Old London Bridge | Hacker News Reader

Old London Bridge

english-heritage.org.uk

134 pointsOJFord40 comments

This is hosted in Kenwood House which is a free entry if you ever find yourself in London on work or whatever.

It is right on the edge of Hampstead Heath which is some fairly large (~800 acres) and fairly wild heathland and forest that is a good place for long walks or running (quite hilly in places, great views (legally protected!) over London as a result), quite close to the center of London (~10-15 mins away from Kings Cross on the tube). Do check it out if you want some outdoor space or a good place for a run when visiting London

It’s very worth visiting - a Palladian mansion with a big art collection that includes some gems such as one of Rembrandt’s greatest self portraits.

> The 19th-century London Bridge (famously referred to in TS Eliot’s The Waste Land) survived for little more than a century before it in turn was replaced, in the 1970s, by the present bridge. The 19th-century bridge was sold and re-erected in Arizona.

Wait, so someone literally got sold a bridge?

His name was Robert McCulloch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge_(Lake_Havasu_Cit...

Growing up in the '70s we used to boat camp on the Arizona shore of Lake Havasu, and after days in the bush we'd boat to the closest civilization, this little tourist town, and be tourists and gape at the bridge, then go back to camping. Good times.

Technically, only granite facing was reused. The core is newly built, made of reinforced concrete.

My mother told a shaggy dog story about the re-construction being cheap spanish speaking labour and a mixup with the stones chalked "L"

She also said the buyer genuinely didn't know what he'd bought, but I still have my doubts.

I have an aquatint or mezzotint of the 19th century bridge I am very fond of but I can find no provenance for. It must have been mass produced but short of demounting it and looking for details, its just a nice print in a frame.

> There is a popular rumor that the bridge was bought in the mistaken belief that it was London's more recognizable Tower Bridge, but the allegation was vehemently denied by both McCulloch and Ivan Luckin, who arranged the bridge's sale.

This is what I was told as a child when the bridge sold. It's definitely a meme from before Dawkins.

This is the story I was told growing up. Also mentioned in Layer Cake (2004) by Michael Gambon when he's laughing about someone's bad investment: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9NMJAxq0QUk&t=210

As a kid growing up in London, we were told they thought they were buying Tower Bridge!

Yes, the British government was happy to sell it to Arizona businessman and developer Robert McCulloch. He had to actually make a slight deviation of the Colorado River in order for it to go under the bridge in its new location. To accomplish that feat he hired some Texas lawyers who personally knew President Johnson, and they all went to the White House to convince Johnson to approve the adjustment to the river course.

Johnson at first didn't want to do it, he said it wouldn't be right to deviate a major river for a real estate developer's project. One of the lawyers said that he wouldn't have to make such exceptions for anyone's sake, just for anytime that an American bought London Bridge and brought it to the US. Johnson was convinced and McCulloch got his way.

Last month, imagine my delight when I realized that the requirement I had to drive from Ehrenberg AZ to Las Vegas without crossing back into CA (for...paperwork reasons) meant that I'd drive right past the London Bridge. But it was dark by the time I got there :( There's an In-n-Out burger at the east end though.

The idea of London Bridge moving along the Panama Canal causes a type error in my brain

Fitting video from Jay Foreman. I love his unfinished London video series.

https://youtu.be/u5CguqywlBk?si=5EHkyayaMtk7UUPV

and

https://youtu.be/pWZ9ZVRQ0Nw?si=B2CeiFIab12Ip1tc

I was always intrigued by the motivation for building houses on the bridge itself.

It seems like one of those interzone areas that shouldn't exist but does[1].

The usually listed reason is that space inside the City walls was at a premium but I think the really interesting point is that the bridge itself was considered inside the City walls. Like a peninsular jutting out of the City.

Also, it was said that with the amount of foot traffic, cattle, etc on the bridge it could take you 15 to 30 minutes to cross. So that kind of makes sense to have shops and pubs on there to service the 138 or so dwellings.

1. That probably comes from reading William Gibson's Bridge Trilogy.

Rochester, NY (where I live) had a bridge over the Genesee River that had buildings on both sides well into the 20th century. They were finally removed in the 1960s(!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Street_Bridge_(Rochester,...

That's a great example, thanks.

From the timeline that bridge was built in 1857 so I guess still dominated by foot traffic.

It might be better for traffic capacity but I think Rochester must have lost something special when they removed the bridge buildings.

In modern times any street with so much foot traffic is lined with shops to take advantage of all the potential customers. Remember that when walking you have plenty of time to take in the shop window, and taking a quick detour into a shop or pub isn't much effort. Especially if traffic is moving slow anyways. It's not at all comparable to driving past in a car.

I imagine the same reason made it attractive to have shops on one of the main streets into London, even if it happened to be a bridge. And once you are erecting a building for the shop or pub, why not add a couple stories to house the shop owner, workers, or anyone willing to pay rent for living inside the city wall?

If you're interested in that, you might be interested in a weird fact about my home city.

Coventry (also in the UK) was built on a river.

I don't mean near a river.. I literally mean, on a river; the river Sherbourne which you would never know even exists today.

What seems to have happened is that in medival times Coventrians built bridges, then homes on the bridges, then more bridges until eventually the river was sunken and runs underneath the modern day city center.

It's still possible to glimpse the river as it hasn't been entirely covered, but you would have to go looking for it quite intently.

https://www.historiccoventry.co.uk/tour/content.php?pg=sherb...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Sherbourne

It's not unusual. If a river is small enough, as the city grows the river often ends up completely culverted and buried underground.

There are many in London, for instance: https://londonist.com/london/maps/london-s-lost-rivers-mappe...

Similarly, Sheffield's railway station (fmr "midland"/"pond street") is built over one of sheffields rivers (the river sheaf - in fact, two rivers, since the Porter Brook and the River Sheaf join under Platform 5a)

Bridge maintenance was funded by the rents of those houses, as well as bridge tolls. The maintenance charity still exists, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Bridge_Foundation

when traffic is sparse and/or mostly pedestrian those houses likely added more than they impeded, and then they stayed there vestigially until the incentive to remove them was strong enough

this happened in many other places as well as business and housing were strongly integrated into the 20th century, and to some extent right next to traffic is still prime location in most of the world that will perhaps leapfrog the era of strong segregation of business and residential

The most unfamiliar aspect is the frost fairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Thames_frost_fairs

I imagine if it had been retained, tourism UK would be calling it the Ponte Vecchio of the north.

Maybe the european parliament can start using spikes on the bridge in Florence for the public displays?

Also in the same area and little known - the Tower (of London) subway, and also parts of the City and South London Railway Thames tunnel still exist that terminated at King William Street

https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/rare-film-from-inside-t...

https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/stories/engineering/j...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_and_South_London_Railway

That is very cool. I didn't know about this.

I like walking through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel; while not as old as the Tower of London Subway, it is very old, and it's wild for me to walk under the Thames.

A few years back (probably more like a decade now) they closed the London Overground for engineers works over a May Bank Holiday weekend, and opened up the Thames Tunnel for visitors - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Tunnel - that is to say the original Mark Brunel tunnel from 1843, original a foot passage, but now a part of the London Overground network.

I was lucky enough to attend. It was an interesting experience - from what I recall a lot of the original ornamentation has been lost, but there are some preserved sections.

They did it this year (or the end of last year maybe) as well :)

There's more about the City + South London tunnels, but the best I can find at the moment is this:

> The original running tunnels north of Borough station remain, although when the Jubilee line extension was built in the late 1990s, the old southbound tunnel was cut through as part of the construction works at London Bridge station in order to provide the lift shaft situated at the south end of the Northern line platforms. These running tunnels are now used as a ventilation shaft for the station and the openings for several adits to the old running tunnels can be seen in the roofs of the Northern line platform tunnels and in the central concourse between them. A construction shaft between London Bridge and King William Street, beneath Old Swan Wharf, now functions as a pump shaft for the disused sections of the running tunnels. It is no longer possible to walk through between the two stations as the old C&SLR running tunnels have been blocked off with concrete bulkheads on both sides of the Thames. The tunnels were further severed by upgrades to Bank station, as the construction shaft for the new Northern line tunnel, located in Arthur Street, cuts straight through the approach tunnel to King William Street station, with the station site itself linked to the new tunnel via a ventilation adit.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_William_Street_tube_stati...

IIRC there's also some other "tunnels" under the Thames around the London Bridge area that are old Victorian pneumatic pipes to deliver mail+parcels.

Sites like that should always include a plain old link to download a high resolution image of the painting itself. Instead I have to scroll back and forth between text bubbles to try to get into some detail.

Here's the image: https://english-heritage.shorthandstories.com/old-london-bri...

Uploaded to Wikipedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old-london-bridge-de...

Some small pieces of the bridge still exist.

See https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/medieval-london-bridge

My son and I made a point of visiting it when we were in London last year. Was a tad disappointing to see it surrounded by scaffolding at the time.

Lovely painting.. horrible interactive web tour experience, imo.

At least let us see the whole painting first, without overlays... [ ugh, I guess it does, but it feels like its moving because the rest of the page is scrolling. ]

DeJong is arguably not quite in the same league as other top Dutch masters.. but would be handy to have a link to DeJongs other work.

Clearly some of his drawings are superb, I handn't seen those before.

Trying not to be negative about the web app .. yet be truthful, so I tried another link :

https://artsandculture.google.com/story/the-guitar-player/kQ...

.. which I found to be nausea inducing.

Sometimes tech features get in the way.

Here you go. https://english-heritage.shorthandstories.com/old-london-bri...

FWIW I liked the article apart from the scroll effects, which didn't kill the experience for me.

My thoughts exactly!

It had a church on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapel_of_St_Thomas_on_the_Bri...

I enjoyed the interactivity and the "severed heads of traitors, displayed on spikes as a warning to citizens and visitors."

Currently reading Quicksilver - this ties in nicely

Neil Stephenson really brought this to life. The amount of research that must have gone into the series!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com