Weekend Sketches

Yesterday I just never found the time for another watercolour Treasure Island copy. In the last two or three months I’ve just been working in my Canson A5 mixed media sketching journal. However on Friday I wanted to make a copy of one of William Heath Robinson’s illustrations for the poems of Edgar Allan Poe. The original is such a complex illustration that I decided to use one of the empty pages in my Daler Rowney A4 sketchbook. Here’s my copy.

You know, I enjoyed it so much that I used the book for all of my sketches this weekend. Amongst others was this copy of a Treasure Island illustration by Walter Paget. Paget was a respected and very successful English illustrator in the last years of the 19^th century ad the first couple of decades of the 20^th. His illustrations to “Treasure Island” provide many striking images of the story and are amongst the most popular.

Finally, then, old Victoria London, a favourite subject of mine to sketch. This one took hours.

Seven Ages of Public Transport on London's Roads

 Last week I posted recent sketches of various forms of public transport on London's roads through the ages. I realised hat I hadn't made a new sketch of a trolleybus. So, here we go, in chronological order of their use rather than when I made them

1) Horse drawn bus

2) Horse drawn tram

Electric Tram

Motor Bus

Trolley Bus

Double Decker 

Now, yes, I know that's only six. Because I haven't yet done what should be the last of he series, a modern London Double Decker. Watch this space.

Me and London Buses (and Trams

^{You know, if I’ve got an old, or very old black and white photograph of London to use as reference for a sketch, then I’m happy. If it has a method of public transport in it, then doubly so. What can I say? I’m a simple soul. So while I’ve been chancing my arm at copying some Treasure Island illustrations recently, during the last week or two I’ve also been making some sketches of London transport. Here they are:-}

London’s first ever scheduled horse drawn buses were operated by Mr. George Shillibeer in 1829. Shillibeer – shilli name. Regulations over the next 30 years saw more efficient, lighter buses which could carry more passengers. Horse drawn services came under competition from motor buses and electric trams from the end of the Victorian era, and the last horse drawn service was withdrawn in 1911. The bus in the picture was operated by the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC). The company was formed in the eighteen fifties, and was one of the main companies to be amalgamated to form London Transport in the 1930s.

London’s first red motorbuses were operated by the LGOC – General for short. In fact London Transport would use the same colour scheme when they took over. London’s first really successful motor bus was the type B that entered service in 1911. During World War I 900 of these buses were sent out to the Western Front where they were nicknamed ‘Ole Bill’ after a popular newspaper cartoon figure of the time. The last Type B was withdrawn in 1926.

^{A couple of horse drawn tram lines began running in London in the 1860s, but they didn’t really get going until the 1870s.Electric powered trams weren’t used until the first years of the 20th century. By the outbreak of the First World War London had the largest tram network in Europe. However it was hard for tram companies to find investment for further expansion in the 1920s. Trams were expensive to maintain and competition from larger and more reliable motorised buses saw some companies increasingly switching. By the mid 30s it had been decided to replace London’s remaining tramways with motor buses and with trolleybuses powered by overhead wires. The outbreak of World War 2 meant that the last tram services remained until 1951.}

It's probably fair to say that no form of public transport ever contributed so much to London as the Routemaster double decker bus. Its contribution to London’s visual identity alone is immense. The iconic Routemaster first ran in 1954, and even though production ended in 1968 Routemaster services were still running into the new millennium, finally ending in 2005. I haven’t lived in London for 39 years, but I was born there, I grew up there, I went to London University. It will always be my home town. And there are some things which always feel like home to me, and a Routemaster bus is one of them. Thankfully, of the almost 3000 built, over a third of them still exist.

That Challenge is complete

Time is getting on. In a couple of days I’m off on the great summer Sketchpedition of 2024. This has give me some oomph to finish off the tunnels. Here they are:-

Woolwich Foot Tunnel

You know, when you hear the word Woolwich, you might not have anything specific come to your mind, especially if you’re not from London or the South East. But if the name does mean anything to you, there’s a number of things that might be, depending on your age. You might be interested in the fact that the very first McDonalds in the UK opened in Woolwich – and it’s still there. If you’re of an older generation you maybe think of the Woolwich Ferry. Well, we’ll see about ferries in the fulness of time. Most likely, if you thought anything you thought Barrier, since Woolwich is home to the Woolwich Flood Barrier across the Thames.

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 anyway 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

Right then. When I was a kid, life was a lot simpler. You had London Underground trains, the Tube as we called even the above ground sections, and you had British Railways. Yes, it was complicated a little by the Waterloo and City Line which looked like a tube line, appeared on the Tube map, but was actually a British Rail line, but since this was only one tiny line between two stations we could forget about it for most of the time. Nowadays we have the London Underground, the London Overground, the Docklands Light Railway and the Elizabeth Line, all under the same Transport for London branding, yet all separate entities. The Underground spends more of its time overground than underground while the Overground goes underground in places. It can all be quite confusing. Ironically the Waterloo and City Line is now part of the London Underground network, so let’s at least be grateful for small mercies.

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, and there are plans and proposals to extend it as far afield as Southend airport. Its 41 stations compare with 60 on the District Line for example, 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.

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I wasn’t 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.

I have to be honest, I found it difficult to keep interest in the tunnels. Most of them were train station platforms and although none of them are identical, they’re pretty similar and it’s really a matter of straight lines and perspective. I don’t plan to do another one for a while, although I’m not rulig out the New York Subway. The ferries perked up my interest a bit, and I did the last two tunnels and all four ferries across just a couple of days. Here they are.

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 16^th 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 20^th 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, include the Transport for London River Bus services. Strictly speaking most of these routes 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 ferries operated in the mid 19^th 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 been licensed by TfL over the years, but the current operator is London River Services Ltd. themselves. There you go.

Finally, this morning for the sheer hell of it I also sketched the Thames flood Barrier at Woolwich – you can see it partly in the sketch of the Woolwich Ferry. 

Extending the Challenge

A couple of posts ago I wrote that I’ve completed the London Bridges challenge. 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 ube train you’ll know that there really ain’t a great deal to see in the tunnels themselves. So what I planned to do was to sketch the exterior of a station at either end of the tunnel, or the platform of the station. So far it’s tended to be he platforms. Which is not necessarily the best decision since I’ve been getting a bit bored with the constant drawing of platforms. Still, soldier on.

Victoria Line tunnel – Vauxhall to Pimlico

I once gave myself a challenge to draw every London Underground Station. This was before lockdown and it seems like a lifetime ago, even though I wasn’t much more than five or six years ago. One of the things that struck me during the challenge was how few stations there are south of the river. Even with Battersea Power station and Nine Elms opening since, there’s still only about 30. Maybe that sounds like quite a few. Not when you consider there’s about 240 north of the river. I guess that’s one reason why there’s relatively few bridges which carry the Underground across the river. However another reason is that there’s quite a few tunnels and the first transport tunnel that we encounter on a journey working downstream from west to east is  a London Underground tunnel. This carries the Victoria Line from 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

No fewer than three cross river tunnels serve Waterloo station, each of them bearing a London Underground line. The furthest upstream is the Jubilee Line tunnel to Westminster station.

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 20^th 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 20^th 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

Strictly speaking the next transport tunnel downstream is actually two separate tunnels. I’m lumping them together because they both go from Waterloo Underground station to Embankment Underground Station. The Bakerloo line tunnel was built first in 1906, while the Northern Line tunnel was built 20 years later.

The Bakerloo Line of the London Underground began life as the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway. Accprding to various sources they had he 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. 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. This 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 during construction. The north tunnel was built first, and the southern one begun when it was completed.

As for the Northern Line, well this had its origins in two railways 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, ad 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 shortly dropped from the name.

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 staions in London opened in 1863 it was 35 years before Waterloo got its first underground station, despite being one of the busiest railway station in the country. That was the Waterloo ad City Line, about which I’ll write more whe 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 opeed 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 damages, 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

Put yourself in the position of the London and South Western Railway (LSWR).You’ve created your London terminus at Waterloo (Bridge). You are bringing huge numbers of workers from outside London into the capital every morning, and taking them home every evening. A very large number of your more affluent (hence desirable) customers work in the Square Mile of the City of London. And that is quite a step from Waterloo, believe you me, and they ain’t happy. It makes sense to connect somehow with the City.

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. In 1846 alone, over 200 Acts of Parliament for new railways were passed. 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 o 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 19^th 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

Alone of all the tunnels that I’ve included in my set of drawings, the Tower Subway is not open to the public. But it was when it was built and to my mind it is a special case. Or to put it another way, it’s my game and I make the rules.

So, hen, 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

As we’ve seen, there are many tunnels beneath the Thames. However, there is only one Thames Tunnel. This was the first tunnel built beneath the Thames. In fact, it was the first tunnel built under a navigable river in Britain. In Europe. In fact it was the first in the whole world.

From the second half of the 18^th 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 increase 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 19^th 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 original Hungerford Bridge and 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.

 

London Bridges Challenge Completed

So, the last time we met I’d completed all of the bridges working downstream from Hampton Court to Waterloo Bridge. Waterloo Bridge was the first I did during the weekend. Since recovering from tendonitis I’ve managed to draw four bridges on the weekends. Now, here’s a confession. I made this sketch of Blackfriars Bridge back in about 2020, but it just seemed to fit.

So, 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 18^th 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. 

The second bridge I drew on Saturday was Blackfriars Railway Bridge. Well, I say I drew it on Saturday. I drew most of it on Saturday evening but finished it off on Sunday morning. It’s difficult to think of many Thames bridges in London that have been demolished during my lifetime. There’s the granddaddy of them all, Rennie’s London Bridge. Other than that though there’s only Blackfriars Railway Bridge, which was removed and demolished in 1985.

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.

On Sunday morning I started this, the Millennium Bridge just before we went to the local for lunch, and I completed it as we were watching ‘The Importance of Being Earnest” Not that you need to know that, but at least it adds a little texture to the narrative.

At the time of writing we’re a year short of a quarter of a century passing since the turn of the Millennium, and it seems strange to think of how big a deal it seemed at the time. Remember the fears over the Y2K bug? Well, whether you’re old enough to remember or not, anything that came about in or around the year 2000 was always going to be doomed to bear the word Millennium somewhere in its name.

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.

Knowing that I only had three bridges left to draw I was tempted to leave it at just the three bridges for the weekend. But the if I hadn’t have drawn this Southwark Bridge on Sunday Evening then I might well be tempted to have watched England in the final of the Euro which could only ever have ended in tears. So, Southwark Bridge it was. Southwark takes its name from the Anglo Saxon Suthringana weorc – literally the fortification (work) of the Men of the South (Surrey). Southwark is the oldest part of South London, developing around the southern end of London Bridge, itself dating back to c.50 AD, soon after the Roman conquest.

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 20^th 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.

I started early yesterday since I knew that I had a couple of prior engagements. It’s the last week of the school year and although I’m off on sick I am retiring at the end of the week so I went in to small functions with my department and then with the whole staff. Nice. This one took a couple of hours only in the morning.

The last railway bridge downstream in London is this, Cannon Street Railway Bridge. Cannon Street station was built to give the South Eastern Railway a terminus within the City of London. This necessitated the building of a bridge to carry the railway. Designed by Sir John Hawkshaw and opened in 1866. It had five spans supported by cast iron pillars. It was originally called the Alexandra Bridge, the Prince of Wales having only recently married Alexandra of Denmark. It had two footpaths that were removed in the 1890s so that the bridge could be made wider.

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.

Now, it isn’t the last bridge in London working downstream – that honour belongs to Tower Bridge. However I have depicted Tower Bridge in the past and I’m using a sketch from the back catalogue for that. Which meant that the last sketch to complete the challenge was London Bridge and I’ve finished it this afternoon.

Here I think I should declare an interest. A couple of decades ago I read Patricia Pierce’s excellent book about Old London Bridge and thought to myself – I bet that would make a good Mastermind subject -. In 2007 it did. I used it as my specialist subject in the grand final. So once I start going on about old London Bridge I find I really easy to get carried away with my subject. I will do my best to try to keep this relatively brief.

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 18^th 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 18^th 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 19^th century could possibly foresee the exponential increase in traffic over the second half of the 19^th 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 18^th 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.

So our journey ends where my 1982 journey began, at Tower Bridge, with a drawing I made about four or five years ago. 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 19^th 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. 

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So that’s the challenge completed. Looking back now I have drawn every station on the London Underground, Overground and DLR. I have drawn every property, station and utility on the London Monopoly Board. Now I’ve drawn all of the bridges across the Thames in London. Whatever will the next challenge be? Answers on a postcard, please, since I have no idea. Watch this space.