The Real Story Behind London's Tower Bridge | Bridges That Built London | Spark

[Music] between Richmond and the North Sea 30 bridges span the Thames they carry people across a stretch of river 35 miles long bringing together a population of nearly 8 men these extraordinary structures have been the making of London Britain's capital and I think Europe's greatest city millions of Londoners cross these bridges every week most I don't suppose give them a second thought but to me this is the far more than Milly means of transport ways of getting from one place to another they are also ways of thinking the present to the past [Music] london's bridges are not just functional objects that also symbols metaphors they transform connect inspire and they tell great stories of Bronze Age relics of the Vauxhall Shore of why London Bridge was falling down of corpses splashing beneath Waterloo Bridge and above all of the sublime ambition of London's bridge builders themselves that was born when London was still above the world's great ports and the thames of the world's great working rivers i will remember the child the impression of london's bridges made on me I suppose bridges gave you my first swimming stomach-churning architectural experience and goodness me they are doing the same now Oh brilliant view some of London's bridges have vanished or been replaced they are ghost crossings of the past but each of them is include the city's hidden history in some ways they are that history a history has lasted nearly 4000 years [Music] in the beginning was a river the Thames the greatest the longest river in England 200 miles from its source the river meets the tidal stream the result is a landscape of marshes and islands indeterminate had always changing only here far downstream from the City of London and understand the elemental world of sand mud pebbles and debris that was the Thames before the city and his bridges were built for generations stretching back over centuries Londoners laboured in the marshes and now long lost trains mut larks and scavengers Tosh's and dredges Wortman and oyster gatherers all gone lost cars the river has always been a portal into the past it's inspired artists and writers none more so than Joseph Conrad who wrote that nothing is easier than to have folk the great spirit of the past the lower reaches of the Thames from here Conrad could see the great modern city of London from an ancient perspective the monstrous town was marked ominously on the sky a brooding gloom in sunshine a lurid glare under the stars and this also has been one of the dark places of the earth we live in the flicker but darkness was here yesterday the marshy landscape on the banks of the Thames gave birth to London but the earliest bridge was built not here but 15 miles upstream to the west past the City of London beyond the seat of power at Westminster at a place which today we call Vauxhall here in 1500 BC before Troy fell and long before Julius Caesar came to Britain the people that Marsh has built a first attempt at a crossing were extremely lucky the remains are only completely exposed twice a year at the very bottom of the spring tide that what our find tests have shown that these timber piles have been preserved here for three and a half thousand years so you've had this dated with dendrochronology so you therefore saw what 1,500 years calendar dated BC yes 1500 BC BC which is about 300 years so therefore this is in a ways that is the oldest of inserts you bit of structure in London isn't it why did they build as bridge some archaeologists think it carried people not across the river but to an island that probably existed in the stream we can't know for sure but Gustav and his team think that back then this was the highest point of the tidal stream this all have place for three rivers met the tens and two of its lost tributaries the tybone and the SS fog that's that something magical three rivers meet it and we're the wonderful tidal things happen I suppose that's right and if this was the tidal heading of the Bronze Age that's a very magical place yeah because the moon is definitely saying when the tide will be low and when it'll be high when people cease connection between those things in the sky you know that the moon and those things on earth deliver they connect you know and as a saint you things you would need to protect the river because very high tides would flood any settlements you had around here say we have possibly a sort of sacred River at this point when the bridge was discovered the archaeologists found two bronze spearheads driven point down into the mud beside that bridge were they offering to the deity of the river like coins in the fountain this urgent Universal and even today Londoners continue to make offerings all the way up and down the Thames these days we find this kind of stuff now these are not Bronze Age these Diwali lamps oh my goodness means they're like in disliking in just like in the like in the sacred gun hang on a minute they're modern time mod models rad Lord Ganesh over a couple of obstacles great fellow and these chaps Hindus living in England in London I cast it uses that attempt at like the Ganges sacred River right so they're replicating what we used to do in the wrong sage a ritual river a powerful God if Gustav is right this challenges a lot of our assumptions about what bridges are for it didn't originate as a means of transport or trade but as sacred creations this was a bridge between a spiritual lot of material divided a bridge between worlds bridge between the world of man here and the world of God's been life and death the Thames was like the River Jordan to cross it was to cross to a promised land the link between bridges and the sacred accounts through the millennia is in fact commemorated in our language the head of the Roman Catholic Church the Pope is called in Latin the Pontifex which means both bridge builder and priest indeed it was the Romans about 1,500 years after our Marsh people to activities here who built London's first traditional conventional bridge bridging the Thames is not easy the riverbed is changing all the time because of tides and currents and human activity but in truth is very shallow sometimes less than 2 meters deep and no tide the Romans knew this they were champion engineers of the ancient world they pulled their bridge while the shallowest narrowest part River now spanned by the modern London Bridge right next to the ancient port was called the pool of London the consequences have been immense for centuries this area was the heart of the British economy a key reason for that is that this was the first place upstream from the sea about 40 miles in that direction that a breach could be constructed to connect the south and north banks of the 10:00 news in addition hardened by the bridge is a tidal pool allowing a large ship to anchor very good for trade there's been a bridge here on and off for nearly 2,000 years and that's been the making of London because of the crossing London became an explosively successful settlement right from the beginning so successful in fact the only one building work takes place can we get a glimpse of the Roman Forum as conquerors the Romans needed a defensible Riverside site and port so that reinforcements could be rushed in if needed and an evacuation could take place at speed in the case of an emergency the trauma of bodegas rebellion in 1861 when the Roman capital Colchester was burnt combined with the fact that already at that time the bridge here made London the traceable centre of Roman Britain then that when Roman authorities were established London not Colchester became the provincial capital from here the Romans could control England did that for several centuries you're looking at a slice of Roman London or the beginning of a slice of London the very first of the first century waterfront would have would have come through roughly where the guy down there is digging we're looking south amount towards the river excite what a cut across more or less there so you can see we're only just beginning to uncover we've only been there a couple of days but you can see the difference between this modern stuff which they're taking out and their natural layers of archaeology which is left and that's what they're trying to do they're trying to distinguish real archaeology from Corbin rubbish yeah this is the first chance we've had to investigate the Roman bridge for more than 30 years as far as we could make up we only saw one pier of the bridge in 1981 but quite a lot of it it's formed of a combination of horizontally laid Timbers stacked on top of each other cantilevering out and then the actual bridge platform the deck is laid along the top of that so that's using the evidence of what we actually found in the ground how are we how we speculate the bridge would have looked as the excavation continues the archaeologists begin to find wooden piles survives of nearly 2,000 years of urban development Congress is coming to grips as Roman engineering there's the pile very solid these battered stumps are the remains of the walls beside the bridge through which the goods of Empire float in and out changing the physical geography and economy of Britain forever but the invaders never forgot the bridge was still a sacred mess a physical place to when the Georgians built the predecessor to the bridge I'm standing on they dredged the riverbed to clear the bottom for ships to pass out there in the middle of the river they found a large cache of Roman coins rather like these wonderful things bronze and brass and maybe silver archaeologists believe that was a shrine in the middle of the bridge and people pass it over would cast coins into the mighty Thames the pieces power so the Romans as with the bronzes Marsh people upstream at Vauxhall bridges were sacred thing things of religion have remember of course that in Rome the same word was used for a bridge builder as for priests canto facts indeed from the titles of the Roman Empire both em prison Empire are of course long gone and the bridge with them for centuries there was no attempt to rebuild it and no real need the main settlement in London now was a long way from the remains of the Roman bridge a mile and a half upstream around what is now coffin garden a new trading post grew up by a sharp bend in the river it was a beach market town and the london street names preserve its memory of the Strand where early English merchants pulled up their ships and the old witch the o veikkaus trading port and the river became as it had been before the Romans a frontier our border between warring kingdoms with names like Essex mrs. X sorry and Kent for London to achieve its destiny as the great city it needed a bridge once King Alfred and his successors had reunited England and we occupied the Roman city a bridge was built but it was really no more than us in music halls way intended more to a stop Raiders traveling upstream than to being able to transport for proper and solid bridge London had to wait around a thousand years off the Roman bridge but then that bridge was very solid and very proper indeed [Music] of all the river crossings in London the one we actually called London Bridge is the most famous the one we remember in the nursery line but the structure immortalized in the song is not the ruthless concrete's bound we see today nor even the one that preceded it the bridge we remember is the medieval bridge the bridge of Thomas Becket and Dick Whittington the one Chaucer and Shakespeare knew but it's a ghost which haunts me still and the question I asked myself is what was it really like but was London Bridge and why was it falling down to find out we have to go back 800 years to the 12th century at the time london was booming much the street plan of the modern city was laid down by them though very few of the actual building survived but what has injured are the record of the bridge preserved the archives of the corporation of London they tell us that in 1173 a religious community the chaplains brethren and sisters of the bridge of London when trusted with building a new stone bridge and the mastermind of the project was a parish priest Peter of coal Church of Cheapside these ancient documents offer insights into the creation the use and maintenance of one of London's greatest structures over London Bridge started 1176 has been long lost but this treasure trove of intimate and evocative documents almost bring it back to life look at this wonderful thing for example it is a grant dated twelve hundred and five a grant from Peter the priest Pete of Culture the architect the crate of London Bridge incredible and attach this grant is something actually wonderful it's a seal it is and it shows Peter of coal church not as an architect or engineer but as a priest offering communion absolutely wonderful such a direct connection with the main man behind old London bridges now this is a charter over about thirteen thirteen twenty and we have attached to it here another seal again wonderful it shows well an abstract representation of the bridge I suppose just simply an arch with Thomas Becket sitting on the top of it and below the arch we see a city of London absolute wonderful image some Paul's in the centre old some poles with inspiring tact flanked by city churches with their spires pointing heavens one of the reasons the medieval London Bridge became such an icon for the city was that it was a living bridge an astonishing structure with houses and shops built upon it the oldest image of it dates from the 15th century hey we see it it's the first of drawn image or feelings arranged in the foreground the Tower of London for today's activities going on and there's the water gate from the Thames and in the background an incredible image of the northern half of London Bridge create chapel in the center and the arches connecting that to land the north bank and in the background it's an image to have that on the seal a skyline of London was the spires open pools and the Spy's the city churches it's a wonderful thing this drawing manuscript drawing in our search for old london bridge the street plan of the city is a major clue you know that the medieval bridge made just to the east of his modern counterpart and if you decode the street plan his ghostly location begins to reveal itself the monument to London's Great Fire of 1666 was put up beside the ancient northern approach to the bridge and at each end of the bridge were told there was a church following the road here fish Street Hill leise's down to the churches and Magda's martyr we stood like a kind of spiritual toll booth at the northern end of the bridge once you understand that old London Bridge stood slightly to the east of modern London Bridge everything here makes sense this splendid elevation on that of magnetars the martyr church which every crossing London Bridge would have passed because the carriageway the roadway to London Bridge was here and inside there within the arch and speak below the tower or the pedestrian route and here we have salvaged some of the stones from old London Bridge I suppose they're part of the mid 18th century casing of the bridge in Portland stone [Music] inside the church is something of a relic our next clue to what old London Bridge might have been like this a wonderful model shows London Bridge as it could have looked as in these I'm sure it did look in about 1400 it saw was then 900 feet long from the city here to southern with the carriageway the roadway carried on 19 stone build arches the trenches Art Smith had a drawbridge somewhat in the middle and on the stone built arches we have a array of timber build houses and shops about 140 in 1400 what's one could see very clearly is about half the width of the river is um sort of constrained by a thick piers of the arches and a breakwater in front of them echoed starlings with edges protected by timber piles in the middle roughly is the great fortification the drawbridge remind that London was defended to degree brother by the Thames was like a moat inter span it was to compromise his adventures of the city so one needed to prevent invaders coming across the bridge from the south up comes the drawbridge this is a fortification that bridge in a sense is part of the defenses of London on whether the city wall I don't know I'm just wonders kept anything of this wonderful bridge still survived it was 30 years before this legendary crossing was completed in 1209 its took longer than any other in London's history but like all bridges was never really finished to resist a huge force of currents and tide on the river it had to be maintained and that offers us a clue to the real meaning of the nursery rhyme what we have here bizarrely is what's the the cut waters the piers for London Bridge it would have looked like the medieval bridge they would have been round wood piles like this made over what chest over a little elm Elm often driven in with a ramp yeah and then clad behind with timber planking nothing but made up with masonry with earth all sorts of solid things in between that the timber frames so the bridge would be supported by the infant of these artificial islands held in place by planks Ryland ground wood piles very laborious work but when do these days for me do these are contemporary with probably the last face of a medieval bridge these would have been here in the late 18th century the obvious question a layman is these these are powers of star some centuries old they survived underwater and were low tide a high tide waters right up here it's astonishing so Timbers preserved by being kept where's yes if it's kept wet yeah it'll be preserved if it's kept dry it'll being preserved the real problem is if a timber rises from the bottom above the high-water mark it'll decay at the high-water mark because part of it is dry and therefore doesn't expand it part of it is wet and therefore it expands when it's wet and then when it shrinks when it's dry it took huge quantities of timber in Kentish rack stone to maintain old london bridge the enormous costs were paid for by the proceeds from tolls from both people and ships but sometimes the money went astray and the results could be catastrophic in 1282 five of the arches of the bridge collapsed about 12 years earlier King Henry the third had given the revenues of the bridge to his wife P Delano and she spent it on herself not on maintain the bridge that's why London Bridge collapsed she is there my fair lady of the nursery rhyme a nursery rhyme which reveals the end of his deep in anxiety about the future of their all-important bridge it wasn't properly maintained on a regular basis it would indeed collapse after the disaster with a small revolution the City of London took back the revenues of the bridge from the crown and gave them permanently to the people indeed to the successes of Peter of coal churches community now called the bridge house estate the bridge now symbolized London's newfound civic independence but its religious roots were not forgotten there were churches at each end and in the middle was the chapel on two levels one at the roadside for travelers and one of the water's edge for boatman spiritual tolls were paid then and now every year on the Feast of the baptism of Christ which is in January we process from this church to the middle of London Bridge and there we meet some of our friends from Southwark Cathedral coming the other way we have a short service in the middle of the bridge we pray for people who work on the river who take their recreation on the river for people who've drowned in the river indeed and then we throw a wooden cross into the river itself as a sign of God's blessing these youngsters too are a direct link to that medieval world because the organisation which built and preserved old London Bridge still exists there's an income of seven hundred million pounds a year derived from centuries of investment it is still responsible for all the bridges within the bounds of the city but they have an annual surplus of up to 20 million pounds which goes to London charities like this dance group funded directly from the tolls and charity left by medieval Londoners all those centuries ago old London Bridge stood about 50 meters over there with its tall buildings as housing shops it was in a sense a city within the city in that space people Londoners lived and died toiled and took their pleasures for nearly six hundred years I live nearby I often come here to look imagine the spectral bridge listen here I can pick up the sound equity through the senses obviou the pilgrims the merchants it's a versus soldiers crossing one way and the other it may seem feasible for 600 years London Bridge dominated the city and the massive iconic structure Reeta fide the very river it spanned it shoosh piers and starlings interfered with the flow of the Thames itself a blockage caused by the bridge slowed the current as a result the river regularly froze over Londoners took to the ice with gusto and what we'll call frost fairs with games and processions stalls that even bull-baiting became a London institution by holding back the water that piers the bridge also function as a giant where and even the earliest manuscript we can clearly see the rapid pouring through the arches passing through it was known as shooting the bridge and boats were often overturned famed by the arches of London Bridge the Thames became a theatre for the royal patron food the more unpopular wives of Henry the 8th shot the bridge as a rite of passage rather than being given more conventional coronations and later on royalty traveled on the Thames in wonderful barges such as this this splendid thing was made in 1730's for Frederick Prince of Wales and of course all during Londoners enjoyed the Thames as well the were frost fairs firework displays and the Lord Mayor's Show or the originally held on the water like Venice London was a world of the water the whole city faced the foreshore here in Greenwich downstream from the City of London you can still catch a sense of how the river and the city once merged here - one of the great tutor palaces right on the water rebo are the stewards from 1610 onwards Greenwich never lost his River focus it's a relic of the world of the rural River the world which is seen would last forever but London's growth changed all that as industrial revolution swept onwards London planned more bridges which is made possible by new technology this volume contains visionary proposals for Tensei to London they do not in 1804 the city corporation which at that time wanted to reorganize the Port of London that involved rebuilding London Bridge and moving it significantly to the west this shows a rebuilt London Bridge this is the central arch cast-iron much higher so great a carriage for indeed high mastership shown going through this is an amazing image incredible of course this did not happen but I think they've done I think that what happen all has change change to a large degree thought about my engines this this is the drawing of a piledriver designed in the late 17th and 30s for the construction of the foundations of Westminster Bridge this is an early product of the Industrial Revolution I suppose here you see horses it says horse powered gain round some capstan with a gear device to increase the power of the horses the ropes would have were is this great hammer up here there it is as hammers brought up the top here then it would be released and rush pow and drive the timber pile in the riverbed so very important movement in in bridge construction just revolution Falls transformed London transformed the world and particularly for London it fueled an explosion of bridge construction for more than 500 years London Bridge stood alone as a crossing of the Thames it defined the original city the commercial giant a to Mars upstream was another big urban centre Westminster from $1,300 words this area had been a seat both of political power and social prestige in England but it had no bridge fast because the City of London had fought preserved old London bridges lucrative monopolies so when plans for another crossing at Westminster mooted in the 1660s there was uproar it wasn't just the city fathers who objected they were joined by thousands of Waterman as boatman and ferryman who believed that lively rooms would be threatened the second bridge was build not remember that then unlike now attended London's main highway in types and goodson people up and down on from side to side now the Watchmen were very powerful lobby indeed they had their own city livery company and even their own poet the Waterman poet John Taylor he campaigned about a competition after introduction in Tudor times of a sprung carriage carriages coaches Jayde's and Flanders mares do rob us of our shares our wares our fares against the ground we stand and knock our heels whilst all our profit runs away on wheels they couldn't charge more than the set fear as but if you could persuade your passenger that it was against the tide and there was a terrible evening and whatever and I'll do my best sir to get you there on time then of course there might be a nice tip you need so that ok so the water will be involved in many things the one of course getting people across the Thames in a sense bridges for the enemy of Waterman they took where they took away the trade absolutely that and they'll get to the pub they objected to every bridge and were compensated very often for or at least the company was conversate it we often for a bridge being built taking trade away would you still object funder yet another bridge being built did the board of ins become the object to the recent Millennium Bridge bridge yes indicated wobbly the gate we won't seriously I mean you would you would have judged it did object to that bridge yes but much more venomously in the past but we still say you know it's not you don't need another bridge there ever [Music] was only in 1736 after centuries of argument the Parliament agreed to a bridge at Westminster under the Act the Washburn got 25,000 pounds compensation the current day of more than 2 million in Westminster Bridge officially opened in 1750 London was transformed once again the Thames had been a kind of mode protecting the city now all that changed the commercial and political powers north of the river once represented mainly by the church now to charge across the river it so started the dramatic transformation of the south bank of the Thames ishutin south bank had been a place independent hostage in the north bank a place free of the city's controls and statutes it was I suppose a land of liberty and liberties there were theatres bear-baiting pits brothels market gardens and pressure grounds that now became something quite different we came in a way a province of the north bank of the Thames miles because or the major landowners and developers with south side of the Thames was the city corporation the city in the bridge house of state-owned land across river which jumped in value once Westminster and then Blackfriars Bridge were built and the obviously erected here candid the focus of a grand new urban district marks a center of their holdings as a result of the new bridges London north and south of the river have become one great city the new crossings were addictive part of what was to be the zenith of George and London but like the Romina medieval bridges before them the two are now ghosts swept away by development flying 14 miles upstream however we can experience their effect Richmond bridge a classic 18th century masonry arch structure is the only one of London's Georgian bridges to survive and it sits in a green riverside landscape the middle-class suburb surrounded by arrows to critique houses and parks it allows us a glimpse of what Westminster might have been like but the bridge was new and the idea of London as a River City was at his height early one morning in September 1802 William Wordsworth after cross Westminster Bridge on the top of a coach he was inspired by what she saw it was a vision he wrote a poem and the poem as charming way is here in this bronze plate upon Westminster Bridge Earth has not anything to show more fair dull would he be of soul who could pass by a sight so touching in its majesty this city now doth like a garment where the beauty of the ships towers domes theatres and temples lie open unto the fields and to the sky standing here I can see the city as Wordsworth sorta haunts my imagination George London on the greatest urban creations ever achieved by mankind I argued and to think that from here that great city unfolded itself to Wordsworth in way he could not resist [Music] Wordsworth's para mas paches swansong for George and London between 1715 1859 bridges were thrown across the Thames but despite this the city began to turn its back on the water as a population of more than two and a half million pushed further and further away from the riverbanks London was fast becoming an industrial Mecca City it needed rapid transit and bridge builders like John Rennie Rennie built three great bridges Southwark bridge Waterloo Bridge and a New London Bridge sadly none of them survived so like old London Bridge who have to search for renny's bridge this is part of the southern approach to Remy's at London Bridge it's a fragment that offers a glimpse of the character of the power of the whole reminder of the architecture engineering wonder that we've lost I love the both icicle corners and the tremendously strong magnet walling all had a Roman fluidity and Granger renny's New London Bridge was his final work was built alongside the medieval bridge new roads had to be built much demolition was carried out and historic Street plan of London was changed although to my mind he never rivaled the medieval bridge it too became a signature of the city famous enough to be dismantled and sold to rich Americans in the 1960s the whole structure was rebuilt stone by stone to grace a housing development in the Arizona desert I must be going no longer the burning time the new bridges reduced lunges reliance on the river even more ones was common to row on the river at night like this not anymore success came with a price the eighteen forties and fifties were three years in London's history the population the city had swollen London's infrastructure couldn't cope with a megacity London at the river was filthy polluted from sewage and industrial waste it was poised in London as it was killing them in their tens of thousands in from diseases like cholera was rife the city was poisoning the wells of London and killing its population [Music] the bridges shared in the sickness Waterloo Bridge became a tourist with suicides particularly for despairing women jumping from his parapets and certitudes confirm its reputation in the 1840s about 15% of London suicides jumped from Waterloo Bridge this aspect of London's bridges and the Thames as theatres of death is etched into our literature the Charles Dickens in our mutual friend essentially that novel about the river and river life starts a story with these characters fishing in the Thames for corpses commodity London now become the capital of a world empire the largest richest a most powerful city in the world and yet who wash with disease and poverty something had to be done the solution was a brutal Taming of the Thames itself an embankment which contained much of the giant new sewer but a railway line as well was a work of one of London's great engineers Joseph basil chair I'm standing on the Victoria Embankment in front of me and above me is a Hungerford bridge below me is passages mighty sewer the underground railway a gas mains and a telegraph cable this was and remains spectacular engineering when completed London would never be the same again this was a death knell of the Riverside omens Phoenician looking London grand buildings like Somerset House once has baked tacky the Watergate we're at high tide people who would arrive by boat but basil jet built a vast wall to separate the river from the city inside it 22 acres of land were reclaimed pushed the river back in places by more than a hundred meters the 17th century Watergate is the last surviving relic of the old waterfront and is now marooned on the edge of embankment gardens you can clearly sadness painting the shows just how splendid the Georgian waterfront must have been safer transport and cleaner water came with a cost the legacy has been the wave of appalling is caught off the river from the light of the atom and the Great Riverside Boulevard there a wonderful win just for a horse-drawn fake and pedestrians is now noisy and polluted urban motorway and the bills that once rose from the river like some of the house behind me rose my palace in Venice rise and swathe of traffic so moving backwards had a terrible effect in the city this point on the reasons why London visit in the way have forgotten the wonders and beauty of the river nonetheless the TOI modernity still had its triumphs palaces bridge in the western suburbs is one of them is one of three built by the same Joseph Basso jet unsurprisingly construction Hammersmith employed the latest technology it's a suspension bridge with the roadways support you from above rather than below unlike traditional arch bridges the road hangs from wrought iron cables strong over cast iron towers with each end anchored firmly in the ground wonderful looking the bridge it's a really the window into submit Victorian London um the engineering of course epitome of Victorian engineering combinational beauty and of other strengths a cast I'm very strong as they say in compression pushing down very strong that's good perfect for the suspension towers but the chain is of course they have to be bit more elastic so they're there they have a tensile strength hence wall shines you so wonderful again doesn't see much now as a casual observer but a lot of the engineering technology going up in here functional strong also beautiful and in Castile of course you can cost lovely detail hence the suspension towers having some classical detail our chocolate isn't and various callously for all the wonderful molding so every time you look at this bridge you can read more into it and answer more about the the wonder of the of engineering in in written Victorian London it's a complete Victorian piece London's best bridges I love it buzzer Jets triumph at Hammersmith was commissioned by the newly created Metropolitan Board of Works the board was the first overall government of the new Victorian mega city in 1869 it had taken over all the private bridges across the Thames and abolished all the remaining tolls and it was determined to propane his authority I love the ornament on this bridge the iconography its sound revealing look for examples wonderful piece of old heraldry I suppose behind me in the middle is a oil curd farms to let the arms the City of London and right the arms the City of Westminster but also the arms of Kent of Surrey of Middlesex and of Essex this bridge relator finds London as it was in the late 19th century doleful reveals the power of bridge building London is no longer simply a city it was a city state by the 1890s buzzer Jed and the Board of Works had shaped the city preparing it for the 20th century and with it the climax of the British Empire the city of more than 5 million people stretched down both banks of the Thames for more than half that distance from London Bridge to the sea there was still no bridges just dangerous and expensive tunnels they were doubt because despite all the changes London was still a port indeed it was the greatest port city in the world and a bridge will prevent big ships from coming upstream the docks downstream at West India Docks and Catherine stock had been constructed in the early 19th century but in the late 19th century London traditional port the port of London over there still functioned with ships would settle deep into Thames some almost as large as HMS Belfast over there so any crossing of the Thames downstream from here how to allow the larger ships still to reach the pool everybody had their own idea of how to solve the problem two artists contributed different swingbridge plans another contemplated a tunnel under the Thames yet another hope to build a transporter bridge we lifted people in traffic high enough to let the ships through but the winning plan returned to a feature of the legendary medieval crossing a drawbridge the completed Tower Bridge deployed the files hydraulics system powered by steam engines to pivot the entire roadway to let ships sail through in the bowels of the structure the scale of it all becomes clear this vast cavernous space is a bascule chamber below the South Tower water level is roughly here and above me is the underside of the roadway you hear the traffic equally everything is painted white moves so when the Tower Bridge Road wave goes armed white elements yeah that's a counterweight come down to occupy this space must be very scary to see that of course this is a fridge like no other in London it's a moving bridge and live in breach in a sense with the crew people in control rooms machinery operating in living migrating we're speaking I can hear it but all the engineering expertise was invisible in the completed bridge instead the architecture was deliberately designed to merge with the Tower of London next door this is one of those astonishing things about Tower Bridge it's not a gothic structure built out of stone but it's a steel frame structure a modern building at first window you can see exactly what I mean I'm looking at the companion Taj this one outside waters wonderful Tudor gothic finial still have the ornamental details they were designed to fit in with the ancient Tower of London or history and in here all his modern steel functional building very strong very very sort of them I say almost brutally honest in its construction inside outside or is almond history Beauty pedigree even dreams of the past [Music] hiding the brute functional realities behind a gothic facade may have been a triumph of late Victorian genteel propriety but the effect was to create a sense of immemorial age that is it always being there old London Bridge with his house and shops have been unique Michael of London now the city has found his successor Tower Bridge the Imperial cities gateway to the massive docks downstream and his fast empire beyond after 150 years of frantic bridge building London had reinvented itself after so much of a Victorian and Edwardian Britain London's bridges steeped in nostalgia instant historic look at our vision actually amazing now there was to be a century of quiet on London's River a powerful two bridges no far upstream acquired the same timeless as TS Eliot observed as he lightly slipped quietly dream in the wasteland the river sweats oil and tar the barges drift with the turning tide red sails wide to leeward swing on the heavy spar the barges wash drifting logs down Greenwich reach past the Isle of Dogs by the end of the 20th century the vast broader Greater London men traversed now had to be able to go round it as well as through it but the time as a reverent bridge at Dartford was completed 1991 keren the orbital motorway across the Thames engineering had moved into a new league between the towers is three times as long as old London Bridge and runs 57 meters above the water it's among the largest bridges of its kind in the world Dartford a cable-stayed bridge this is not the same as a suspension bridge here the forces as ODEs travel up the cables and then directly down the towers unlike the suspension bridge where they are anchored on each bank this is a more stable design allows for the creation fasting widen highs this is a British making a statement what's it say well it's proclaiming that the whole of the tempt s tree belongs to London crossing the Thames far downstream from historic city Dartford which defines London's being larger than ever a city-state within South East England the claims of board work as dissipate a hammersmith far upstream now seem vindicated you really do understand the nature this bridge it does command the estuary it is this great gate it protic to London is here now city over there the sea over there should come and go my goodness me I can just about see the towers over Canary Wharf but however magnificent the bridge is in itself however modern it doesn't erase the echoes of the past that so intrigued Judith Conrad how about 50 miles downstream from the food of London where everything started around 2,000 years ago there of course things have changed many times but here in places like this it feels well surely much they did when their own dry winds passed by this is a strange location so seem to be lost between worlds a very odd place indeed an edgy frontier yet emerging from the primordial ooze and modern I'm in the reads much as London emerged all those centuries before ah this is why I love the Thames it carries memories of all the people who ever tabs on it you've lived besides it look here there's a pottery porcelain earth where there was lovely delicate handle from a teacup I suppose beautiful it's such an intimate connection with the person who owned it loved it lost it that's what's only incredible about this place that it's sudden and live in connection with the ghosts of the past who stand here one finds and connects and remembers my ad mm London had lived through nearly 20 centuries of its own history and what better way to celebrate their history and with a bridge are not a giant a jewel one design not for transport of a human delight a pedestrian bridge opened up a new way through the city and in a nod to his noble forebears a spiritual bridge pointed directly to London's Cathedral some Paul although is suffered teething troubles the design our engineers of Arab architect Norman Foster and even a sculptor Auntie Karen is a work of art this bridge is redefine London once again I create a new link across the Thames it's a brought added life to Southwark in front of me with city behind me created a wonderful connection things take mod not there and some Paul's Cathedral doesn't look absolutely fantastic also the bridge has some crated aspect active new vistas of the city from here I can see an array of bridges left and right on the form a bridge over there the distance object lovely to walk across it lovely - it's good or it's touches and you look at it it might be a way of them other great pedestrian bridges around the world throughout our bridge in Venice for example also exquisite it's of course is lined with shops lovely living thing the rialto bridge puts your mind of inhabited preachers I wonder if London could ever recapture the glory of old London Bridge with his houses could to be a new inhabited bridge in London perhaps [Music] people have been building bridges in London for 3,000 years and all and those extraordinary structures have defined the city from beginning they were sites of primal spiritual power as mad attempt to tame and harnessed the brute force of nature and they've also shaped London's economic and political dominance once a permanent bridge was built wealth and power found their way to London and with them the talents of millions of people and so these crossings became not only a vehicle for oil and political display they helped lunder become to my mind the greatest city in the world but we knew bridges and different London's in the future even now a cable car bridge is being built downstream at docks that like this bridge could only be a good thing of help Londoners regain the pleasures of the Thames and only through the Thames and his bridges can you grasp the true nature of London and understand those diverse people costs mongers in Kings warriors and merchants who have made London the fantastic City it is [Music]

Channel: Spark

Views: 762,876

Keywords: dan cruickshank britains best buildings, dan cruickshank adventures in architecture, dan cruickshank documentary, dan cruickshank, bbc4 documentaries full episodes, London bridge, london bridge is falling down, tower bridge, millenium bridge, bbc4 documentary, westminster bridge, southwark bridge, london bridge documentary, waterloo bridge, albert bridge, lambeth bridge, Spark, Science, science documentary, Engineering, Technology, science experiment, science explained

Id: 7dFJqnXBvgQ

Length: 58min 47sec (3527 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 21 2019