Appendix to the South Bank walk

LONDON BRIDGE

There have been many books and articles about London Bridge, and its predecessors, and one of the best summaries I’ve read is on the London Remembers website, which I reproduce here –

Roman soldiers built the first wooden bridge over the Thames near here around 43AD to connect Londinium to Southwark and London grew rapidly as a result.

In 1176, after successive wooden bridges were destroyed by fire, Henry II commissioned a stone crossing under the supervision of an Essex priest, Peter de Colechurch (d.1205). It took 33 years to complete and was to last more than 600 years. The 900 feet long and 26-foot-wide bridge was supported on twenty Gothic arches and featured a central chapel and a host of shops and houses (the rent from which funded its construction and upkeep).

In 1281 expanding ice from the frozen Thames crushed five of the arches and Queen Eleanor was blamed for misappropriating bridge revenues and failing to use them for repairs. This supposedly gave rise to the popular rhyme: ‘London Bridge is falling down – my fair lady’.

In 1722, to ease congestion, the Lord Mayor decreed that ‘all carts, coaches and other carriages coming out of Southwark keep along the west side and those going out of the City keep along the east side.’ It has been suggested that this may have inspired traffic driving on the left in Britain.

The houses and shops on the bridge were demolished to ease traffic flow between 1758 and 1762, and the bridge modified to improve navigation on the river, but the congestion did not improve.

In 1831 King William IV and Queen Adelaide opened a new 49-foot-wide bridge, designed by John Rennie the Elder (1761–1821), made from Haytor granite in a five-arch design. It was widened by a further thirteen feet but remained a pinch point for London’s traffic. In 1896 the bridge was the busiest point in London, with more than 8,000 pedestrians and 900 vehicles crossing hourly and the bridge was sinking about 9 inches every eight years under the weight.

In 1968 Rennie’s bridge was sold by the City of London to an American, the Missourian entrepreneur Robert P. McCulloch (1911–77), for US$2,460,000. It was taken apart, reconstructed piece by piece at Lake Havasu City, Arizona and re-dedicated on 10 October 1971. It is still there today. Some of the old London Bridge granite footings are in this square. (I will just add here that rumours that he thought he was actually buying Tower Bridge are incorrect! He didn’t!)

The current London Bridge was designed by Lord Holford (1907–75) and opened by the Queen Elizabeth II in 1973. The 920-foot-long bridge is made of three spans of concrete box girders and cost £4 million.

TOWER OF LONDON

Scores of books have been written about the Tower of London, but whilst we are so close it would seem appropriate to at least give a little more information.

William the Conqueror, became King after he travelled across the English Channel from Normandy in France and invaded Britain in the 11th century. Hardly surprising, he wasn’t popular so, concerned about the likelihood of rebellion, he started building this massive stone castle, which took around 20 years to complete,

It has been a fortress and a palace for over 1,000 years. However, it’s also been the Royal Mint (later moved over the road and soon to be the Chinese Embassy), a menagerie, arsenal, public records office and the Royal Observatory.

It’s also been a prison, where over the years thousands of people have been held. Some of the more well-known include Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Thomas Moore, Lady Jane Grey, Queen Anne Boleyn, Queen Catherine Howard and at the other end of the scale, the Nazi Rudolf Hess. It was also the site of various executions, though many of these took place outside of the tower’s walls.

If you’d like to know more about the Tower, there are many sources on line, but one of my favourites is here.

However, something I read recently and rather fascinated me was about the ravens. I’m sure many people will have heard that if the ravens leave the Tower, then both the Tower and the kingdom would fall. But what is the background to this odd-sounding story? Well, it allegedly goes back to Charles II who, having been warned about this, insisted they be protected – and they have been ever since.

Responsibility for the ravens is with the ‘Ravenmaster’, one of the Yeoman Warders, known by many as the ‘Beefeaters’. They are the ceremonial guards of the Tower, who since Tudor times have served as bodyguards to the King or Queen of the day, as well as escorting visitors who come to look around.

Today the Ravenmaster has eight ravens and two chicks to look after and besides making sure they return to their cage each evening, he has to ensure they have food and water. Apparently, they are fed raw meat every day, an egg once a week and sometimes for a treat, blood-soaked biscuits.

A commonly asked question is why they don’t fly away. To avoid this, their wings are slightly clipped, which means they can fly, but not too far. Having said that, one did ‘escape’ and was discovered in someone’s garden and had to be carefully enticed back!