The History Of London's Bridges | Our History

right through the middle of london runs the thames this mighty tidal river was once the artery of the city but now all the bridges seem to sew the whole place together linking the north with the south powerful and functional graceful sleek and slender artistic and colorful we've got innovative and modern bridges beside the grandeur of gothic design and victorian ingenuity and an important part of london's social and economic progress can be measured by its very first bridge london bridge which has existed in four very different incarnations that date back to medieval and even roman times [Music] i've just come down 5th street hill and this is lower 10th street and underneath my feet are the remains of the roman bridge the very end of the roman bridge on the north bank of course we're now about 100 meters away from the river because in those days it was very much wider with sloping muddy banks ali taylor from the thames explorer trust helps school children discover london's history on the banks of the thames [Music] romans book the first london bridge yes and it's just downstream here um how did they choose where to build it well one of the reasons was this was the highest point that the tide reached in those days and so they got a free lift with the tide up the river right another reason they built it here was because it doesn't look like it now but this area was full of islands it was very shallow and so they could build a bridge across it was a good bridging point good forwarding point is there any evidence of it here on the back of the river well a couple of weeks ago we had a bit of a star find and these were the children because the children are wonderful they've got sharp eyes haven't they they have indeed now those are roman floor tiles amazing that they haven't knocked off in all that time it's at least 1500 years old what happens is you see they're buried in the mud okay and then they get protected this is a fantastic archaeological site because you've got the tide coming in and out so twice a day the river thames kindly does the excavation work right so if we came down here next week we'd find something else that's why it's always really exciting to come down here because you never know what you're going to find no one knows quite what happened to the roman london bridge some historians think it fell into disrepair after the romans left others believe its wooden construction was patched up and used right up until the building of london's very first stone bridge in 1176 [Music] this is the church of saint magnus the martyr and just through there is what used to be bridge street the approach to the old london bridge come and have a look these lumps of stone were actually part of the old london bridge bridge street was here this was the end of the bridge and it went straight across the river there oh they seem to have built something in the way still i'm told there's a lovely model of the bridge inside the church and here it is just look at this what amazes me is all the buildings on the bridge there are three-story houses there are shops down below there's a chapel with thomas of rebecca chapel there's a gatehouse here there are pigs in the street and lots of chaps on horses and cows here as well here's a bit of naked bridge but mostly it's covered in buildings now in the old days before this they could put a single arch over a stream but here this is 276 meters long and they had to have look 19 arches absolutely extraordinary arch after arch and they're incredibly narrow too just look at this one here hello you can see it be quite tough to get a boat through there it's so narrow and in fact if the tide was unfavorable there could be a six foot drop from your side upstream to my side so that you'd shoot through a tremendous speed it was called shooting the bridge and watermen loved it but it was dangerous a lot of them died and a proverb came which said the bridge was for wise men to cross over and for fools to go under one reason that they built all those houses and shops on london bridge was that they always needed money the fact is the bridge was always in need of maintenance and repairs the fair lady in the rhyme could well have been eleanor of provence henry iii's queen she misspent funds meant for maintenance of the bridge in 1282 five arches collapsed and she quickly returned responsibility for the maintenance to her subjects amazingly the bridge was maintained for almost 200 years but after another fatal collapse in 1437 something more serious had to be done over the next 35 years arch by arch london bridge was rebuilt but it still needed constant repair its collapse could have been a disaster for the capital as the nearest crossing was 20 miles upriver in kingston fishmonger's hall on london bridge approach is home to one of the city of london's guilds or livery companies that were formed in early medieval times to protect and regulate specific trades here inside fishmonger's hall with its wonderfully rich decoration they've got a whole mass of information about the history of london bridge and i'm off to meet the curator claire crawford in the courtroom so claire this must be the old london bridge with all the buildings on it yes it is um the buildings were taken off in 1757. they caused a sort of impediment to the traffic flowing everywhere it wouldn't be easy to drive anything over there there were shops and all sorts of businesses it became a parrot in 1820 that the the city were going to have to um look at building a new bridge they held an architectural competition in 1825 um but decided after they picked a winner that they were going to ask john rennie anyway because he had designed waterloo and southwark bridges right and so john rennie's design was put up this looks a bit of a mess this picture what's going on well it does look like rather an unusual topic for a painting doesn't it but it does actually show the demolition of the old london bridge that started in 1832. ah so this is the remains of it that is yes that's right wow and you can see how the approach that bridge went past the doris magnus the master church um this looks to our eyes i say an unusual topic but the the fact is that 5 000 people a day came to see the bridge being democratic yeah did they sell tickets they should have done it yes but yeah i'm sure a few of them took the odd piece of stone home and put it in their pockets as a souvenir the demolition of the medieval london bridge had sparked an awareness of its historical value and all sorts of little trinkets egg cups and snuff boxes were made out of fragments of the bridges stone and timbers curiously the finest artifact of all from the old london bridge is this chair it's it's not terribly comfortable i have to say because i'm sitting on a piece of stone clad tell me about it you allege that all these timbers came from a london bridge but they're not covered in barnacles or seaweed these were very large old timbers some of them driven into the riverbed they were taken out preserved dried out and then the inner parts of the woods were used to make the chair that you can see here we've got here the old london bridge with its 19 small chips there you would only a very small boat would fit through the middle there and then the second one down here is the second london bridge that was designed by john rennie and then further down you've got waterloo and southwark bridges both of which were also designed by john so the old bridge that we're interested in is this one of renis on its completion in 1831 john rennie was knighted and his magnificent london bridge still stands to this day but as you can see this london bridge here is definitely not rene's five arch design so where has it got to well it can be found in the unlikely home of lake havasu in the arizona desert sold in the 1960s it's rumored that the purchasers the mcculloch oil company thought they were actually buying tower bridge bridging nothing except desert sand when it was first reconstructed brick by brick it now forms the centerpiece of this man-made fishing lake and is a major tourist attraction [Music] you don't have to go all the way to arizona to see reni's london bridge because this is one of the original arches the one on the south bank and also part of his structure are these steps taking you up onto the bridge they're now called nancy's steps because in the dickens novel oliver twist this is where nancy gets murdered [Music] not much however of the old medieval london bridge remains you can see two of its alcoves preserved in victoria park and another a little closer to its original home here in the grounds of guys hospital but my favorite piece of the medieval london bridge is far more colorful and vibrant than these old stones and it's here just around the corner in newcomen street this fabulous coat of arms you see at the top it says king's arms 1890. that's when this pub was rebuilt but underneath it says george iii 1760. that was the year that george the third came to the throne in fact that coat of arms was on the south gate of london bridge in the time of his dad george the second and it was in 1760 the whole lot was demolished all the houses the south gate and everything and sold and that's why it landed up on this pub but when the bridge was there with the arch everyone who crossed the bridge must have walked under that arch and indeed under that coat of arms and i think i ought to do it too just in remembrance there's no bridge there but there might be a bar might not for hundreds of years the only bridge to cross the thames in london itself was london bridge if you wanted to cross anywhere else you would have to be ferried over by a waterman at the time this business was at least as important as the taxi business is today [Music] but there's one ferry that still crosses the tidal thames in the same place as it has for hundreds of years right here in twickenham right francis can you take me across um do you get a lot of business here yes weekends mainly so it's tourists tourists and residents i would say right but not commuters with briefcases times it's 10 in the morning so why don't they bother to go to the bridges well richmond bridge from the steps round is one and a quarter miles that way that way yes and teddington lock to your right is one and three quarter miles that's a foot bridge over the lock so that's the longest way along this wall it is it's more it's a rather uncomfortable footbridge isn't it it's sort of steeper yes many years ago i believe all the residents of richmond hill that's not there yet they've got a covenant to say that the the view from richmond hill to the souls of the river mustn't be obscure so they said no bridges no bridges nothing and therefore there's still a ferry running yeah that of course was not to be the fate for the rest of london's watermen [Music] i steadied my sea legs again for a ride a few miles downstream [Music] the expansion of the capital and the ever-growing congestion on london bridge finally got work underway on london's first new bridge over the thames in nearly 700 years the corporation of london held back the building of westminster bridge for 70 years for fears of the damage it would do to the trade in southwark and also because they were worried about impoverishing the ferryman they even bribed the king charles ii to oppose the building plans the first westminster bridge that opened in 1750 was dubbed the bridge of fools corners were cut in its construction and its cheap shallow foundation suffered from constant subsidence several of the piers had to be rebuilt before it was finally demolished in 1862 and completely rebuilt as the bridge that stands today [Music] the construction of that first westminster bridge despite all its faults meant that holding back the demand for more bridges across the thames became [Music] impossible [Music] but the grandest and most famous bridge in the whole of london is a monstrous victorian original built right next to the tower of london it's tower bridge it's also one of the newest completed in 1894. it was financed by the tolls and taxes levied on london bridge and it cost more than a million pounds [Music] it was arguably the most ambitious civil engineering project at the time over 400 men were employed to build a structure and over 70 000 tons of concrete were used to build the bridges supporting piers alone today thousands of tourists come here just to look at this fabulous structure but back in 1876 just the idea of building a bridge here wasn't at all popular now the city of london were desperate to ease the traffic flow around the city which is just the other side of the tower of london but the thames was a major shipping lane and a bridge here might spell the end of the upstream docks so how would the bigger ships reach the docks further upstream many designs were put forward with various clever ideas for letting the ships through eventually it was horace jones's ingenious drawbridge design that was chosen it lifted the whole road now look look they're opening the bridge it's up at nearly 45 degrees there's a boat coming down so they've shut off the traffic they've shut off the pedestrians and they're all gathered here in the old days port of london was the busiest port in the world and i kept having to lift the bridge several times a day so the pedestrians were allowed to go up in lifts up the towers and walk across the high walkways at the top so they wouldn't be interrupted but in fact nobody bothered to go because it was such fun standing here watching the bridge go up they all just stayed here as spectators more or less as they are [Music] today [Music] the bridge lift these days involves simply pressing a sequence of buttons engaging the hydraulic pumps that power the bridge stopping the traffic and releasing the safety bolts that keep the bridge in place david who is in charge of opening the bridge was kind enough to let me have a go at the final stage of lifting so how are we doing what else has to happen it's now protected so now we're ready to do a lift really can i do it do a lift all we do is check and make sure the bridge is clear everybody and now you can go ahead you don't have to warn anybody you just do it we just do the lifting and hold it down you just pull back and hold it back if you watch this ah fantastic watch the screen the screen will actually go with it oh yes how are you moving oh wow hey this is something i always wanted to do open tower bridge 45 is a long way up it actually goes up to 87 degrees gosh oh the pigeons are getting all unhappy up there we're disturbing their resting places oh here comes the barge right so then i just let go that's it it should come [Music] now this chap here was the chap who used to drive the bridge in victorian times in fact i think he's been doing it ever since but he's not looking terribly well at the moment they didn't have green electric buttons in those days and they had these vast levers the first two levers here are for the large and small engines it says large and small you could decide which engines you wanted to drive this is for the resting blocks the brake you have to operate each of these in turn and more brake and finally the pull and each one had to be over like that before you could begin to open the bridge and then when you shut it again you did that and when you were going to open the bridge you did it with this which is basically just to open the hydraulic valve down below and let in originally the water in it today with the oil now i'm right down in the bowels of the building below water level and this is an accumulator the way the victorians did it was to generate using a steam engine at the end of the bridge high pressure water at 750 pounds per square inch which came in here in pipes but they couldn't make it fast enough to lift the bridge directly so they had to accumulate the energy and what they did was to pump that high pressure water into a cylinder in the middle of this and the water pushed the piston up which lifted this cross head and lifted the whole of this vast weight and it went up the rails you see the guide rails and the walls up about 20 feet and then they had accumulated a massive energy and with six of these accumulators they had plenty of power to lift the whole bridge despite switching to electricity in 1976 the basic victorian engineering principles that power tower bridge remain the same today as they were over a hundred years ago i was taken further into the depths of the bridge to see the bascule chamber that was built to accommodate the bridge's counterweight as it opened it's moving it's moving [Music] are you sure it can't just break loose and go warm he cannot break loose no all systems fail he just locks up solid wherever he is now as much as the crew and i knew this was true there is still something decidedly uncomfortable about having hundreds of tons of lead and iron bearing down on you [Music] you can see the sky through that well almost yeah that is one whole lot of machinery isn't it each end of the bridge weighs 1200 tons but they're relatively easy to lift because the weights coming toward me in the bascule chamber act in the same way as the kid at the other end of a seesaw i just hope he's right that it is going to stop quite soon ah it stopped broken i don't believe you could break this bridge though only a short ride downstream from its nearest rival london bridge tower bridge stands as a reminder of london's seafaring heritage of the not too distant past and marks our progress as we build yet bigger and bolder bridges even further towards the sea this is the queen elizabeth ii bridge it carries the traffic on the m25 from thorac across to dartford this was finished in 1991 and it's actually two miles long and the closest bridge to the sea [Music] as american president franklin roosevelt once said there can be little doubt that in many ways the story of bridge building is the story of civilization but by it we can measure an important part of a people's progress and today the bridges tie together the whole of london linking the north and south marshlands of roman and medieval times into what has become the modern world city that london is today [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Our History

Views: 6,701

Keywords: our history, documentary, world history documentary, documentary channel, award winning, life stories, best documentaries, daily life, real world, point of view, story, full documentary, history, london bridge, waterloo bridge, thames bridges, london bridges, bridges in london, london history, tower bridge, tower bridge london

Id: pj2mU2Rgb5o

Length: 22min 29sec (1349 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021