It seems like a dream now, looking back on 1982. I’m 60
years old as I write this – back then I was 18. In terms of physical age, forty
two years is a long enough time anyway, but when you consider all that has
happened since it’s much longer. In personal terms in the Autumn of 1982 I’d
only just taken my first ever trip abroad, to Greece. I had yet to win a place
at University, let alone train as a teacher. Now, I’ve just retired from the
job. I didn’t even have a girlfriend at the time – within four years I’d be
married with a child. My Nan had already predicted that one day I would win
Mastermind, but sadly she wouldn’t live to see that prophecy come true a
quarter of a century later. In the wider world there was no internet. Money was
something you carried in your wallet or your pocket and not on a card. Britain’s
fourth TV channel had only begun broadcasting earlier that year. I could go on,
but you get the picture, I’m sure.
Earlier in the year Tower Bridge had reopened its two high
level walkways for the first time in my lifetime. The bridge first opened in
1894 and the two high level walkways between the towers acquired a reputation
as a haunt of pickpockets and ladies of the evening to use a charming old world
phrase. They were closed in 1910.
The walkways were refurbished and reopened in 1982 to house
the Tower Bridge exhibition. Even back then I was in love with London and its history,
so a visit was pretty much a given. Very interesting it was too. The start of
the exhibition concentrated pretty much on Old London Bridge. I found it fascinating.
Years later I discovered Patricia Pierce’s 2002 book on Old London Bridge and I
couldn’t help thinking what a great Mastermind subject it might make. The rest,
as they say . . .
Coming back to 1982, I began to think about how many of
London’s Thames Bridges I’d never crossed. Which was most of them, it turned
out. So the idea came to me to see just how many I could walk across in a day.
This was about 10am. By about 2 pm I reached Putney Bridge – which is only a
bit more than 7 miles away, and had to call it a day.
I never got round to walking across the other bridges to
complete the challenge. However, 2 years later I was in my first year at
University. I’d been cycling everywhere and was probably the fittest I’ve ever
been in my life – not that this is actually saying that much. During the summer
holiday I would cycle from home in West London along the pilgrimage route to
Canterbury all in one day. So when I cycled back across London to my student
hall on the edge of Blackheath at the start of my first summer term it occurred to me
that this would be a good opportunity to cross all of the bridges on the way.
So I did.
I missed out on rail bridges with no footbridge, of course,
and also on bridges which hadn’t actually been built yet – the Millennium Bridge
and the Golden Jubilee Bridge come to mind. These would all be crossed in years
to come. Since then I’ve maintained an interest in London’s Thames Bridges – so
much so that the History of London Bridge would be my Mastermind Grand Final
subject. So in the summer of 2024 I challenged myself to draw all of the
bridges. Here is where I am so far.
1) Hampton Court Bridge – 1933.
Like London Bridge, we do not know exactly when the first
wooden bridge at Kingston was built. Fairly reliable written sources say that there
was a wooden bridge standing here in the second half of the 12th
century, but it’s not impossible that there were other bridges on the site going
back into Anglo-Saxon times.
In 1554 when Sir Thomas Wyatt mounted the rebellion named
after him against the rule of Mary Tudor, the inhabitants of London Bridge
refused to allow him to cross into the City of London. Rather gallantly Wyatt refused to burn the bridge down
but marched his men the almost fourteen miles to Kingston. He shouldn’t have
bothered. The citizens of Kingston partly destroyed the bridge to hinder his
progress, and the people failed to rise in support as he marched back towards
London.
Being wooden the bridge was fairly constantly having to be
repaired or partially rebuilt and the severe frost of 1814 would eventually
sound the death knell for the bridge, just as it would for Old London Bridge.
Originally the 1825 Act of Parliament authorising the building of the current
bridge called for a cast iron bridge, but a rise in the cost of iron led to revised
plans for the stone bridge still standing today. It was opened in 1828 and has
been widened several times. Today it is a grade II* listed building.
Kingston Railway Bridge
The bridge carries national railway lines mostly in and out
of London’s Waterloo. That's just about all I have to say about this first railway bridge across the Thames in London, working our way downstream.
Teddington Lock Footbridges
The two footbridges were built between 1887 and 1889, funded by donations from local residents and businesses. They replaced a ferry which gave its name to Ferry Road at Teddington. The most notable thing about the two bridges is how different they are considering that they were built at the same time as part of the same project. The southern bridge consists of a suspension bridge crossing the weir stream which is the main feature of the sketch and it links the island to Teddington itself. The northern bridge is an iron girder bridge, which you can see part of on the extreme left of the drawing. It crosses the lock cut and links the island to Ham on the Surrey side.
The footbridges are both Grade II listed.
Richmond Bridge – 1777
This rather gorgeous stone bridge to me looks like the quintessence of Georgian elegance. It was built in 1777 to replace a ferry service. In order to repay the investment tolls were charged, which actually lasted until 1859. Talk about long-term pay offs. It was the 8th bridge to be built across the Thames in what is now the Greater London area, but the seven earlier bridges were all demolished, making it the oldest. I used to go ice skating regularly in the old Richmond Ice Rink. I'd take the 65 bus from Ealing Broadway on Sunday afternoon, and walk across the bridge then along the towpath. I think that the ice rink has gone now, but at least the bridge, which is grade 1 listed, remains.
The first Richmond Railway Bridge was built for the London
and South Western Railway in 1848. This made it one of the very first railway
crossings over the Thames. There was fairly heavy use of cast iron in the
structure of the bridge, and the cast iron was largely replaced by steel during
the first decade of the 20th century. This second bridge which
incorporates many elements from the original bridge in its construction was
built between 1906 and 1908 and this is the bridge still standing. In 2008 the
bridge was Grade II listed in order to protect it from unsympathetic future
alterations.
Twickenham Bridge
So, Twickenham Bridge. If you look at it, you’ll see those
wide, elliptical arches which show it’s a child of the 20th century.
A concrete child of the 20th century. 1933 to be precise. OK, now my
view is this. Concrete is a remarkable material. It was extensively used by the
Romans, believe it or not. We can argue about how suitable a material it is in
the damp British climate, but even leaving aside some of the structural problems you
can get with ferro concrete buildings, bare concrete is just plain
ugly to me. Even when you texture the surface it just becomes grubby and
depressing. Lord knows we have enough grey in this world as it is. It’s a
shame, because the lines of Twickenham Bridge are elegant and unfussy. I think
it looks better than the slightly younger Waterloo Bridge and the current
London Bridge as comparisons. But just downstream is the Richmond Lock and
footbridge, and I’m sorry, but it shows just how lacking in character
Twickenham Bridge is by comparison. Nonetheless, the bridge is Grade II*
listed.
Richmond Lock and Footbridge
This one I have crossed twice, and walked past many other
times, and until the first time I crossed it this always struck me as a bit of
an unusual thing. It seemed to me that it was only going halfway across the
river, until I actually crossed it and saw all the lock gubbins.So, what else can we say about it? Well, it’s a grade II*
structure and is the only lock that’s owed and operated by the PLA – Port of
London Authority. It was built to keep parts of the river navigable, and was
opened in 1894.
I have to say that this does have a bit of late Victorian
style about it. They didn’t do things by halves did the late Victorians and
Edwardians. Shrinking violets they were not and this building has bags of confidence.
One interesting thing to see on the footbridges are the old tollbooths. They
were still charging pedestrians at the start of the second world war.
Kew Bridge
Walking between the Richmond lock footbridges and Kew
Bridge is very pleasant on a nice day, since you have the Royal Botanical Gardens
to the Kew side on the south, and Syon Park on the Brentford side on the north.
There’s been a bridge over the Thames at Kew since 1759. It
was dedicated to George, Prince of Wales, who a year later became George III. His
predecessor, his grandfather George II had leased a grand house in Kew for his
daughters and over time a whole palace complex – Kew Palace – grew there. Poor
old George III was virtually kept a prisoner at Kew during his first bout of ‘madness’
in 1789. At about the same time the first bridge, made of wood and stone, was
replaced by the second, built alongside it. This one, to be fair, lasted more
than 100 years, but not long after its centenary it was felt that it was too
narrow and could not cope with the volume of traffic, and so it was demolished,
with a temporary wooden bridge put in its place while the current bridge was
built.
There’s a fair chance that I’ve crossed Kew Bridge more
times than any other across the Thames – only Richmond Bridge might beat it. I
used to go ice skating every Sunday in Richmond, and the route of the number 65
bus from Ealing crossed the river at Kew.
Kew Railway Bridge
Well, fair play, the bridge has been standing here since
1869 and it’s still going strong. It was built for the LSWR – London South
Western Railway, and today it is shared by the London Overground and the London
Underground. So working downstream this is the first bridge we’ve encountered
which carries the Tube. That’s another thing that endears it to me.
It is grade II listed. I know that this sort of structure
is not to everyone’s taste, but I like the honesty of a bridge that has all of
its workings on show. Think about it. Would the Forth Bridge, or the Eiffel
Tower (a structure that in itself owes a great deal to railway architecture and
engineering) look better if all of the girders were covered up away from sight?
I rest my case.
Chiswick Bridge
Chiswick Bridge, Twickenham Bridge and the rebuilt Hampton
Court Bridge were all opened on the same day in 1933. Improvements in transport infrastructure during the end of the 19th century and the beginning
of the 20th had made commuting more attractive. Up to the end of the
Victorian period, Hammersmith had been on the outskirts of London. A rapid
growth of the population to the west put pressure on the existing bridges
upstream of Hammersmith which necessitated the building of these. My own family
first moved to Ealing, my home borough, at this time with my mother’s parents and
grandparents moving there in 1907, and my father’s parents settling there just
after the outbreak of World War II.
Coming back to the Boat Race, there’s an unobtrusive stone
marker to show where the race ends just upstream of the bridge.
Barnes Railway Bridge
I’ll be honest, Chiswick Bridge has never really blown me
away. But I really like Barnes Railway Bridge. Working downstream it’s the
first bridge we’ve come to that combines a railway and a footbridge. The only two
others are the combined Hungerford and Golden Jubilee Bridges and Fulham
Railway Bridge, which we’ll come to fairly soon. It’s somehow very close to my
platonic ideal of what a railway bridge should look like.
The first Barnes Railway Bridge was built in 1849. Like Richmond Railway Bridge upstream it performed pretty admirably, but came under question for the use of cast iron in its construction. I believe that a cast iron bridge in Norwood collapsed suddenly in 1891. So the LSWR built this successor which opened in 1895. Wrought iron is used extensively in the structure, which was able to incorporate parts of the original bridge, and I think it has a little bit of a ‘belt and braces’ appearance, with the metal arches holding the carriageway, and the girdered arches supporting it from above. I like it.
Hammersmith Bridge
The current Hammersmith Bridge was designed by the great Sir Joseph Bazalgette and erected in the 1880s. This isn't maybe the place or time to go into exactly what made Sir Joseph a great unsung hero of the story of London, but if you're interested he is well worth a google. The previous bridge on the site was the first suspension bridge across the Thames. It was designed by William Tierney Clark and opened in 1827. The bridge was very similar to William Tierney Clark’s own 1837 Chain Bridge across the Danube in Budapest – which is still standing and I enjoyed walking across in 2017.
Tierney Clark couldn’t have envisaged how
the volume of traffic that the bridge would carry would exponentially increase
over the next few decades. The authorities at the time were appalled at the
possibility of the bridge collapsing when the annual crowd of over twelve
thousand people gathered on the bridge to watch the University Boat Race and they would rush from one side to the other as the Oxford and Cambridge boats passed
beneath. It’s always struck me as ironic just how important the boat race was
to people of Hammersmith and West London as a whole, and how whole families would
be passionate supporters of one of the two universities. Despite the fact that
there was sod all chance of any of these families’ kids ever getting to either
seat of learning, this kind of partisanship was still very common when my
parents were kids in the forties and fifties.
Coming back to the bridge, it was during
the 1860s when my ancestor John Olive was walking across the bridge to work
that he had a fatal heart attack. Even more macabrely his son, James, would have
a fatal heart attack while walking 20 years later – this happened on the South
Ealing Road. Both had inquests carried out in the venerable Dove Public House
in Hammersmith.
Putney Bridge
Edmund: Tell me young crone. Is this
Putney?
Young Crone: That it be
Edmund: Yes it is, not that it be.
I’m not a tourist.”
No? Well, I guess that you had to be there.
Little things, as they do say. Right then, it’s pretty well
known that there’s been a London Bridge since Roman times. The first stone
built London Bridge was completed in 1209. How long do you think it took before
the next bridge across the Thames in the area we think of now as London was
built? I’ll tell you. 520 years! There was not another bridge built until 1729.
And that bridge, dear reader, was Putney Bridge. Basically the City of London
blocked the building of any other bridges to protect the interests of the
watermen, who worked the ferries across the Thames.
The 1729 bridge I hasten to add, was not the Putney Bridge
we know and love today. The story goes that Britain’s first Prime Minister, Sir
Robert Walpole, following an audience with the King, reached Putney and was
unable to drag any of the ferrymen out of the pub to row him across the river.
He returned to Westminster via another route in high dudgeon and the experience
seems to have motivated him to get a bridge between Fulham and Putney built. This
was a wooden bridge, a rather fetching one judging by contemporary engravings.
The bridge had a pretty decent long working life too, but the writing was on
the wall for it from 1870 when it was damaged when a barge collided with it.
The current stone bridge was opened in 1886. Like
Hammersmith Bridge it was designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, although it is
very different in style from that bridge. This one is a lot more conservative – with
more of an understated elegance.
On a personal note, when I came up with the idea of walking
across all of the bridges back when I visited the Tower Bridge exhibition in
1982, Putney Bridge was as far as I got.
Fulham Railway Bridge
So, what have we got? Well, it’s a relatively unassuming
lattice girder bridge built for the LSWR in 1889. You know from my comments
about Kew Railway Bridge that I have something of a fondness for the
unashamedly industrial appearance of this kind of railway bridge. Nowadays it
carries the London Underground District line branch to Wimbledon.
Wandsworth Bridge
The bridge couldn’t carry trams or buses and replacing it
was first mooted in the 1920s. Replacing Putney Bridge was deemed more urgent,
and so it wasn’t until 1935 that the Ministry of Transport agreed to the replacement.
Demolition of the old bridge began in 1937, meaning it lasted a little more
than 60 years.
The current bridge is a cantilever steel bridge that
crosses the river in three spans. The outbreak of World War II caused a
shortage of steel and meant that the bridge could not be completed and opened
until September of 1940. I want to be kind about the bridge, or at the very
least, I don’t want to be mean about it. It isn’t ugly – it’s a bit too nondescript
to be ugly. But, and I want to stress this, it does the job which is all the
more praiseworthy considering that it is one of the busiest bridges in London,
carrying an estimated 50,000 vehicles a day.
Battersea Railway Bridge
For one thing, it’s not just one of the oldest railway
bridges across the river, it’s one of the oldest bridges across the river full
stop. Yes, a fair number of bridges were built across the Thames before this
one was built in 1863, but most of them have long since been replaced. This is
still substantially the same bridge. Today the bridge carries the West London
line of the London Overground. Originally it linked railways in South London
with the termini at Paddington and Euston. The link with Paddington meant that
the bridge originally carried broad gauge lines as well as standard gauge.
Trust me, that’s a big thing to a railway buff.
While we’re on the subject of railways, the bridge was used
exclusively for freight throughout the 19th century and the first
passenger train didn’t cross it until 1904. The structure carries the railway
across five wrought iron arches and is grade II* listed.
Battersea Bridge
The current bridge is the second Battersea Bridge. The
first was opened in 1771 and came to prove a popular subject with artists, despite
the fact that it really wasn’t terribly good. It was planned as a stone bridge
but there were problems with raising the investment to build it so a wooden
bridge was built. If you look at paintings of the bridge, or old photographs it
was certainly an eye catching structure. It had 19 spans and must surely have
posed a challenge to river traffic. Old London Bridge itself had 19 spans, and
this had the effect of creating a weir effect at certain times, so much so that
at different times of the day passing downstream could be like shooting the
rapids. For all that the bridge was not demolished until 1885.
So, the current Battersea Bridge was designed by our old
hero, Sir Joseph Bazalgette. From a distance it doesn’t necessarily look that
much to write home about. That’s possibly partly due to the predominantly dark
green colour scheme, I would think. When you get closer though there’s enough
decoration while the five cast iron arches give a feeling of strength and
permanence.
Coming back to paintings of the old bridge, old Battersea Bridge was featured in Whistler’s “Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket’. The critic and know-all John Ruskin in his review accused him of ‘flinging a pot of paint in he public’s face.” Whistler sued, and was awarded damages of one farthing, which virtually ruined him.
Albert Bridge
Of the bridges I’ve just mentioned I think that the Albert
Bridge is the prettiest. I did think always think that the Albert Bridge was
designed by Joseph Bazalgette, but no. It was actually designed by Rowland
Mason Ordish in 1873. It’s an interesting design too. At first glance it looks
like another suspension bridge, but it wasn’t. It was built according to the
Ordish-Lefeuvre system, as a cable stayed bridge. Look, I’m not an expert on these
things, but I do know that the design proved to be a bit unstable and this is
where the Bazalgette connection comes in. It was Bazalgette who incorporated
elements of suspension bridge design into it.
You can argue that the success this brought was limited.
The bridge develop a reputation for instability, and like the first Wandsworth bridge
it never reaped enough revenue from tolls to pay for maintenance and up keep of
the bridge. Speaking of toll booths, these still exist on the bridge, in fact I’ve
painted one of them once. They have signs warning troops to break step when
crossing it.
One of the things that might strike you when you cross the
bridge is how narrow the roadway is. So in practical terms, this is not a great
success as a bridge, and although it is still open to traffic there are very
strict restrictions on its use and it is one of London’s least used bridges.
However on a clear evening, when it’s all lit up with LEDs, it’s undeniably
very, very pretty.
Chelsea Bridge
The purpose of the Victoria Bridge/ Chelsea Bridge 1 was to
facilitate the development of the new Battersea Park area. It was originally
planned in the 1840s. However the work on the Chelsea Embankment caused over a
decade of delays and the bridge was not actually opened until 1858. Photographs
of this first Chelsea Bridge show it as a relatively stately looking suspension
bridge, just a little reminiscent of the current Hammersmith Bridge,
Like a significant number of 18th and 19th
century Thames Bridges this was a toll bridge – which was a bit of a cheek
considering that it was built with public money. Like the majority of those
toll bridges, it was not a commercial success. Which goes to prove the old adage
– if you build it they will come, but they won’t pay to cross over it -. Tolls
were finally abolished in 1879. There’s an interesting story as to why the
bridge was renamed Chelsea Bridge. Basically the structure of the bridge was
unsound and the authorities didn’t want the bridge being associated with the Queen
in case it collapsed.
Even if it had been sound by the 1920s it was obvious that
it could not cope with the amount of traffic wanting to use it which was only
likely to increase. The bridge was finally demolished and replaced by the
current bridge which opened in 1937. The current structure was apparently the
first self-anchored suspension bridge in Britain – which I’m told means that it
is anchored to its own deck rather than to the ground. Fills one with
confidence.
It has always struck me as something of a plain jane of a
bridge. It’s clean and unfussy but lacks adornment when compared with the other
bridges on this section of the river. I don’t know if this is what was meant,
but the pillars carrying the cables above the deck have always looked a bit
like Egyptian obelisks to me.
Grosvenor Railway Bridge
Still, the Grosvenor Railway Bridge was the first to be
built in central London and here Sir John was on much firmer ground should you
pardon the metaphor. His bridge originally carried just 2 tracks across five
arches. Five years later it was widened to add a further four tracks which
would accommodate increased traffic from the London, Brighton and South Coast
Railway and the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. In 1907 the bridge was
widened again to accommodate a further track for the LB&SCR.
Between 1967 and 1968 the bridge was completely renovated
and modernised, and little remains of the materials Fowler originally used apart
from the cores of the original piers. Within a year of the completion of this
work Grosvenor Bridge was claimed to be the world’s busiest railway bridge,
carrying in excess of 1000 trains each day.
Today it’s a perfectly pleasant, unfussy railway bridge,
even if it does lack a little impact.
Vauxhall Bridge
This is the second Vauxhall Bridge. The first had a
complicated genesis. The purpose of the bridge was to open the South Bank of
the Thames for development. There was opposition to the building of any bridge
here from the proprietors of the original Battersea Bridge. In the end the
Vauxhall Bridge Company was obliged to compensate them for any loss of revenue.
The original design was rejected. Then the great John Rennie – don’t worry, we’ll
get to him later – had a design accepted, but the developers ran out of money
to build it. So Rennie submitted a cheaper design. This was rejected. Samuel Bentham
submitted a design. Construction began but it wasn’t long before concern was
expressed about the construction of the piers, and a report by engineer James
Walker led to the design being abandoned. So Walker was appointed to design and
build a bridge of 9 cast iron arches with stone piers, which would be the first
cast iron bridge over the Thames. So, finally the bridge opened in 1816. It was
named the Regent Bridge after the future George IV, but pretty soon afterwards
was renamed Vauxhall Bridge.
The developers believed that the areas either side of the
bridge would become well to do suburbs, so they set high tolls at the start.
Instead the area became home to poor factory workers in the Doulton factory,
and also to the Millbank Penitentiary. Despite this though revenue did improve
from the tolls, until the Metropolitan Board of Works (the Government
department at the time responsible for public infrastructure works) had an Act
of Parliament passed enabling it to buy all of the bridges across the Thames from
Hammersmith Bridge to Waterloo Bridge and abolish the tolls. Vauxhall Bridge
was bought in 1879 and tolls were lifted. Not long after this, though, a report
into the bridge established it was in poor condition and in 1895 an Act of Parliament
was passed allowing the bridge to be replaced.
The original design for the new bridge by London County
Council chief engineer Sir Alexander Binnie was for a steel bridge. Asked to
think again he came up with a five span concrete bridge to be faced with
granite. After the piers had been built it was discovered that the clay of the
riverbed could not support the weight of a concrete bridge, and so the long
suffering Binnie and civil engineer Maurice Fitzmaurice designed a steel
superstructure to fit the piers. During the construction many influential
people commented with dismay about the very functional design and so sculptors
Frederick Pomeroy Alfred Drury were commissioned to make large,
personificational statues which would eventually be attached to the sides of
the bridge. Upstream there are Pomeroy’s Agriculture, Architecture, Engineering
and Pottery, while Drury’s Science, Fine Arts, Local Government and Education
adorn the downstream side.
Vauxhall Bridge was the first bridge to carry trams across
the river. Sadly the tracks were ripped up when trams ceased operating in
London in 1951. There’s been a lot of development in the last 40 years
particularly on the south bank here, and in 2008 the bridge was give a grade
II* listing.
Lambeth Bridge
Back to Lambeth Bridge, then. On the north bank there’s a
road called Horseferry Road on the approach to Lambeth Bridge, which shows that
this was originally the site of a horse drawn ferry. Remember, there was no
other bridge than London Bridge in central London until the 18th
century. The first Lambeth Bridge wasn’t opened until 1862, and it was a plain
and austere suspension bridge. Yes, it was a toll bridge and no, the tolls didn’t
raise the expected revenue. This is a story we’ve heard before. The LCC bought
it in 1879 and abolished the tolls. The Metropolitan Board of Works found that
the bridge – less than two decades old at this point – was badly corroded, and
vehicles were banned from it in 1910.
Parliamentary approval for a replacement road bridge was
granted in the 1920s, but a flood in the area before work had begun delayed the
building of the bridge. Finally the current five span steel arch bridge opened
in 1932.
Westminster Bridge
A bridge at Westminster was first proposed during the Restoration
period, but the opposition of the Corporation of London and the waterman’s
lobby proved a tough obstacle to shift. It wasn’t until after London’s second
bridge was built at Putney that Parliament approved the building of a bridge at
Westminster, and even then it took 11 years to build, finally opening in 1750. Wordsworth
wrote his poem about the bridge in 1802, but even then it was probably
suffering from the design flaws that would see it suffering from incurable
subsidence by the time it reached its centenary. Like London Bridge the original
Westminster Bridge consisted of many narrow arches, and the narrowness of the
arches contributed to the current scouring the river bed away which led to the
subsidence.
The bridge was then demolished and the current Westminster
Bridge was built to replace it. It was opened in 1862. The bridge has 7 cast
iron arches, and much of the ornamentation was designed by Charles Barry, who was the architect of the Palace of Westminster which was in the middle of the
long process of being built at the time. The current Westminster Bridge might
not be the most beautiful on the river, although it’s perfectly inoffensive.
However, it has to be said that if you’re standing on the Southern end of the
bridge the view to the northern end, taking in the Palace of Westminster and in
particular the Elizabeth Tower – commonly known as Big Ben – is one of the finest
on any bridge across the Thames.
Trying to be a little less damning of the original bridge,
it did at least have the effect of opening the door to the development of more
bridges in London. Prior to the building of Westminster bridge, only 1 new
bridge, Putney, had been built in the previous 500 years. In less than 30 years
four more had been built.
Currently, Westminster Bridge is the oldest road bridge
across the Thames in central London, albeit that Richmond Bridge is many
decades older.
Hungerford Bridge and Golden Jubilee Bridges
Right, here’s a question for you. If you asked this question - can you name a Victorian Engineer? - whose would be the name that came
up more than any other? Chances are it would be Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Brunel
was the chief supervising engineer of the Thames Tunnel from Wapping to
Rotherhithe that had been designed by his father Marc Brunel. He didn’t design
or build any of the existing bridges across the Thames in London, however he did
design and build the original Hungerford Bridge.
This was a suspension bridge opened in 1845 carrying railway lines across the river from the then Hungerford market to what would become the Waterloo area. In 1859 the bridge was bought by the South Eastern Railway, to extend the line into the new Charing Cross station. The decision was made to replace the bridge. It’s a bit of a shame since Brunel’s bridge was actually rather picturesque. Contemporary pictures show that a pair of rather fetching Italianate red brick towers supported the central span. These were demolished but the new bridge did use the buttresses of Brunel’s bridge. You might well have seen or even passed over a bridge held up by the chains from Brunel’s Hungerford Bridge since these were reused in Brunel’s Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol. (Yes, I know that the Clifton Bridge was finished by William Barlow and Sir John Hawkshaw who made some pretty substantial revisions to Brunel's design. I'm impressed if you did.)
The new bridge, which is the current bridge, was a nine-span
wrought iron steel truss bridge, made of lattice girders. You have to look
quite closely to see the details from some angles, mind you, and I do find my attention is drawn away by the white pylons of the two Golden Jubilee bridges and the cables supporting the walkways. The bridge was
originally built with walkways on either side, but the western one was removed
when the railway bridge was widened. In 1996 a competition was held to design
new footbridges either side of the railway bridge, since the lone walkway had
become dilapidated and was felt to be too narrow.
Not claims you could make about the new bridges which are both four metres wide. I have to say that the large white slanting pylons from
which the deck is suspended seem to enter into a rather unsettling dialogue
with the Victorian appearance of the railway bridge sandwiched between them,
but on a sunny day I find the bridges very pleasant to walk across. As for the
name, well with them opening in 2002, the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden
Jubilee, it’s a bit of a no-brainer.
Waterloo Bridge
Let’s talk about the old bridge for a while, though. My
favourite bridge ever to cross the Thames is Old London Bridge. We’ll come to my
favourite existing bridge in the fullness of time. Still, I do also have a soft
spot for old Waterloo Bridge. This was originally designed by the Scottish engineer
John Rennie as the Strand Bridge, for the obvious reason it could be accessed
from The Strand. Before it was complete the Battle of Waterloo had been fought
and won and the bridge was renamed Waterloo Bridge. John Rennie would go on to
design the new London Bridge which would be opened in 1831, and there were
certainly similarities in the design of the two bridges. Like people, some
bridges are naturally more photogenic than others, or should I say, more picturesque.
Waterloo Bridge scored highly on this scale. Constable painted its opening, and
Claude Monet painted it no fewer than 41times.
The same scour from the river flow which had earlier done
for the first Westminster Bridge was found to be damaging the foundations of
Waterloo bridge by the mid-1880s. Urgent remedial work had to be carried out
during the 1920s, but this was only ever a temporary solution and in the 1930s
the London County Council made the decision to demolish it and replace it,
despite some opposition from early proponents of architectural conservation.
Right, what links both Waterloo Bridge and the traditional
British red telephone box? Yes, both were designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.
Scott freely admitted that he was an architect and not an engineer, which is
perhaps why you get to see so little of the actual engineering of the bridge
from the outside. Look, I’ve put on record that I don’t like looking at large
amounts of concrete on the exterior of a structure. However the first time I really
looked at Waterloo Bridge I was impressed by how modern it looked. To me at that
time in the mid 70s it looked every bit as modern as the recently opened London
Bridge. Well, you live and learn, I suppose. For some time after it was opened it was known as the Ladies’ Bridge because of the large numbers of women who
worked on its construction during the Second World War.
Since World War II Waterloo Bridge has had a fairly
uneventful history, with the exception of the Georgy Markov incident. Georgy
Markov was a Bulgarian dissident who worked for the BBC world service, and a
vocal critic of the Soviet bloc. In 1978 he walked across Waterloo Bridge, and
when he had crossed it he was injected with a poisoned micro pellet, probably
by the tip of an umbrella. He died four days later.
Coming back to the original bridge when it was demolished blocks of granite from it were sent to Commonwealth countries across the world. The silver grey beech piles were also cut up and used to make thousands of boxes, many of which were sold during the Festival of Britain. I have several of these boxes in my own small collection.
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| Old Waterloo Bridge - I couldn't resist doing this one as well |
Blackfriars Bridge
You know, if you take the time to think a little about the
names of various places you can learn a bit about their history. If we take a
very simple one to start with, the name Hammersmith might lead you to think
that it was originally a district where blacksmiths made tools. You’d be right
to think so, although by the time my 3x great grandparents were living there it
was nicknamed Laundry Island. I digress. So the area of Blackfriars derives
from a Dominican Priory built there in the 1270s. The Dominican order of monks
were nicknamed the Black Friars from the black robes they wore. This compares
with the Grey Friars – the Franciscans and the White Friars - the Carmelites.
The Black Friars were pretty much the Stormtroopers of the medieval Catholic
Church.
The priory had gone a long time before the first
Blackfriars Bridge was built. Yes, Blackfriars was one of the bridges built in
the couple of decades following the original Westminster Bridge. Begun in 1760
it was opened 9 years later. This was a bridge of 9 arches made of Portland
stone. Judging by paintings and engravings of the first bridge it was a rather
attractive Italianate structure. Officially it was named the William Pitt
Bridge after the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Elder, whose reputation was
at its zenith in 1760 following the successful conclusion of the Seven Years
War, but it was the informal name based on the district on the North bank that
was served by the bridge that caught hold.
What happened to the bridge afterwards is a fairly familiar
story. While the bridge may have looked elegant and classy, it’s construction
was not made to stand the test of time. Any bridge built in the 18th
century faced a number of challenges. Britain was in the middle of the period
known as the ‘little ice age’ during which the winters were more severe than
they are now. During the life of the first Blackfriars Bridge the Thames froze
over so badly in 1789 and 1814 that Frost Fairs were recorded as being held on the Thames. The 1814 frost,
and the disastrous effects of its thawing sounded the death knell for Old
London Bridge. Immediately following the opening of John Rennie’s London Bridge,
old London Bridge with its 19 narrow arches was demolished. This had the effect
of removing a huge obstacle to the river, which increased its flow and the
scouring effect of the current on bridge foundations. This effect was noticeable
on Blackfriars’ Bridge where extensive repair work was necessary from 1833 for
the rest of the decade. The bridge was finally demolished in 1860.
Building of the replacement bridge was hampered when the
company that won the contract had issues finding stable foundations, which led
to financial issues which bankrupted their main supplier. It wasn’t until 1869
that the current five span wrought iron arched bridge was opened by Queen
Victoria.
Blackfriars Bridge took on a certain amount of notoriety when the body of Italian banker Roberto Calvi was found hanging from one of its arches in 1982. Rumours and unconfirmed stories have since surfaced suggesting that Calvi was murdered by the Italian Mafia, to whom he allegedly owed a lot of money. An Italian court case in 2007 failed to convict men who were accused of carrying out the murder due to lack of evidence.
Blackfriars Railway Bridge
This gets a little complicated. Because, you see, there
were actually two Blackfriars Railway Bridges, one of which, the one in the
picture, remains. The older of the two was the one which was demolished. It was
opened in 1864 by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. When the bridge was
demolished the huge abutments on either side were preserved in place and these
bear the arms of the company, They’re something to look out for any time you go
to see the Thames bridges for yourself. After the company was subsumed into the
Southern Railway in the 1920s, cross channel traffic was allocated to other
routes. By the time of demolition the bridge was just too weak to bear the
weight of modern trains. The columns that carried the bridge were left in place
and can still be seen alongside the second Blackfriars Railway Bridge.
The second bridge opened in 1886 and was originally called
the St. Paul’s railway bridge. This too was built for the London, Chatham and
Dover Railway. It was designed by William Mills of the railway company, John
Wolfe Barry who would later design Tower Bridge and Henry Marc Brunel (Isambard’s
nipper). It was made with five arches constructed from wrought iron. The
original design called for four tracks but this was increased to seven. The
bridge served St. Paul’s station. This was renamed Blackfriars which became the
name of the bridge from then onwards.
Following the demolition of the other Blackfriars Railway
Bridge, the columns were partially used to support the extension of the
platforms of Blackfriars Station across the bridge. The roofs of the platforms
were installed with solar panels. It makes Blackfriars Railway Bridge the only ‘solar
bridge’ in the UK, and the longest of only three in the whole world.
Millennium Bridge
The competition to design the new footbridge took place in
1996. The winning design from Arup Group, Foster and partners and Sir Anthony
Caro took its inspiration from a blade of light. And what an innovative design
it is. When you look at the bridge you may be surprised to learn that it is a
suspension bridge. A suspension bridge? But where are the cables? Ah, that’s
one of the clever things. They are below the deck which means that the view
from the deck itself is brilliantly unobstructed. Although possibly the finest view
is looking across the bridge itself from the southern end, where the majestic
bulk of St. Paul’s Cathedral in all its glory seems to beckon you forward. All of
which makes the Millennium Bridge a structure which looks far better to my mind
from on the deck of the bridge, than from the river, where I find that the
blocky concrete supports are a little clunky looking, and the thin metal
profile of the deck just a little underwhelming.
Okay, let’s get the W word on the table. That word is
wobble. The Millennium Bridge was opened on 10h June 2000 and on that day many
people walking across the bridge reported that they could feel it wobbling. I
don’t want to get too technical (because I can’t) but basically suspension
bridges, far from being absolutely rigid, have a capacity to sway slightly. The
Millenium Bridge originally had a tendency to slightly sway from side to side,
as opposed to a traditional suspension bridge having a tendency to move up and
down slightly. The sway caused people unconsciously to start walking in time to
the bridge’s swaying which had the effect of increasing the sway. This is
related to, although not the same as the vertical sway that caused the Tacoma
Narrows bridge to shake itself to pieces in a very famous piece of film.
The engineers at Arup solved the issue through the fitting
of fluid dampers, which I guess are like shock absorbers to the bridge, and in
more than two decades since there haven’t been any reports of any issues with
wobble. I’ve walked across it myself many times, and although I was more than
up for a bit of a wobble I didn’t feel anything. Still, give a dog a bad name.
It’s still not unusual to hear it referred to as the Wobbly Bridge.
Southwark Bridge
It wasn’t until 1811 that Parliament passed the bill for
the building of the first Southwark Bridge, and work didn’t start until 1813.
The bridge was designed by John Rennie who also had Waterloo Bridge on the go
at the same time and would design the replacement for Old London Bridge. This
first Southwark Bridge had three cast iron spans supported by granite piers. In
Charles Dickens’ “Little Dorrit” there are several references to the Iron Bridge
across the river and I had to do a little bit of research to find out that this
was a reference to the original Southwark Bridge. The main purpose of the
bridge was to relieve traffic upon Old London Bridge. Contemporary reports
showed that it was pretty unsuccessful at attracting traffic away from Old
London Bridge. There were a number of reasons why. Firstly there were tolls. Who
was going to pay to use Southwark Bridge when Blackfriars and old London Bridge
were free? Then the bridge itself was pretty narrow. The approach roads were
steep and on the Southwark side very poorly made up.
Predictably enough the bridge company went bankrupt and the
bridge was acquired by the Bridge House Estates which operated a number of bridges
including London Bridge – we’ll talk more about Bridge House Estates when we
get to London Bridge. The tolls were abolished in 1864. The bridge limped on
into the 20th century. To be fair judging by photographs showing the
bridge it was not a bad looking thing at all. Still it was living on borrowed
time and the new bridge, the current bridge, was constructed between 1913 and
1921.
Southwark Bridge has five steel arches supported by granite
river piers. On top of the piers on each side of the bridge are alcoves for
pedestrians to sit and take a break. This echoes a feature of the last phase of
old London Bridge, which I’ll say a little more about when I get there. All in
all the current Southwark Bridge is a perfectly decent river crossing, however
it does hold the unenviable record of being the least used of all of the Thames
bridges in London.
Cannon Street Railway Bridge
The bridge was damaged during world war II and had to be partially
rebuilt. Then in the 1980s British railways carried out an extensive renovation
and removed much of the ornamentation on the superstructure. Thankfully they
left the two original brick towers facing onto the waterfront on the City side.
There it is, not a lot more that I think I can say about it.
London Bridge
Nobody knows exactly how many wooden bridges were built
here across the Thames after the Romans built the first around 50AD. During the
reign of King Ethelred II (nicknamed the Unready) the story goes that one of his
allies pulled down the then bridge to thwart the Danish armies. This was
commemorated in a poem by skaldic poet Ottar Svarte, and some people believe
that this poem, the first lines of which translate as
‘London Bridge is broken down,
Gold is won and bright renown’ – is actually the origin of
the nursery rhyme London Bridge is Falling Down.
The decision to rebuild London Bridge in stone was taken
during the reign of King Henry II and work began in 1176, under the direction
of local parish priest Peter de Colechurch. It was completed in the reign of
King John in 1209. Although we don’t have any images or written descriptions of
the bridge at the time it’s most likely that it had buildings on the
superstructure right from the start. Buildings on the bridge were demolished or
destroyed and rebuilt for over 500 years until the extensive remodelling from
1758 - 1760 when all the buildings were
removed. There was a fortified gateway at the southern end, where severed heads
were displayed after the drawbridge gate was demolished. The drawbridge itself
could be raised twice a day to let ships through, although it ceased to
function and was made solid in the remodelling at the start of the fifteenth
century. The most notable feature of the bridge until the 16th century was the
Chapel of St. Thomas a Becket. Becket was the patron saint of the City of
London and had actually been a parishioner of Peter de Colechurch. The chapel stood
on the thickest pier, just over halfway across from the Southwark side. During
the Tudor reformation Henry VIII had the chapel demolished. During the reign of
Henry’s daughter Elizabeth I a partially prefabricated timber house, probably
manufactured in the Netherlands, had large parts of it ferried to the bridge,
where it was erected. It was called Nonesuch House and it stood in increasingly
dilapidated condition until all the buildings were removed from the bridge.
A number of interesting events punctuate the bridge’s
history. The current London Bridge and several other Thames bridges are cared
for by the Bridge House estates. This is a charitable organisation and dates
back more than 900 years, predating old London Bridge itself. There have been
times when the old bridge was taken out of their care. Notably King Edward I
gave over the care of the bridge to his mother, Eleanor of Provence – who is believed to be the my fair
lady of the nursery rhyme. She proved expert at gathering the tolls, but not so good at using them on
the maintenance of the bridge. During her stewardship part of the bridge
collapsed. Maintenance of the bridge was a problem throughout its 600+ year
history. It had 19 narrow arches, which greatly reduced the width of the river
in real terms and meant each pier was under huge hydraulic pressure.
If you were coming from the Continent the only way to get to
Westminster or the City of London was by taking a water ferry, or by crossing
London Bridge. So it was the scene of a great deal of pageantry, and not a little
bloodshed. In 1381 the leaders of the Peasants Revolt threatened to set fire to
the bridge if the citizens did not lower the drawbridge to let the ‘peasant
army’ cross. Later on in Richard II’s reign it was also the scene of a magnificent
joust between the champions of England and Scotland. (Scotland won 1-0)
The Chapel of Thomas Becket was often used as the starting
point for pilgrimages to his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral and the chapel was
rebuilt in about 1400 with money from the charitable bequest of the real Lord
Mayor Dick Whittington. During Jack Cade’s rebellion in the reign of Henry VI
the rebels were defeated in battle on London Bridge itself.
I’ve already mentioned the nineteen narrow arches. In the
mid 18th century remodelling when all of the houses were remove from
the bridge the two central arches were combined to make one ‘great arch’. This
did not prevent the Thames from freezing over during particularly cold winters
and in 1814 it caused the last of London’s Frost Fairs. When the thaw came the large
chunks of ice shooting through the arches caused a lot of damage to the bridge
and within a few years it was accepted that the bridge would have to be
replaced. Demolition didn’t actually start until after the replacement bridge
opened slightly downstream in August 1831.
There are remnants of Old London Bridge you can see if you
know where to find them. In the 18th century remodelling, some of
the piers were topped with curved alcoves. When his Dad was imprisoned in the
Marshalsea Prison young Charles Dickens used to go and sit in these to watch
the world go past him. You can find one of these in the grounds of nearby Guys’ Hospital and another 2 in Victoria Park in Hackney. The Museum of London
has smaller remains on display too. The church of St. Magnus the Martyr on the
Northern bank of the Thames was actually the start of the roadway onto the
bridge and the churchyard has several blocks which were part of the bridge
which were uncovered during work on a nearby building in the 1930s.
Right, that’s the old bridge, which is the longest lasting
and for me the most interesting bridge ever to span the Thames. Now we come to
Rennie’s Bridge. Rennie’s design was one of five that were considered, eventually
winning approval. The foundation stone was laid in 1825. Rennie died four years
earlier but work on the bridge of five stone arches was carried out under the
direction of his son, another John Rennie. For the first few decades after its
1831 opening many people expressed admiration for the bridge and the way it
dealt with traffic far better than the old bridge had ever done. Still, it was
probably unrealistic to expect that John Rennie, designing the bridge in the
second decade of the 19th century could possibly foresee the
exponential increase in traffic over the second half of the 19th
century. By the end of the century there was a desperate need for the capacity
of the bridge to be increased and it was widened. Within a few years surveys
revealed that the bridge was subsiding by an inch every eight years, with the
east side subsiding more severely than the west side.
Hence the decision to replace the bridge. It was a man
called Ivan Luckin who proposed the idea of selling the bridge. Despite initial
scepticism from the City Council the bridge was put on the market in 1968. On the 18th
April it was bought by US oilman Robert P. McCullough who envisioned it could
be the centrepiece of his Lake Havasu resort.
There is an urban myth that Robert McCullough thought he
was actually buying Tower Bridge. There is a word for this. It’s cobblers. Mr.
McCullough was fully aware of what he was buying. During negotiations there was
even a scale model of London Bridge on the table in front of him. So the stones
of the bridge were numbered, dismantled, shipped off to Lake Havasu and rebuilt
there. Well, sort of. Some of the stones were certainly numbered and shipped
off. Not until after they had been shaved so that they could be fitted as
facing stones over the new concrete frame which had been built to hold them. A
lot of stone was sold off and a lot was just let in an abandoned and flooded
quarry. A very large number of souvenirs were made from discarded stones – I myself
have a small block, an ash tray and a desk set.
The current bridge was built while Rennie’s was being
demolished. They would work on for example the upstream side while the
downstream side would continue to be open to traffic, then vice versa when that
side as finished. Finally it was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1973.
So, the current bridge consists of three spans of
prestressed concrete box girders. Nope, me neither. From the river side, well,
it looks alright if you like concrete, I suppose. Its bland. On anything except
the sunniest day its sides look grey and miserable. No, in order to get the best
view of the bridge you need to get up on the walkways.
Wide, isn’t it? It carries 6 lanes of traffic across the
river. I’ve seen a number of websites claiming that Wandsworth Bridge is London’s
busiest but I wouldn’t be surprised if London Bridge gives it a fair old run
for its metaphorical money. London Bridge at the time I’m writing this is only
fifty one years old, and I reckon it will need to be at least double that age
before we can really start to decide whether it has stood the test of time. But
based on what we’ve seen since it opened, I’d say it scores highly for
functionality. For aesthetics? Nah, not so much.
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| Old London Bridge - the most remarkable bridge ever to cross the Thames ( or any other river in my opinion) |
Tower Bridge
So our journey ends where my 1982 journey began, at Tower Bridge. When you talk or you write about Tower Bridge as a bridge you’re up against the fact that Tower Bridge isn’t just a bridge. It’s a world landmark and it’s also a symbol. For many years as a teacher, in my first lesson with a new year 7 class I would draw several symbols on the board to show the kids things about me, if they could work them out. For example I would draw a stork with a bundle and ‘x5’ to show them that I have five children. To show them that I come from London I would draw a simplified outline of Tower Bridge. And to be fair, it nearly always worked. For Tower Bridge transcends its existence as a mere river crossing. It is nothing less than a symbol of London. There are two structures which evoke in me a feeling of pride in London and a nostalgia for growing up there. The dome of St. Paul’s is one, and Tower Bridge is the other.
Through the second half of the 19th century the development of the East End led to increasing demand for a new bridge downstream of London Bridge. The opening of Rennie’s London Bridge in 1831 led to a huge increase in traffic, so much so that London Bridge would need to be widened in 1901, and the need for a new bridge to relieve the congestion became more pressing throughout the 1870s. An 1876 report recommended the building of either a new bridge or a new tunnel to the east of London Bridge. More than fifty designs were submitted, but in 8 years all that the committee of the Bridge House Estates had managed to do was to decide that the bridge would only be one of three designs of 2 types – either one of two designs of swing bridge, or a bascule bridge. A bascule bridge was decided upon, and an act of Parliament passed to the effect in 1885.
The Act imposed some stringent conditions on the design of the bridge. Boiling these down to essentials, the bridge would have to ensure that it was no obstacle to tall ships passing into the Pool of London to load and unload at the wharves on the Southwark side of the river. Also, the design of the Bridge had to match the architecture of the Tower of London. There was also a stipulation that the construction of the bridge had to be completed within four years. This necessitated a further two Acts of Parliament to extend the timescale of the construction.
Horace Jones as architect and Sir John Wolfe Barry as engineer designed the bridge in a way that fulfilled the conditions of the Act of Parliament. Jones died before the completion and Barry took over as architect as well as engineer. In Jones’ original design the façade was meant to be red brick but the changes to a more ornate Victorian Gothic style were thought to be more in keeping with the Tower of London.
Tower Bridge was a target for enemy bombing raids during the Second World War and although it was fortunate enough to escape a devastating direct hit it did suffer damage on a number of occasions.
There are few more archetypal London experiences for which there is no charge than standing by the river either a little upstream or downstream of the bridge and watching the bridge being raised and lowered. If you’re visiting London you have a pretty decent chance of being able to do so because the bridge currently is raised about a 1000 times a year. Which is considerably less than the first 12 months of its operation, when it was raised over 6000 times. To be fair at that time the Port of London was probably the busiest in the world so there was a lot more traffic on the river.
Coming back to the untrue urban myth about Robert P. McCullough believing he was buying Tower Bridge, which we discussed along with London Bridge, the origin of this possibly lies in the fact that many people other than Londoners, do actually think that Tower Bridge is London Bridge. I can sort of understand this. London Bridge has the history, the famous name, the song. But it really doesn’t look the business. Tower Bridge looks the part. So, not London Bridge, no. But London’s Bridge, yes, that I can get on board with.
--------------------------
If you were kind enough to follow what I wrote about
drawing all of the stations on the London Underground, then you might remember
how I went on to extend the challenge to include every station on the London
Overground and the Docklands Light Railway. It’s okay if you didn’t, I can’t
say that I blame you. Well, a similar thing has occurred to me that I should extend
this challenge to include all of the tunnels beneath the Thames in the Greater
London area.
Well, I say all of them. I don’t actually mean tunnels
which have only ever carried utility cables. There are nine of these that I
know of in the specified area. However there are 17 tunnels that have carried
the public in one form of transport or another, only one of which no longer
does so. These are the ones I want to work on.
Drawing tunnels, however, is by no means as straightforward
as drawing bridges. So I’ve had to think about the ways I want to do it. The
foot tunnels (and the tower subway) are easy enough, since I will draw the
entrances. The road tunnels, ditto. The train tunnels, well, this calls for a
little more thought. If you’ve ever travelled in a tube train you’ll know that
there really ain’t a great deal to see in the tunnels themselves. So what I
plan to do is to sketch the exterior of a station at either end of the tunnel,
or the platform of the station. Is that acceptable to everyone? Well, I shan’t
lose any sleep over it if it isn’t because that’s how we’re going to do it.
Victoria Line tunnel – Vauxhall to Pimlico
Pimlico is interesting because it wasn’t on the original
plans for the Victoria Line, which meant that it was the last to open. This may
account for the fact that all of the other stations on the Victoria Line also
connect with at least one other line, but Pimlico doesn’t. Pimlico does at
least serve people visiting the original Tate Gallery, Tate Britain.
*Digression Warning* I grew up in the London Borough of
Ealing and one of the things my home borough is renowned for is Ealing Film
Studios. In the immediate post war period Ealing studios made a series of
comedy films which were extremely successful and one of the most famous of
these was called “Passport to Pimlico”. Basically the plot concerned the
residents of Pimlico finding that Pimlico had been given to the Dukes of
Burgundy in the middle ages and this had never been repealed. Said residents
then throw away their ration books and assert their independence. Allowing for
the way that a nation’s collective sense of humour can shift over the decades it’s
a funny film, but one which also manages to make a point about post war
austerity in the Britain in which my parents grew up.
At the other end of the tunnel is Vauxhall Station. Back in the good old days when I was cycling past the station on my way between home and university, old Vauxhall station really wasn’t a lot to write home about. It’s still there, but what has grown up around it is remarkable. Vauxhall has become a huge transport hub, and the entrances to the subterranean tube stations are visions of the future in chromium and glass. I’ll be honest, when work was going on a couple of years ago and I was visiting London with my daughter and grandson we took a double decker bus from Wimbledon to Vauxhall Bridge and I found the whole scale of the tube and bus station complex rather oppressive. That’s just a personal opinion and please feel free to disagree.
Jubilee Line Extension tunnel – Waterloo to
Westminster
The Jubilee Line section of Westminster station opened in
1999 and I visited it within a year of the opening. This was the London
Underground Jim, but not as I knew it. Once you go through the entrance you are
struck by the fact that this is by no means a beautiful station, but my
goodness, it has a scale that inspires admiration. The elevators to the deep
level Jubilee Line platforms are supported by columns and even today to ride
them is to experience what early 20th century visions of the city of
the future thought it would be like.
In the original plans for the Jubilee Line it was never
envisaged that the line would pass through Westminster. When the time came at
the end of the 20th century to make the Jubilee Line extension the
decision was made to connect with Waterloo station, and a tunnel between a new
deep level Westminster station and Waterloo seemed the best way of doing it.
I’ve used metros and subways in many European countries,
and Westminster station reminds me quite a lot of an archetypal European Metro
station. Only the Jubilee Line on the London Underground has automatic doors
allowing passengers to access the trains and this is far more common in Europe.
Bakerloo and Northern Line Tunnel – Waterloo to
Embankment
The Bakerloo Line of the London Underground began life as
the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway. According to various sources they had the
devil’s own job raising finances, eventually selling out to Charles Tyson
Yerkes' Underground Electric Railways of London, laying the foundations for what
would eventually become London Transport.
The tunnel benefited greatly from the experience of building deep level tube lines which had been gained by the engineers of the City and South London Railway, the world’s first deep level underground railway. It used the Greathead tunnelling method. Greathead adapted the tunnel shield invented by Marc Brunel (more on him later) for the Thames tunnel. Instead of having brick walls built up behind the shield as it was cut and pushed forward, the tunnel linings were made of cast iron rings bolted together. Greathead had used the system first when building the Tower Subway - we'll get there, don't worry.
Greathead's method had two benefits – the workers were at
less risk of the tunnel collapsing, which is never a bad thing, and they could
also progress much more quickly. Despite this there were still several blowouts of the compressed air used in the tunnels during construction. The north tunnel was built first, and the southern one was begun
when it was completed.
As for the Northern Line, well this had its origins in two
railway companies. The City and South London Railway, as already mentioned was
the world’s first deep level tube line and originally ran between Stockwell and
it’s first terminus in the City at King William Street. This was later
abandoned. The Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway opened in 1907,
running from Charing Cross north to Hampstead. It was soon extended to
Embankment. The 1926 tunnels were built as part of a scheme to link the two
sections of the Northern Line by making it possible to travel directly from
Embankment to Kennington, and it made sense to create an interchange with the
Bakerloo Line at Waterloo in the process.
What do we know about Waterloo? Well, according to Abba at
Waterloo is where Napoleon did surrender. Good song, although not historically
accurate. Napoleon fled after the battle and didn’t actually surrender until he
was on board HMS Bellerophon. Still, the station isn’t named after the Battle
of Waterloo. The station is named after nearby Waterloo Bridge. THAT was named
after the battle. In fact that station was originally called Waterloo Bridge,
but the Bridge was dropped from the name in the 1880s.
The station predates the underground by about 15 years,
opening in 1848. I made the point earlier about the relative lack of
Underground Stations south of the Thames and if you need any more proof of the
way that the south of the river has always been the poor relation of the
Underground network, try this. After the first Underground stations in London
opened in 1863 it was 35 years before Waterloo got its first underground
station, despite being one of the busiest railway stations in the country. That
was the Waterloo and City Line, about which I’ll write more when the time comes.
The Bakerloo Line opened in 1906 and the station building was a rather nice
Leslie Green job, with his trademark oxblood red tiles. This was demolished to
make way for the Festival of Britain in 1951. The temporary station put in its
place looked like a really interesting modern design, but it was replaced by a
far less interesting station building incorporated into the Shell Mex Building.
That too was more recently demolished. A couple of years ago as part of the
development of the site a new station entrance opened. This is of a far more interesting
appearance, a modern building with echoes of motifs occurring in the work of
Leslie Green. I like it.
Embankment, then. As far as I know nobody ever claimed that
Napoleon did surrender at Embankment, which is just as well because as we know,
he didn’t. The station was opened as early as 1870, because its also on the
District and Circle lines. Like the Metropolitan Railway, the Metropolitan District
Railway was built as a sub-surface railway, with the underground stations being
constructed by the cut and cover method. Dig a trench for the railway, make the
tunnels and stations, cover them over, job’s a good ‘un. The first deep level
platforms for the Bakerloo opened in 1906, and for the Northern in 1914, several
years before the tunnel under the river to Waterloo was built. Here’s a rather
interesting fact. The Bakerloo called the station Embankment, while the
District had always called it Charing Cross!
The railway tunnels between Waterloo and Embankment were
lucky during the war. They were not damaged, however a disused loop tunnel was struck
by a bomb, breached and flooded. It had been sealed off when it was abandoned
and caused no damage to the network when it was hit. Electrically powered flood
gates were applied to either end of the tunnel in the early months of the war.
Waterloo and City Line – Waterloo to
Bank/Monument
However. Building railways and railway lines in the UK and
especially London was not an easy business. Following the Railway mania of the
late 1840’s investors had become a lot more cautious. So had Parliament, ad you couldn't build a railway without an Act of Parliament. In
1846 alone, over 200 Acts of Parliament for new railways were passed. After the Railway boom collapsed, Parliament became a lot more wary. So a
number of schemes were proposed and reached various stages of development but
none of them came anywhere close to fruition. Finally the proposal for what
became the Waterloo and City Line was put forward in 1891. The LSWR were very
much in support although the line would be independent at least at the start.
It took two years for the proposal to result in the necessary Act of Parliament.
Engineered using the Greathead Shield (James Greathead was
one of the chief engineers on the project) the line reaches its deepest point
beneath the Thames.
We’ve already said a bit about the Waterloo Underground
stations. The Waterloo and City Line was the first railway to serve Bank Station. Only,
it wasn’t called Bank station, it was called City station, which does actually
make sense of calling the line the Waterloo and City line. At more or less the
same time the Central London Railway – the core of the Central Line – were building
into the station and they were the first ones to call it Bank Station. There
you go.
Incidentally, at the time of writing and for large parts of
its history, I think that the Waterloo and City Line is the only tunnel under the
Thames that doesn’t work at weekends.
In the picture I’ve drawn a 1940 stock train, partly
because these were the trains that ran along the ’Drain’, as the line was
nicknamed when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s. As for the line itself, this was
continually owned by mainline railway companies – the LSWR from 1906, the Southern
Railway in 1921 and British Railways in 1948. It wasn’t until 1994 that it was
bought by London Underground. Mind you, they only had to pay a quid for it, so
fair’s fair. Coming back to the 1940s rolling stock, on the surface it really
looked quite like a tube train. But there were things about I that were more
like a British Railways train. On the odd occasions I’ve used the line since
the 80s, that’s pretty much how I’ve felt about the whole line. It’s like the
Tube. . . yet not quite. No, I can’t be much clearer than that.
Northern Line – London Bridge to Bank/Monument
We’ve already discussed the Northern line. So let’s start
off by discussing London Bridge station. There’s quite a bit to say. London
Bridge is the oldest ailway station in Central London. It was originally built
by the London and Greenwich Railway and it opened in 1836. During the 19th
century it served a number of different railway companies before coming under
the Southern Railway in 1921, and then British Railways in 1947.
There was no underground station at London Bridge until the
year 1900. The unusual thing about this was that the tunnel which carried the
City and South London Railway (C&SLR) beneath the Thames had already had
opened 10 years earlier. For reasons best known to themselves the C&SLR did
not create a station at London Bridge in their original line from King William
Street to Stockwell. The station at the southern end of the tunnel underneath
the river was Borough.
King William Street was proven to be unsuitable in the
first years of the line’s operation. Trains had to face a steep incline up from
the cross river tunnel into the station and the original electric locomotives
used on the line were underpowered and could only reach King William Street
with some difficulty. When the railway undertook to extend the line to Moorgate
they also took the decision to abandon King William Street. The original
tunnels were blocked up and a new pair constructed along with a new underground
station at London Bridge.
Tower Subway
So, then, the Tower Subway. This is a tunnel running from
Tower Hill on the north side to Vine Lane off Tooley Street on the south side.
The Tower Subway was built using the Barlow-Greathead shield tunnelling method which
would later be adopted for many deep level tube lines in London and elsewhere. Peter
Barlow patented a shield design for digging out tunnels and applying cast iron
rings to the walls, but it was Barlow’s former pupil James Greathead who patented
the machine to apply the all-important grouting needed to make the tunnel safe
and secure.
When the tunnel was complete the floor was lain with a
narrow gauge railway. One railway car, carrying a maximum of 12 passengers was
hauled across by stationary steam engines on either side, pulling the car along
by cable. This was not a conspicuous or commercial success and the company went
bankrupt before the end of the opening year, 1870. The railway was removed in
December of the same year.
The tunnel reopened as a foot tunnel on Christmas Eve 1870,
for the toll of a halfpenny. It was successful for a while, too. Around twenty
thousand people a week used the tunnel at its height. However, this golden
period of the tunnel subway’s life was curtailed with the opening of nearby
Tower Bridge – which had no tolls - in 1894. By 1897 the subway’s days of being
open to the public were over. It was sold to the London Hydraulic Power Company
and served as a hydraulic mains.
A bomb exploded very close to the tunnel in 1940, but it
did not penetrate the tunnel ad although some repair work was needed the tunnel
was found to be in generally very good repair.
The former hydraulic tubes now carry fibre optic cables and
the tunnel also carries water mains. The original northern entrance on Tower
Hill still stands, but the southern one was demolished and replaced in the 90s.
Thames Tunnel – Rotherhithe to Wapping Overground
From the second half of the 18th century there
was an increasing need for cross river connections as London grew as a port. As
a concept the appeal of a tunnel is that it causes no obstruction to the river
and places no restriction on shipping. In reality, though, while it’s difficult
and dangerous to built a bridge across a river such as the Thames, the danger
and difficulty raise exponentially when you try to build a tunnel. As great an
engineer as Richard Trevithick failed to do so between 1805 and 1809. He was
using tried and tested tunneling methods he had developed in Cornish mines, but
these were impractical for the soft clay and quicksand beneath the Thames.
Marc Brunel is probably most famous today for being the
father of the illustrious Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Marc Brunel had first
emigrated to New York during the French Revolution, then moved to London 1799,
where he married Sarah Kingdom. During the Napoleonic Wars Brunel invented machinery
which automated the production of pulley blocks for the Royal Navy. They
dragged their heels over payment, and debt would be a problem for him for years
to come.
As early as the second decade of the 19th century Brunel had turned his genius towards the problems of tunnelling. He took inspiration from the teredo navalis – the common shipworm and the way that it lines its tunnels with excreted material. Brunel invented and in 1818 patented a tunneling shield device. His shield was a large, rectangular, scaffold-like iron structure with three levels and twelve sections per level and a solid weight-bearing top. The earth behind the face of the shield was kept in place by planks. One plank at a time could be removed, the earth behind it excavated, and then the plank removed and another replaced. Once the twelve sections had been completely excavated, then the shield could be pushed forward by hydraulic jacks, and the bare walls of the tunnel could be faced with bricks. The shield offered the real possibility that a tunnel could be built underneath the Thames. By 1824 Brunel had enough financial support, when the Thames Tunnel Company was formed.
The start of the work in 1825 was ingenious, at least. At the southern end in Rotherhithe, Brunel constructed a huge metal ring, rather like a gigantic pastry cutter. A brick tower was built on top, while earth was excavated from inside, thus sinking the shaft to the requisite depth. Actually, therein lay something of a problem. Brunel’s designs foresaw that the tunnel would never be more than 14 feet underneath the riverbed. Thus the construction of the tunnel was plagued by floods. Brunel decided that this was just the sort of project for his 18-year-old nipper Isambard to cut his teeth upon. The work was fraught with difficulties, and in one serious break-in Isambard was nearly drowned when the Thames broke in and flooded the tunnel. The money ran out in 1828 and the tunnel was sealed. Young Isambard went away and designed the Clifton Suspension Bridge. By 1834 the Company had made enough money to start work again, and the tunnel was finally completed in 1842. Brunel Snr. had been knighted on the instigation of Prince Albert the previous year.
Prior to becoming a railway tunnel, it was never a success. It had been designed for both foot and horse drawn traffic. However, there was never the money to build the required approaches to the tunnel, and so the only entrances were through the stairways built into the access shafts at Rotherhithe and Wapping. The tunnel was finally bought by the East London Railway in 1865 and was opened to rail traffic in 1869. In 2006 the control of the East London line and therefore the tunnel was transferred to London Overground.
When you stand on the
platforms of Wapping Station, you just don’t tend to pay that much attention to
the entrance to the Thames tunnel. No, what you can’t help noticing is how
narrow the platforms are. Extremely narrow, in fact, I’d go so far as to say dangerous.
Rotherhithe
Tunnel
The tunnel was built to link
the Limehouse and West India Docks to the north with the Surrey Commercial
Docks to the South. The construction largely copied that of the Blackwall
Tunnel, although the diameter was wider and there were claims that it was the
largest subaqueous tunnel in the world when it was built. Speaking of its
construction, one of the great claims to fame of the Rotherhithe Tunnel was
that the safety precautions for the men building it were so comprehensive that
not a single person was fatally injured during its construction, which was a
rare occurrence indeed for tunnels built in the late 19th and early
20th century.
The Rotherhithe Tunnel is
unusual inasmuch as it carries motor vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians all
within a single bore. The portals at either end of the tunnel are now grade II
listed. The tunnel has fairly sharp bends and the carriageways are narrow, and
this means that there is a ban on vehicles more than 2 metres high or 2 metres
wide. There is a speed limit of 20mph in operation throughout the tunnel.
Originally the walls of the tunnel were faced with glazed tiles, with a band of
brown tiles marking the boundary between northern and southern halves of the
tunnel. There were problems especially with the tiles on the southern half and
the tiles were removed in 2011. It’s a shame, since for my money this has done
nothing for the tunnel’s aesthetic appeal.
Maybe this has something to
do with the tunnel’s virtual abandonment by pedestrians. This has dwindled to
the point where the current estimates suggest that the average number of
pedestrians using the tunnel each day is 20. Personally I think it probably has
more to do with the really unpleasant fumes inhaled by those who brave it. By
1997 over 34,000 vehicles were using the tunnel each day, which is far more
than it was ever designed for. Restrictions since have kept that figure from
rising, as this is seen as pretty much the tunnel’s full capacity.
I will be honest. Although I
have driven through the Rotherhithe Tunnel I have never been tempted to cycle
through it or heaven forbid, walk through it. Generally it is felt to be really
unpleasant, and some have even suggested unhealthy. Just google ‘walking
through Rotherhithe tunnel’ and you’ll find plenty of first hand accounts that
say as much.
Jubilee Line – Canary Wharf to Canada Water
It was always intended that the Jubilee Line would be
extended, but several plans were considered, then changed, then rejected,
before work finally began on the extension south of the river and into London’s
Docklands redevelopment. New platforms were built at Westminster, Waterloo,
London Bridge, West Ham and Stratford, and 6 brand new stations were built including
Canada Water and Canary Wharf.
The new Jubilee Line Extension stations have been rightly
praised for the imagination that their architects have shown in their designs.
Even as I write a quarter of a century after their opening they seem fresh, and
new and in the case of Canary Wharf in particular, a vision of the future. Not
that building the line between the two stations was by any means an easy thing
to do. It was complicated by the presence of the foundations of some of the
tallest office buildings in the UK in Canary Wharf and a 19th century railway tunnel. Despite
this the line opened on schedule in 1999, which shows you the contrast between Britain in the 1970s and the 1990s.
Cards on the table – I like the Jubilee Line. I’ve used
both Canada Water and Canary Wharf stations and both have proven to be a very
pleasant experience.
Okay, confession time. I really liked the photograph I found and used for the picture, and it wasn't until I was about half finished that I suddenly asked myself - where are the doors? For the Jubilee Line has glass walls with automatic doors between the platforms and the trains. The answer is that it isn't the Jubilee Line platforms, it's the Overground. Canada Water serves both Underground and Overground. The station at the other end of the Jubilee Line tunnel under the Thames here, Canary Wharf doesn't serve the Overground, but does serve the DLR and is very close to the Elizabeth Lne station of the same name. There you go.
Docklands Light Railway Tunnel – Island Gardens
to Cutty Sark
The growth of Docklands saw the DLR extended during the mid
90s, to connect with the Underground at Bank, and out into East London. It was Lewisham Borough Council that
first mooted extending the system via a tunnel beneath the Thames between
Island Gardens and Greenwich, extending out to connect with Lewisham’s existing
British Rail Station. They commissioned a feasibility study which was
enthusiastically received by Parliament. Consent was given and work began in
1996.
One consequence was that it was necessary to resite Island
Gardens station. The new station is a shallow subsurface one, after which the
line enters the tunnel under the Thames. The next station is Cutty Sark, after
which the tunnel ends at Greenwich station. The extension opened in 1999.
I am well aware that not everyone loves or even likes public transport. I will admit that after I moved to Port Talbot I developed a dislike for the local buses and trains – mostly to do with their irregularity and scarcity. I am glad to say that my opinion has changed since receiving my free bus pass. Returning to the point, I do think that for anyone with even a sneaking regard for public transport, a ride on the DLR is well worth your time. If you can, you should sit in the front of the driverless train and watch the spectacular vault of Canary Wharf station approach you.
Greenwich Foot tunnel
In Greenwich, by the riverside, not at all far from the
Cutty Sark, is a rather curious looking circular, domed red brick building. This
is the Greenwich entrance to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel and prior to the opening
of the DLR Lewisham Extension it was by far the easiest way to cross the river
between Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs.
I didn’t have much occasion to cross to the Isle of Dogs
during my three years in Lewisham, but out of curiosity I did use it on a few
occasions. It was over 80 years old, having first opened in 1902 and to be
honest it felt like it. The original lifts were still in use and would continue
until being replaced in the 1990s. The tunnel to my eyes seemed fairly narrow.
Having grown up with the London Underground it only seemed natural that the
tunnel should be lined with white tiles, but back then I recall there was a bit
of a damp problem, and some of the tiles looked unnecessarily mouldy. Someway
into the tunnel the tiles cease and you get what look like cream coloured exposed tunnel rings.
These are actually repairs to the tunnel made following the explosion of a bomb
nearby in 1940. If the rest of the tunnel felt narrow, this section felt almost
claustrophobic. These repairs were only temporary, even though, over 80 years
later they’re still there!
Well, let’s be a little kinder to the poor old Greenwich
Foot Tunnel. I was impressed to read that once it really got into top gear, the
tunnel progressed at a remarkable 10 feet per day. It is open all day every day
and its still used by a average of four thousand people a day. I read that
upgrade work was undertaken in the second decade of the present century to
ameliorate some of the problems with dampness. Signs in the tunnel make it
clear that you’re not allowed to ride your bike in the tunnel, but I did wheel
my bike through it when I was on my way from Lewisham to relatives in Essex,
and it was significantly quicker than cycling to Tower Bridge and crossing the
river. . . and significantly healthier than riding through the Rotherhithe
Tunnel.
Jubilee Line – North Greenwich to Canary Wharf
Yes, the Jubilee Line is the gift that keeps on giving. For
once you’ve crossed from Canada Water to Canary Wharf, then you get to cross
right back to North Greenwich.
One of the driving forces behind the Jubilee Line extension
was facilitating access to what was at the time called The Millenium Dome in
Greenwich. In 1851 The Great Exhibition was held in Hyde Park in the building
which came to be known as The Crystal Palace. The purpose of the Exhibition was
to showcase Britain's and other countries’ culture and commerce. It’s been credited
as the brainchild of Prince Albert and whether that’s strictly true or not he
was a primary mover and shaker behind it. The building itself was bought,
dismantled and reerected at Sydenham Heights, where it stood until destroyed by
fire in 1936, after being used for a variety of purposes.
In 1951, Britain staged the Festival of Britain. The
original inspiration was the Centenary of the Great Exhibition. The Great
Exhibition however was the first ever World’s Fair, while the Festival itself
was a purely British affair, focused on Britain and its achievements. Festival
events took place throughout the year and throughout the country. The focal
point for the celebrations was the temporary complex built on the South Bank
from early May until the end of September. At the end of the year almost the
whole complex was demolished, although the Royal Festival Hall remained, and
still does.
So, the Great Exhibition and the Festival of Britain served
as inspiration to the John Major Conservative government of the mid 90s for a
public exhibition to celebrate the Millennium. The Labour Government elected in
1997 took the plans and greatly expanded them. The exhibition was always going
to be held in the Millennium Dome, built at North Greenwich. The Dome, which is
supported by 12 100m tall towers, is still one of the largest in the world. The
twelve towers spaced around the circumference of the dome are inspired by a
clock face, a nod to Greenwich being the home of the Greenwich meridian. Curiously the Dome's footprint is almost exactly the same as that of the original Crystal Palace.
You can use statistics to argue that the Millennium
Experience in the Dome was either a huge success or a huge flop. In the 12
months it was open it attracted just over 6 million visitors, making it by far the most
popular tourist attraction in the UK, by a factor of 3. On the other hand the
Festival of Britain attracted 10 million visitors over a shorter time period.
In the years following the Dome was sold, and has been renamed the O2 Area,
where its huge indoor space has been used for multiple events, most notably as
a sports arena and concert venue. I visited it myself to see the Treasures of
Tutankhamen Exhibition in 2008.
So, in the same way that the Jubilee Line Station at Canary
Wharf has tunnels crossing under the Thames on both sides of the line, so does
North Greenwich. However, in between we have . . .
Blackwall Tunnel
By the 1880s, two fifths of London’s population lived East
of London Bridge. Yet London Bridge remained their nearest river crossing. The
same growth of London’s docks that made new crossings more necessary also meant
that more bridges East of Tower Bridge were going to be too much of a
restriction to shipping.
An Act of Parliament for the building of a Blackwall Tunnel
was passed in 1997. This tunnel was the brainchild of Sir Joseph Bazalgette and
would have composed of three bores, two for vehicles and one for pedestrians.
However the Metropolitan Board of works, whose responsibility it would have
been was abolished in 1889 when the London County Council was established. This
ended Bazalgette’s involvement.
It didn’t end the tunnel as a concept, and the LCC’s chief
engineer Sir Alexander Binnie designed a single bore tunnel that would be built
using the Greathead tunnelling shield and compressed air method and it opened in 1897. By comparison with
the slightly later Rotherhithe Tunnel, 7 men lost their lives during the
construction. The original bore, the western bore, is now only used for
northbound traffic. It has some sharp bends and there is a maximum height limit
for vehicles of four metres.
By the 1930s it had become generally accepted that the
tunnel was inadequate for the volume of traffic using it. It was not until 1938
that the required Act of Parliament for a new tunnel to be constructed was
obtained by the LCC. As you might have deduced, work on the new tunnel was
considerably delayed due to the outbreak of World War II and the subsequent
period of post war austerity. It was not until 1958 that work commenced. That
was only on the new approach roads. Work on the tunnel itself began in 1960 although
the tunnel itself was not opened until 1967. It is wider than the original
bore, and takes a shorter, more direct route under the river.
The northbound entrance to the original tunnel still stands
and certainly in terms of appearance it puts me just a little in mind of what Tower
Bridge might have looked like had it been built in red brick as Horace Jones
originally intended. Out of interest, horse drawn traffic is banned in the
tunnel, but the ban didn’t come into effect until 1947.
Being the easternmost road crossing of the river in Greater
London the Blackwall tunnel is one of the most important crossings of the whole
river, and has seen criticism for the amount of congestion around it for
decades. There have been proposals over the years to build a third bore. Finally
in 2018 the Government agreed to the
proposal of a new tunnel between Silvertown and Greenwich. The opening of the
new Silvertown Tunnel has been proposed for 2025. Watch this space. Charges
will be imposed for using the Blackwall Tunnel for the first time when the new
Silvertown Tunnel opens.
Jubilee Line – Canning Town to North Greenwich
I have to say that at first glance the Northern entrance, which is the main entrance to the station, looks tired and uninspiring. Concrete panels rarely look inspiring, and once they’ve had a few years to get dirty, as these have, they look even less appealing. Even the parts which make less conspicuous use of concrete and more use of glass and metal are flat and rectangular and speak more of dull bus station than imaginative tube station design. One thing it does have which is worth writing about is a huge memorial to the Thames Ironworks. Remarkably this claims to have been made from inscribed concrete panels attached to iron hewn from the hull of HMS Warrior. I’ve no doubt that it did originally come from HMS Warrior, but I just wish it explained how Warrior is still in existence, proudly standing close to HMS Victory in historic Portsmouth Dock. Curiosity makes me ask just when it was removed from the Warrior. I pause briefly for a flight of fancy in which the Warrior’s conservators arrive one morning to see a huge hole in the hull, scratching their heads and asking each other “Where the hell did that go?”
The station also has a southern entrance, and this is the one I’ve sketched. Okay, this is little more than a lift entrance, but blimey, it displays more imagination than the rest of the station put together. Curves always play well with me, and circular structures even more so. The glazed panels around the top of the drum below the canopy are a lovely touch, and the sort of thing which lifts this little part of the station and allows it into the ranks of those which have gone before.
From here the Jubilee Line
stays north of the river, and goes on up to Stratford for a well earned rest.
Woolwich Foot Tunnel
Well, the foot tunnel has nothing to do with this. The
Thames Flood Barrier at Woolwich does have a tunnel linking the gates and the
banks of the river, but it’s certainly not open to you and to me, being a
service tunnel and therefore not part of my remit.
No, we’re here in Woolwich to look at the Woolwich foot
tunnel. Like the slightly earlier Greenwich Foot Tunnel, the Woolwich tunnel
was the result largely of energetic lobbying by working class politician Will
Crooks. The Woolwich tunnel is longer than the Greenwich Tunnel, and it has
about 1000 users a day on average compared with the 4000 on average who use the
Greenwich Tunnel each day. Like
Greenwich the tunnel walls are lined with white glazed tiles, although there’s
none of the temporary war damage repairs
which are still so glaringly obvious in the former. The entrances to the tunnel
are similar to Greenwich, but the lack of a dome means that I prefer the
Greenwich entrances.
I only ever used the tunnel once, forty years ago so I can’t
say if this is in any way unusual but on both crossings I was the only person in
the tunnel.
In 2010 the tunnel was closed when structural weaknesses
were discovered. At its deepest point the roof of the tunnel is less than 10
feet below the riverbed. It reopened late in 2011.
One thing I can’t tell you is whether you can cycle in it
officially. I’ve read several websites saying you can at off peak times, but
the official Woolwich Tunnel website states categorically that cyclists are
expected to dismount at all times. So, I guess you pays yer money and takes yer
chance on that one.
Elizabeth Line Tunnel – Custom House to
Woolwich
The Underground Lines of London built in the fifty years before
the First World War, still form the core of the network in Central London but
were never designed to cope with a population of nearly 9 million people. Even
with the various extensions to the network since and with the additions of the
Victoria and Jubilee lines, even before 2000 it was obvious that the network
was struggling to cope with the volume of passengers. The Crossrail Project to
alleviate the problem was first discussed in 2001. In 2008 the route was
settled and Parliamentary Approval secured. Work began on what would become The
Elizabeth Line in 2009.
Boring of the tunnels took 7 years, which is hardly
surprising considering how congested Central London is. Crossrail was the
largest engineering project in Europe at the time. The original opening of the
line was scheduled for 2018, but this was delayed and then delayed again due to
the Covid 19 pandemic. The line opened in 2022.
There are many differences between the Elizabeth Line and
the lines of the London Underground. The tunnels have a wider diameter, and the
trains are longer, bigger and carry many more passengers. At the time of
writing in 2024 it is such a success that it’s estimated that one in seven of
all rail journeys in the UK are taken on the Elizabeth Line. The line passes
through Central London but it’s much longer than any Underground Line,
stretching from Reading in the West to Shenfield in the East, ad there are
plans and proposals to extend it as far afield as Southend airport. Its 41
stations compare with 60 on for example, the District Line, and the greater
distances between stops allow the trains to travel at a higher average speed
than the Underground.
So, the Elizabeth Line’s cross river tunnel links Custom
House, already a DLR station, with Woolwich, on a spur which ends at the next
station at Abbey Wood. In the early days of the Crossrail proposal there was
not going to be a station at Woolwich. However involvement with Greenwich
Borough Council and the Berkely Homes Development Group with he cost of a new
Woolwich station meant that Woolwich was included by the time that
Parliamentary Approval was gained.
DLR tunnel – Woolwich Arsenal to King George
The Docklands Light Railway tunnel between King George V
station and Woolwich Arsenal Tunnel is the furthest upstream crossing of the
Thames in Greater London, and the end of our subterranean journey back and
forward across the Thames. The next crossing is the Dartford Tunnel between Kent
and Essex more than ten miles away.
Woolwich Arsenal station is shared between the DLR and national
rail. The DLR platforms are underground and the end of this section of the DLR.
Trains arrive at and depart from either side of an island platform. The station
is the end of the line extending out to London City Airport which was built
between 2005 and 2009, and opened in the latter year.
The DLR tunnel under the Thames to King George V is not
without interest, since it curves around so much that trains departing Woolwich
Arsenal head eastwards, while the tunnel curves westwards under the river.
As for King George V station in North Woolwich itself, well
I don’t have a great deal to say about it. The station platforms are a distance
from the tunnel and are above ground. The station was opened in 2005 even
though it would be four years before the tunnel to Woolwich was completed and
Woolwich DLR platforms were open. Every time I’ve visited the platforms have
always struck me as a bit bleak and the exterior of the station is pretty
uninspiring.
-------------------------------
No, I’m afraid that we’re not done yet. Not quite. You see,
I’ve missed out something obvious. The first tunnel beneath the Thames opened
in 1840. The first London Bridge was built in about 50AD. In the 1990s remains
of a Bronze Age structure from about 1500BC were found in the Vauxhall area,
and this may have been a bridge to an island, although this is still a
hypothesis rather than a proven fact. Yet for all this we can be pretty certain
that the first people to cross the Thames did so in boats.
From the Saxon reoccupation of the walled Roman city of
Londinium a settlement on the south side of the river around the southern end
of the bridge called Southwark grew. A thriving and powerful community of Watermen
took advantage of the increased traffic between London and Southwark. The boats
they used were called wherries. In medieval times Southwark was not subject to
the restrictions of the City and it developed a reputation as a place where
people could enjoy the kinds of amusement and entertainment not permitted in
the city– it was no accident that the Globe and Rose theatres of Shakespeare’s
time were both in Southwark. The wherries had become water taxis, and the
watermen vigorously opposed the building of any new bridges in London until
Putney Bridge in 1729.
Various ferries have run across the Thames throughout the
centuries. The proliferation of Bridges and tunnels in the central London area in
the last two hundred years has drastically reduced the demand for ferries, but
there are still a couple of scheduled ferry services across the Thames in the
Greater London area, and so let’s add these to the challenge. The completist in
me would never forgive me if I didn’t.
Hampton Ferry
The Hampton Ferry has a very good claim to being the oldest ferry service on the Thames in London. Mind you, it’s only just in Greater London. It runs from Hampton to Molesey. I’ve never used it myself so what I know about it is derived from what I’ve found online, and if there are mistakes, then I apologise.
It runs from March to October and judging by the
photographs it only carries a small number of passengers. But you have to
admire the fact that it has been ging since 1514.
Hammerton’s Ferry
Hammerton’s Ferry has not been running since the 16th century. Again, like the Hampton Ferry I have never yet used Hammerton’s Ferry, so I apologise for any errors in what I have to say.
Right. Up until the 20th century the land on
either side of the Thames a this point of the river between Teddington and Richmond
was privately owned. During the 1900s Marble Hill House and Park on the north
side were purchased for public use, and the footpath on the southern side near
Ham House became a public right of way. A local resident called Walter
Hammerton began hiring out boats from a boathouse opposite Marble Hill House,
and by 1909 he was operating a ferry service carrying up to 12 passengers, each
paying one penny.
Despite legal challenges and appeals to Hammerton’s right
to run the ferry service which finally ended when he House of Lords upheld
Hammerton’s side, he continued to run the service for 38 years. I don’t know if
this is true but sincerely hope it is that world famous musician Phil Collins
is Walter Hammerton’s grandson. I know Phil Collins is a West London boy, so
you never know.
The ferry is still in private ownership. Hammerton’s
original ferryboat is on display at the Museum of London Docklands. The current
ferry still operates on the original route from near Marble Hill House to near
Ham House. The current ferryboat was manufactured in 1997 and is called Peace
of Mind. It operates on weekends all the year round and also on weekdays from
February until October.
Transport For London River Bus
Yes, let’s begin with the Transport for London River Bus services. Strictly speaking these aren’t counted as ferries, but what the hell, it’s my game and we’re playing by my rules or I’m taking my ball and going home.
London River Services Ltd. are part of Transport for
London. They don’t actually run the three London river bus services, but manage
them by licensing the services of operators. This had its roots in an
initiative by Labour’s Transport Secretary in the 1997 Government, John
Prescott. Prescott was also the Deputy Prime Minister so he had a lot of clout
within the Government and could get things done. This resulted in the Creation
of London River Services. It directly manages 8 piers, and has tied in branding
with the rest of TfL.
Route RB1 goes from Battersea Power Station Pier to Barking
Riverside Pier , which is also the destination of RB2 which starts at Putney
Bridge. There is currently no RB3. RB4, which I used twice in 2016, is the
shortest route of all and is essentially a ferry between Canary Wharf and the Doubletree
dock by the Hilton Hotel. There is no RB5, and RB6 operates at peak times on
weekdays between Putney and Canary Wharf.
Woolwich Ferry
So, the ferry between Canary Wharf and the Doubletree dock is licensed by London River Services Ltd. and officially designated River Bus Route RB4. The Woolwich Ferry is also licensed by London River Services Ltd. and officially designated the Woolwich Ferry. Personally I think that this is a bowing to the inevitable. The Woolwich Ferry has been the Woolwich Ferry since 1889, and even if it was officially called route RB whatever the hell you like, people would still call it the Woolwich Ferry.
The first mention of a ferry on this part of a river is in
a paper dated to 1308. In 1320 the ferry was sold for 100 silver marks. No, I
don’t have the first idea how much that is in 2024 money, but you can bet your
life it was a pretty penny back then.
The Royal Arsenal was established in Woolwich in the 1670’s
which only increased cross river traffic at this point of the Thames. So much
so that the Army created its own ferry service in 1810. Various commercial
ferried operated in the mid 19th century, but bowing to public
pressure the Metropolitan Board of Works agreed to provide the infrastructure
needed for a free, public steam ferry service and this opened in 1889.
Like may of the bridges and tunnels across the Thames, at
different times there’s been concern over the capacity of the Woolwich Ferry Service.
Demand continues to be high especially with modern HGVs unable to use the
Rotherhithe and Blackwall Tunnels.
The Ferry service has seen a number of owners in its time.
Just two days before it opened for business in 1889 the Metropolitan Board of
Works was replaced by the London County Council. This in turn was replaced by the
Greater London Council (GLC) in 1965. The GLC was abolished in 1986 when responsibility
passed to the Ministry of Transport. The Secretary of State passed operating
responsibilities to the London Borough of Greenwich, then TfL took over asset
ownership and responsibility for operating the service. Several operators have
bee licensed by TfL over the years, but the current operator is London River
Services Ltd. themselves. There you go.
Woolwich Flood Barrier
As I mentioned earlier, this is not a public crossing of the river Thames. But it is such an impressive, remarkable structure across the River that I could not leave it out. Basically the Barrier, when raised, is meant to prevent London from being flooded by exceptionally high tides. Following the serious North Sea Flood of 1953 a committee was established to investigate the possibilities of preventing such a disaster in the future. The idea of a barrier was mooted as an alternative to the cost prohibitive idea of raising the banks of the Thames. By 1966 an independent report strongly recommended that a barrier should be built and the site of Woolwich was chosen.
The designer Charles Draper build a working model to
demonstrate the concept as early as 1969. An Act of Parliament was obtained in
1972 and contracts given out by the GLC in 1974. Work on the Southern piers and
gates was carried out first and river traffic kept to the northern side. Then
when this was complete work began on the northern side and river traffic was
kept to the southern side. The first test raising of the barriers was carried
out in 1982, and the barrier was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1984.
In the first 20 years of operation up to May 2024 the
barrier was closed 221 times.
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