
Bridges for people, horses, and these new things called trains too.
London just couldn't get enough of them.
Bridges bridges bridges bridges bridges bridges bridges
bridges bridges bridges bridges bridges.
London Bridge wasn't special anymore.
It blended in with all the others getting on with its job in a no-nonsense sort of way.
After 130 years which in London terms isn't really that long,
London Bridge already found itself once again in a bit of a pickle.
By the 1960s, London had turned into a car city.
To make room for all the commuters that wanted to use it,
London Bridge would need to at least triple in width.
The City Corporation once again had the expensive task of building
a modern bridge in place of the old one.
But the trouble was, in the 20th century it was
much harder to raise the huge amount of money needed for this sort of project.
And so they made the unusual but ingenious decision
to put the two Rennies' bridge up for sale.
Brochures and TV ads were produced offering a "unique
piece of british history" to the highest bidder.
The highest bidder was American oil tycoon and chainsaw manufacturer Robert P McCulloch.
Ho hooo!!
Papa's got a bridge!
who had the old London Bridge shipped across the Atlantic brick by brick
and put back together in Lake Havasu City, Arizona
where it's become something of a tourist attraction.
There's a famously not true at all urban myth
that McCulloch thought he was buying the much more famous and impressive Tower Bridge
and bought the wrong bridge by mistake.
And that's where we get the expression "I bought the wrong bridge by mistake."
Not all of London Bridge went to Arizona.
These steps and this arch from the Rennie's bridge
are still here and here today on the South Bank.
Whilst it's great that some of the Rennies' bridge has been kept alive
its modern replacement is a structure best described as a shame.
The necessary rebuild of London Bridge in the late 60s
coincided with a flash-in-the-pan fashion for brutalist functional architecture.
New New London Bridge completed in 1973 is a wide grey concrete slab
devoid of even the slightest hint of its rich history.
It's impressive for the sheer amount of nothing there is to say about it.
With London Bridge getting more boring every century
the next one coming in 2182 will likely be made entirely of beige jumpers.
Eeerrm...
Yep. I think that's everything I can think of about London Bridge.
But London does of course have many more bridges.
And there are lots of interesting things to say about them too.
So if you're not busy
join me next time for another thrilling installment of Unfinished London.
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♫ He's got a very very long arm
♫ A very long arm indeed.
♫ He doesn't use it to fight crime
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♫ He says it's my arm, and I'll do what I want
♫ That's always his excuse.
♫ It's a very big shame his very long arm
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♫ He used to have a very long arm
♫ now he's got Surfshark and a very long arm.