What Happened To The Original London Bridge? | History Of London | Timeline

[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 [Music] millions of Londoners cross these bridges every week most I don't supposed get them a second thought but for 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 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 voxel shore of why London bridges falling down of corpses fashioned beneath Waterloo Bridge and above all of the sublime ambition of London's bridge builders themselves I was born that London was told while the world's great ports and the tens of the world's great working rivers I will remember the child the impression and London's bridges made on me I suppose bridges gave me my first feeling stomach-churning architectural experience and goodness me they are doing a second now in view some of London's bridges have vanished or been replaced they are ghost crossings of the past but each of them is occluded the city's hidden history in some ways they are that history the history has lasted nearly 4000 years [Music] in the beginning was the river the Thames the greatest the longest river in England 200 miles from its source the river meets the tidal stream the result the landscape of marshes and Islands indeterminate had always changing only here far downstream from the City of London can understand the elemental world of sand mud pebbles and debris that whilst attends before the city and his bridges were built for generations stretching back over centuries Londoners laboured in the marshes at now long lost trains mut locks and scavengers Tosh's and dredges Waterman an oyster gatherers all gone lost class the river has always been a portal into the past as inspired artists and writers none more so than Joseph Conrad who wrote that nothing is easier than to evoke the great spirit of the past the lower reaches of the Thames from here Conrad could see the great and modern city of London from the ancient perspective the monstrous town was marked ominously on the sky a brooding gloom in sunshine a lurid glare unto 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 about 15 miles upstream to the West past the City of London beyond the seat of power at Westminster as it pays which today we call Vauxhall here in 1500 BC before Troy fell and long before Julius Caesar came to Britain the people of the marshes made 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 edges so you therefore saw what 1500 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 the Institute of structure in London is there 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 his all her place with three rivers met the tens and two of his lost tributaries the tybone and the fr that's there something magical three rivers meet it and weird a wonderful tidal things happen I suppose that's right and if this was the tidal heading a 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 see this connection between those things in the sky you know that the moon and those things on earth deliver they connect you know 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 were discovered the archaeologists found two bronze spearheads driven point down into the mud beside the bridge were they offering to the deity of the river like coins in the fountain this urges universal and even today Londoners continue to make offerings all the way up and down the 10 C's days we find this kind of stuff now these are not Bronze Age these Diwali lamps oh my goodness nice sound like in striking India's like in the like in the sake of gang hang on a minute modern said mod models read Lord Ganesh over couple of obstacles great fellow and and these chaps you found these in the tempo Hindus living in England in London I cast it uses that attempt like the Ganges sacred River right so they're replicating what we used to do in the Ron's age 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 and fish between worlds a bridge between the world of man here and the world of gods in 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 Roman's about 1,500 years after our Marsh people's 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 two meters deep and no tide the Romans knew this they were champion engineers of the ancient world they pooled their bridge while the shallowest narrowest part of River our span for the modern London Bridge right next to the ancient port what is 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 bridge could be constructed to connect the south and the north banks of the Thames in addition armed by the bridge is a tidal pool allowing a large ship's 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 lung he 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 for sure as conquerors the Romans needed a defensible Riverside site and port so that reinforcements could be rushed in it's needed and an evacuation could take place at speed in the case of an emergency the trauma of Boudica rebellion in 1861 when the Roman cap of Colchester was burnt combined with a factor already at that time the bridge here made London the transport centre of Roman Britain when that when Roman authorities re-established London not Colchester became the provincial capital from here the Romans could control I did that for several centuries you're looking at a slice of Roman London or the beginning of a slice of Rome and 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 at the moment towards the river so 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 different seam this modern stuff which they're digging out and there and the actual layers of archaeology which is left and that's what they're trying to do they're trying to distinguish real archaeology from modern 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 out we only saw one pier of the bridge in 1981 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 we how we speculate the bridge would have look 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 is the pile o 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 invaders never forgot the bridge was still a sacred mess a physical place - when the Georgians built the predecessor to bridge I'm standing on they dredged the riverbed to clear the bottom for ships to pass out there in the middle of river they found a large cache of Roman coins rather like these wonderful things bronze and brass maybe silver archaeologists believe that was a shrine in the middle of the bridge and people pass it over with cast coins into the mighty Thames the pieces power so for 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 Ponte facts indeed from the titles of a Roman Emperor both Empress and 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 Covent 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 which the old weakest were trading port and the river became as it had been before the Romans a frontier a board between warring kingdoms with names like Essex Middlesex sorry and Kent for London to achieve its destiny as the great city it needed a bridge once King Alfred and his successors of the United England and we occupied the Roman city a bridge was built but it was really no more than us in music causeway intended more to a stop Raiders traveling upstream than to be an aid 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 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 spam 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 ask 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 planner the modern city was laid down by then though very few the actual building survived but what has endured are the record of the bridge preserved the archives of the corporation of the london they tell us that in 1173 a religious community the chaplains brethren and sisters of the bridge of London when trusted with building new stone bridge and the mastermind of the project was a parish priest Peter of coal church off 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 it's 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 and grant from Peter the priest Pete of Culture the architect the crate of London Bridge incredible and attached to this grant is something actually wonderful it's a seal here it is and it shows Peter of cultures 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 Bridge now this is a charter over about thirteen thirteen twenty and we have attached to it here another seal again wonderful it shows about an abstract representation of the bridge I suppose just simply an arch was a Thomas Becket sitting on the top of it and below the arch we see a city of London absolute wonderful image some poles in the centre old some poles with his spire intact flanked by city churches with air buyers pointing to the 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 here we see it it's the first of drawn image orpington arranged in the foreground the Tower of London for today's activities going on and there's a water gate from the Thames and in the background an incredible image of the northern half of London Bridge great chapter in the centre and the arches connecting that tool and the north bank and in the background image to that on the seal a skyline of London with the spires open pools and the spires the city churches it's a wonderful thing this drawing manuscript 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 the tower of a Magnus the master Church which every cost in London Bridge would have passed because the carriageway the road weight London Bridge was here and inside there within the art so to speak below the tower or to 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 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 roadway 19 stone build arches xx 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 well someone could see very clearly about off the width of the river is um sort of constrained by a thick appears of the arches and a breakwater in front of them they're called 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 center span it was to compromise his adventures of the city so are needed to prevent invaders coming across the bridge from the south up comes the drawbridge this is a fortification that which in a sense is part of the defenses of London all other than city war I don't know on just wonders kept anything of this wonderful bridge still survived below the waters of the Thames it was 30 years before this legendary crossing was completed in 1209 and it's 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 bridges would have look 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 that would be made up with Vivid masonry with earth all sorts of solid things in between that the timber frames so the bridge would be supported by the infill of these artificial islands held in place by planks Ryland ground wood piles very laborious work but when do these day 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 for laymen is these these are powers of some centuries old they survived underwater and were low tide a high tide waters right up here it's astonishing so timber is preserved by being kept wet 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 part of it is wet and therefore it expands when it's wet and then when it streets 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 would 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 only was deep in anxiety about the future of their all-important bridge it wasn't popular entertained on a regular basis it would indeed collapse after the disaster the small revolution the stitch of London took back the revenues of the bridge from the crown and gave them permanently to the people indeed to the successors 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 of 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 have 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 organization which built from preserved old London Bridge still exists there's an income of 700 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 tolls and charity left by medieval Londoners all those centuries ago old London Bridge stood about 15 metres over there with its tall buildings as houses and shops it was in a sense a city within the city in that space people landowners lived and died toiled and took their pleasures for years I live nearby I often come here to look imagine the spectral bridge sound accurate to the census of the pilgrims the merchant six have no soldiers trusting one way and the other it may seem feasible for 600 years London Bridge dominated the city and the massive iconic structure redefined the very river it spanned it shoosh pairs and starlings interfered with the flow of attempts itself the 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 Weir and even the earliest manuscript we can clearly see the rapids pouring through the arches passing through it was known as shooting the bridge and boats are often overturned framed by the arches of the London Bridge the Thames became a theatre for the royal patron food the more unpopular wives of Henry the 8th shot the bridge 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 was 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 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 with 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 been 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 greater carriage for indeed high mastership shown going through this is an amazing image incredible of course this did not happen but things have gone I think that what happen all has change change to a large degree brought about by engines this this is the drawing of a piledriver designed in the late 17th 30s for the construction of the foundations of the Westminster Bridge this is an early product of the Industrial Revolution I suppose here you see horses it says horse powered rounders and capstan with a gear device to increase the power of the horses the ropes would have is this great hammer that is as Hamas brought up the top here then it would be released and rush town power and drive the timber pile in the riverbed so very important movement in in bridge construction does revolution course 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 two-month upstream was another big urban centre Westminster from 1300 onwards this area had been a seed both of political power and social prestige in England but it had no bridge that's because the City of London had fought preserved old London bridges lucrative monopolies so when pounds for another crossing at Westminster were muted 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 larger rooms would be threatened the second bridge was build remember that then 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 the 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 profits 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 do my best sir to get you there on time then of course there might be a nice tip at the end of heed so that okay so the water will be involved in many things for one of course getting people across the Thames in a sense bridges were the enemy of water and they took where they took away the trade absolutely that's and they get it to every bridge and were compensated very often for at least the company was conversate it very often for a bridge being built taking trade away would you still object find it yet another bridge being built at the border fence company object to the millenium bridge indicated wobbly the game we won't seriously I mean you would you would object 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 that was only in 1736 after centuries of argument the Parliament agree to a bridge at Westminster under the Act the Washburn got 25,000 pounds compensation the occurrence day of more than two 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's so started the dramatic transformation of the south bank of the Thames ishutin south bank had been a place independent mr. Gela north bank a place free of the city's controls and statutes it was I suppose a land of liberty and liberties who are theatres bear-baiting pits brothels market gardens and pressure grounds and now became something quite distant it became in a way a province of the north bank of the Thames miles because or major landowners and developers with south side of the Thames was the city corporation the search in the bridge houses stayed homeland across River which jumped in value once Westminster and then Blackfriars Bridge were built and the obelisk erected here handed 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 a middle-class suburb surrounded by aristocratic houses and parks it allows us a glimpse of what Westminster might have been like when the bridge was new and the idea of London as a River City was at his height early one morning in September 1800 and to Willing Wordsworth passed across Westminster Bridge on the top of a coach he was inspired by what he saw it was a vision he wrote a poem and the poem and most charming way is here in this bronze plate upon West is the bridge [Music] 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 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 a way he could not resist words was poem was fetch his swan song 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 river banks London was fast becoming an industrial Mecca City it needed rapid transit and bridge builders like John Reni Reni built three great bridges Southwark bridge Waterloo Bridge and a New London Bridge but sadly none of them survived so like old London Bridge who have to search for renny's bridge this is par for southern approach to renny's at London Bridge it's a fragment that offers a glimpse of the character of the power of the whole reminder of the architect our engineering wonder that we've lost the bold icicle corners and the tremendously strong magnet warning don't have a Roman solidity and Granger Menace 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 down by stone to grace a housing development in the Arizona desert the new bridges reduced Londoners reliance on the river even more once it was common to roll on the river at night like this not anymore success came with a price the eighteen forties and fifties were green years in London's history the population the city had swollen London's infrastructure couldn't cope with a megacity London River was filthy looted 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 of right the city was poisoning the wells of London and killing its population the British shared in the sickness Waterloo Bridge became a tourist for suicides particularly for despairing women jumping from his parapets answer touches confirm its reputation in the 1840s about 15% of London suicides jumped from walking 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 novel about the river and river life starts a story with these characters fishing in the Thames for corpses [Music] Londyn now become the largest richest and most powerful city in the world and yet who was awash with disease and poverty the solution was a brutal Taming of the thames itself an embankment which contained not just a giant new sewer but a railway line as well was a work of one of London's great engineers Joseph basil Chen 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 at 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 almost venetian looking London grand buildings like Somerset House once has baked tacky the Watergate we're at high tide people would arrive by boat but basil jet Boulevard 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 has now marooned on the edge of embankment Gardens you can clearly see this painting the shows just how splendid the Georgia waterfront must have been safer transport and cleaner water came with a cost the legacy has been revolve appalling is caught off the river from the light and the great Riverside Boulevard they're a wonderful win just sort of horse-drawn fake and pedestrians is now noisy and polluted urban motorway and the business at once rose from the river like Somerset House behind me Rose like palace in Venice grinds and swathe of traffic so moving backwards had a terrible effect in the city he's buying bond the reasons why London is in the way have forgotten the wonders and beauty nonetheless Victorian modernity still had its triumphs Hammersmith bridge in western suburbs is one of them is one of three built by the same Joseph Basile jet unsurprisingly construction Hammersmith employed the latest technology it's a suspension bridge with the roadways supported from above rather than below unlike traditional arch bridges the road hangs from wrought iron cables strong / 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 and the engineering of course epitome of Victorian engineering combinational beauty and of pedal strength cast time very strong they say in compression pushing down very strong that's good perfect for the suspension towers but the chains of course they have to be bit more elastic so they have a tensile strength and hence rule times you so wonderful again doesn't see much now as a casual observer but a lot of the engineering technology going on here functional strong also beautiful and in cast-iron of course you can cost lovely detail hence the suspension towers happens of classical detail at all corners isn't and various callously throttled wonderful molding so every time you look at this bridge you can read more into it on some the wonder of the of engineering and in written Victorian London is a complete Victorian piece one of London's best bridges I love it puzzle Jets triumph at Hammersmith was commissioned by the newly created Metropolitan Board of Works the board was the first overall government for 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 put his authority I love the ornament on this bridge the iconography its sound revealing looks itself as wonderful piece of old heraldry I suppose behind me in the middle is a royal curd farms to let the arms and City of London and the right the arms the City of Westminster had also the arms of Kent of Surrey of Middlesex and of Essex this visually defines London as it was in the late 19th century daughter reveals the power of bridge building London was 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 for 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 report indeed who was the greatest poor city in the world and a bridge will prevent big ships from coming upstream the dock downstream is 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 the ships would separate deep into the Thames some almost as large as Belfast over there so any crossing of the town's downstream from here how to allow the large of ships still to reach the pool everybody had their own idea of how to solve the problem to octaves contributed different swingbridge plans another contemplate is 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 a 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 angry maybe that's painted white moves so when the Tower Bridge Road wave goes armed yeah that's a counterweight come down to occupy this space must be very scary to see that amazing of course this is a frigate like no other in London there's a a moving bridge and living bridge in a sense with the crew people in control rooms machinery operating in living painting 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 and through this window you can see exactly what I mean I'm looking at the companion tab this one outside waters wonderful Tudor gothic finial still of the ornamental details they were designed to fit in with the ancient Tower of London or history and in here all his moderns deal functional building very strong very very sort of them I say was brutally honest in its construction inside outside or is almond history bú shì pedigree a vocation dreams on the past 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 vast empire beyond after hundred fifty years of mounting bridge building London had reinvented itself as there's so much of the Victorian and Edwardian Britain London's bridges steeped in nostalgia instantly historic look at our vision actually amazing now there was to be a century of quiet on London's River a powerful two bridges don't scream acquired the seal timeless as TS Eliot observed as he lightly slipped quietly downstream in the wasteland the river sweats oil and tar the barges drift with the turning tide Red Sails white Ally would 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 broad of Greater London men traversed now had to be able to go round it as well as through it but the time is irreverent bridge at dark that 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 of zodes toughen up the cables and then directly down the towers unlike mrs. Benson bridge where they are anchored on each bank this is a more stable design allows for the creation fasting widen highs and this is a British making a statement what's it say well it's proclaiming that the whole of the tempt estuary belongs in London crossing the Thames far downstream from historic city Dartford which defines London's being larger than ever a city-state within the South East England the claims of board of work as dissipate a hammersmith far upstream now seemed vindicated you really do understand the nature this bridge it does command the s3 it is this great gate it proved to London is here now city over there the see over there should come and go my goodness me I 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 they're so intrigued Joseph Conrad I'm about 15 miles downstream from the food of London that 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 the Roman trains passed by this is a strange location subsea city lost between worlds a very odd place indeed an edgy frontier yet emerging from the primordial ooze and mud and slime and the reeds much as London emerged all those centuries before oh this is why I love the Thames it carries memories of all the people who ever tabs on it we've lived besides it look here with a pottery porcelain earth where there's lovely delicate handle from a teacup I suppose beautiful is such an intimate connection with the person who owned it loved it lost it that's what's so incredible about this place that it's um a living connection to the ghosts of the past who stand here one finds and connects and remembers by ad mm London had lived through nearly 20 centuries of its own history and what better way to celebrate their history than with a bridge are not a giant a jewel one design not for transport but for 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 but there is suffered teething troubles the design our engineers of Arab architect Norman Foster and even a sculptor and de Caro is a work of art this bridge has redefined London once again I create a new link across the Thames it's a brought added lifetime Southwark in front of me mystically behind me created a wonderful connection between take mod not there and some Paul's Cathedral doesn't look absolutely fantastic also the bridge has some painted a spectacular new vistas of the city from here I can see an array of bridges left him to write on the forum over there the distance okay lovely to walk across it lovely - it's good order two touches if you look at it it might be a way of them other great pedestrian bridges around the world do they also project in Venice for example also exquisite it of course is lined with shops lovely living thing the Rialto Bridge because the mind of inhabited bridges 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 [Music] people have been building bridges in London for 3,000 years and more and those extraordinary structures have defined the city from beginning they were sites of primal spiritual power as man attempted to tame in a 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 the 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] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 601,973

Rating: 4.7771721 out of 5

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, tower bridge, the history, river thames, history of london, timeline documentary, history channel documentary, european history, history of the world

Id: 8n15w-s1qIM

Length: 58min 51sec (3531 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2019