The Bridges That Built London with Dan Cruickshank


The Bridges That Built London with Dan Cruickshank

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Between Richmond and the North Sea, 30 bridges span the Thames.

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They carry people across a stretch of river 35 miles long,

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bringing together a population of nearly eight million.

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These extraordinary structures have been the making of London,

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Britain's capital and, I think, Europe's greatest city.

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Millions of Londoners cross these bridges every week.

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Most, I don't suppose, give them a second thought.

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But for me, bridges are far more than merely means of transport,

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ways of getting from one place to another.

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They are also ways of linking the present to the past.

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London's bridges are not just functional objects,

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they are also symbols, metaphors.

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They transform, connect, inspire.

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And they tell great stories.

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Of Bronze-Age relics of the Vauxhall shore,

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of why London Bridge was falling down,

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of corpses splashing beneath Waterloo Bridge

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and, above all, of the sublime ambition of London's bridge builders themselves.

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I was born when London was still one of the world's great ports

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and the Thames one of the world's great working rivers.

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I well remember, as a child, the impression that London's bridges made on me.

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I suppose bridges gave me

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my first thrilling, stomach-churning architectural experience.

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And, goodness me, they are doing the same now.

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Oh! Brilliant view!

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Some of London's bridges have vanished or been replaced.

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They are ghost crosses of the past,

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but each of them is a clue to the city's hidden history.

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In some ways, they ARE that history,

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a history that's lasted nearly 4,000 years.

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In the beginning was the river, the Thames.

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The greatest, the longest river in England.

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200 miles from its source, the river meets the tidal stream.

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The result is a landscape of marshes and islands,

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indeterminate and always changing.

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Only here, far downstream from the City of London,

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can you understand the elemental world of sand, mud, pebbles and debris

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that was the Thames before the city and its bridges were built.

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For generations stretching back over centuries,

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Londoners laboured in the marshes at now long-lost trades,

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mud larks and scavengers, toshers and dredgers,

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watermen and oyster-gatherers. All gone, a lost class.

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The river has always been a portal into the past.

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It's inspired artists and writers, none more so than Joseph Conrad,

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who wrote that, "Nothing is easier

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"than to evoke the great spirit of the past

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"upon the lower reaches of the Thames."

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From here, Conrad could see the great modern City of London

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from an ancient perspective.

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"The monstrous town was marked ominously on the sky,

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"a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.

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"And this also has been one of the dark places of the Earth.

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"We live in the flicker, but darkness was here yesterday."

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The marshy landscape on the banks of the Thames gave birth to London.

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But the earliest bridge was built not here,

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but 15 miles upstream to the west.

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Past the city of London, beyond the seat of power at Westminster,

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at a place which today we call Vauxhall.

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Here, in 1500 BC,

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before Troy fell and long before Julius Caesar came to Britain,

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the people of the marshes made a first attempt at a crossing.

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We are extremely lucky,

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the remains are only completely exposed twice a year

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at the very bottom of the spring tide, but what a find.

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Tests have shown that these timber piles

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have been preserved here for 3,500 years.

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So you've had this dated with dendrochronology, have you?

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-Yes.

-So you're therefore sure...

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It's 1,500 years calendar-dated BC, yes.

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-1,500, so...

-BC.

-BC.

-Which is about 3,500 years.

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So therefore, this is, in a way,

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it's the oldest of an in-situ bit of structure in London, isn't it?

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Why did they build this bridge?

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Some archaeologists think it carried people not across the river,

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but to an island that probably existed in the stream.

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We can't know for sure, but Gustav and his team think that, back then,

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this was the highest point of the tidal stream.

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It's also a place where three rivers met,

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the Thames and two of its lost tributaries,

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the Tyburn and the Effra.

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That's obviously magical - three rivers meeting,

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then weird and wonderful tidal things happen, I suppose.

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That's right, and if this was the tidal head in the Bronze Age, that's a very magical place.

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-Yes.

-Because the moon is definitely saying when the tide will be low and when it will be high.

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And when people can see this connection between those things in the sky, you know,

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that the moon, and those things on Earth, the river, they connect, you know, as a sacred thing...

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You would need to placate the river,

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because very high tides would flood any settlements you had round here,

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so we have, possibly, a sort of sacred river at this point.

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When the bridge was discovered,

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the archaeologists found two bronze spearheads

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driven point down into the mud

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beside the bridge.

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Were they offerings to the deity of the river?

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Like coins in the fountain, this urge is universal

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and, even today, Londoners continue to make offerings.

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All the way up and down the Thames these days,

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we find this kind of stuff.

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Now, these are not Bronze Age, these are Diwali lamps.

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Oh, my goodness me.

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So it's like in India. It's like in the sacred Ganges.

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Hang on a minute.

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-But they are modern, modern...

-What's that?

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Lord Ganesh!

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Overcomer of obstacles, great fellow.

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And that looks like Krishna or something, doesn't it?

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And these chaps?

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That looks like Krishna, doesn't it?

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So you found these in the Thames.

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So Hindus living in England, in London, are casting,

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using the Thames as...like the Ganges, the sacred river?

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Right, so they're replicating what we used to do in the Bronze Age.

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A ritual river, a powerful god.

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If Gustav is right,

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this challenges a lot of our assumptions

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about what bridges are for.

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It didn't originate as a means of transport or trade,

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but as sacred creations.

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This was a bridge between a spiritual, not a material divide,

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a bridge between worlds, a bridge between the world of man here

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and the world of gods, between life and death.

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The Thames was like the River Jordan,

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to cross it was to cross to a promised land.

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The link between bridges and the sacred echoes through the millennia.

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It's in fact commemorated in our language.

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The head of the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope,

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is called in Latin the Pontifex,

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which means both bridge builder and priest.

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Indeed, it was the Romans,

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about 1,500 years after our marsh people's activities here,

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who built London's first traditional, conventional bridge.

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Bridging the Thames is not easy.

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The river bed is changing all the time,

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because of tides and currents and human activity.

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But in truth, it's very shallow.

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Sometimes less than two metres deep at low tide.

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The Romans knew this.

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They were champion engineers of the ancient world.

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They put their bridge on the shallowest, narrowest part of the river,

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now spanned by the modern London Bridge,

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right next to the ancient port, what is called the Pool Of London.

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The consequences have been immense.

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For centuries, this area was the heart of the British economy.

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A key reason for that is that

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this was the first place upstream from the sea,

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about 40 miles in that direction,

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that a bridge could be constructed

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to connect the south and the north banks of the Thames.

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In addition, by the bridge is a tidal pool,

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allowing the large ships to anchor, very good for trade.

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There's been a bridge here on and off for nearly 2,000 years

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and that's been the making of London.

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Because of the crossing,

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London became an explosively successful settlement,

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right from the beginning.

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So successful, in fact, that only when building work takes place

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can we get a glimpse of the Roman foreshore.

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As conquerors, the Romans needed

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a defensible riverside site and port,

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so that reinforcements could be rushed in if needed

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and an evacuation could take place at speed

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in the case of an emergency.

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The trauma of Boudica's rebellion in AD 61,

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when the Roman capital of Colchester was burnt,

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combined with the fact that, already at that time,

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the bridge here made London the transport centre of Roman Britain

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meant that when Roman authority was re-established,

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London, not Colchester, became the provincial capital.

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From here, the Romans could control England,

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and they did that for several centuries.

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You're looking at a slice of Roman London,

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or the beginning of a slice of Roman London.

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The very first of the First-Century waterfront would have come through

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roughly where the guy down there is digging.

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-We're looking south, at the moment, towards the river.

-Yes, exactly.

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So it would have cut across more or less there.

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So you can see we're only just beginning to uncover...

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We've only been here a couple of days, but you can see the difference

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between this modern stuff which they're digging out

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and the actual layers of archaeology which are left.

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And that's what they're trying to do, they're trying to distinguish

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real archaeology from modern rubbish.

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'This is the first chance we've had to investigate the Roman bridge

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'for more than 30 years.'

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As far as we can make out,

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we only saw one pier of the bridge in 1981,

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-but quite a lot of it.

-Yeah.

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It's formed of a combination of horizontally laid timbers

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-stacked on top of each other cantilevering out.

-Yes.

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And then the actual bridge platform, the deck, is laid along the top of that.

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So that's, using the evidence

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of what we actually found in the ground,

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-how we speculate the bridge would have looked.

-Yes. Fascinating.

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As the excavation continues,

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the archaeologists begin to find wooden piles,

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survivors of nearly 2,000 years of urban development.

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I can't resist coming to grips with Roman engineering.

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This is a pile. Ooh! Very solid.

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'These battered stumps

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'are the remains of the wharves beside the bridge,

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'through which the goods of empire flowed in and out,

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'changing the physical geography and economy of Britain forever.'

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'But the invaders never forgot

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'that a bridge was still a sacred, metaphysical place too.

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'When the Georgians built the predecessor

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'to the bridge I'm standing on,

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'they dredged the river bed to clear the bottom for ships to pass.'

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Out there, in the middle of the river,

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they found a large cache of Roman coins,

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rather like these, wonderful things.

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Bronze and brass and maybe silver.

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Archaeologists believe there was a shrine in the middle of the bridge

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and people passing over would cast coins

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into the mighty Thames to appease its power.

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So, for the Romans,

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as with the Bronze-Age marsh people upstream at Vauxhall,

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bridges were sacred things, things of religion.

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We have to remember, of course, that in Rome,

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the same word was used for bridge builder as for priest - Pontifex.

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Indeed, it was one of the titles of the Roman Emperor.

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Both emperors and empire are, of course, long gone

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and the bridge with them.

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For centuries, there was no attempt to rebuild it and no real need.

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The main settlement in London now was a long way

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from the remains of the Roman bridge.

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A mile and a half upstream around what is now Covent Garden,

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a new trading post grew up by a sharp bend in the river.

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It was a beach market town

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and the London street names preserve its memory,

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of the Strand, where early English merchants pulled up their ships,

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and the Aldwych, the old vicus or trading port.

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And the river became, as it had been before the Romans,

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a frontier, a border between warring kingdoms

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with names like Essex, Middlesex, Surrey and Kent.

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For London to achieve its destiny as a great city,

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it needed a proper bridge.

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Once King Alfred and his successors had reunited England

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and reoccupied the Roman city,

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a bridge was built.

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But it was really no more than a flimsy causeway,

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intended more to stop raiders travelling upstream

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than to be an aid to transport.

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For a proper and solid bridge,

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London had to wait around 1,000 years after the Roman bridge.

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But then, that bridge was very solid and very proper indeed.

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# London Bridge is falling down

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# Falling down, falling down... #

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Of all the river crossings in London,

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the one we actually call London Bridge is the most famous,

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the one we remember in the nursery rhyme.

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But the structure immortalised in the song

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is not the ruthless concrete span we see today,

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nor even the one that preceded it.

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The bridge we remember is the mediaeval bridge,

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the bridge of Thomas Becket and Dick Whittington,

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the one Chaucer and Shakespeare knew.

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But it's a ghost which haunts me still.

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And the question I ask myself is, "What was it really like?

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"What was London Bridge and why was it falling down?"

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To find out, we have to go back 800 years to the 12th Century.

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At the time, London was booming.

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Much of the street plan of the modern city was laid down by then,

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although very few of the actual buildings survive.

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But what has endured are the records of the bridge,

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preserved in the archives of the Corporation Of London.

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They tell us that in 1173, a religious community -

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the Chaplains, Brethren And Sisters Of The Bridge Of London -

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were entrusted with building a new stone bridge.

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And the mastermind of the project was a parish priest,

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Peter of Colechurch, off Cheapside.

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These ancient documents offer insights

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into the creation, the use and maintenance

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of one of London's greatest structures,

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Old London Bridge.

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Started in 1176, it's been long lost.

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But this treasure trove of intimate and evocative documents

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almost bring it back to life.

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Look at this wonderful thing, for example.

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It is a grant, dated 1205,

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a grant from Peter the Priest, Peter of Colechurch,

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the architect, the creator of London Bridge. Incredible.

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And attached to this grant is something utterly wonderful.

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It's a seal.

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Here it is.

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And it shows Peter of Colechurch

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not as an architect or an engineer,

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but as a priest offering communion.

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Absolutely wonderful.

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Such a direct connection with the main man behind Old London Bridge.

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Now, this is a charter of about 1320,

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and we have attached to it here another seal, again wonderful.

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It shows an abstract representation of the bridge, I suppose.

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Just simply an arch with Thomas Becket sitting on the top of it,

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and below the arch, we see the city of London.

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Absolutely wonderful image.

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St Paul's in the centre. Old St Paul's with its spire intact,

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flanked by city churches with their spires pointing to the heavens.

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# London Bridge is falling down Falling down... #

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One of the reasons the mediaeval London Bridge became such an icon for the city

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was that it was a living bridge,

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an astonishing structure with houses and shops built upon it.

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The oldest image of it dates from the 15th century.

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Here we see it. It's the first sort of drawn image of London Bridge.

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In the foreground, the Tower Of London,

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with various activities going on,

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and there's the water gate for the Thames.

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And in the background,

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an incredible image of the northern half of London Bridge.

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Great chapel in the centre

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and the arches connecting that to land at the north bank.

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And in the background, an uncannily similar image to that on the seal -

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the skyline of London with the spires,

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old St Paul's and the spires of the city churches.

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It's a wonderful thing, this drawing,

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manuscript drawing.

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In our search for Old London Bridge,

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the street plan of the city is a major clue.

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We know that the mediaeval bridge

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lay just to the east of its modern counterpart.

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And if you decode the street plan,

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its ghostly location begins to reveal itself.

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The monument to London's great fire of 1666

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was put up beside the ancient northern approach to the bridge.

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And at each end of the bridge, we're told there was a church.

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Following the road here, Fish Street Hill, leads us down to the church of St Magnus Martyr,

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which stood, like a kind of spiritual tollbooth,

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at the northern end of the bridge.

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Once you understand that Old London Bridge

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stood slightly to the east of modern London Bridge,

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everything here makes sense.

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This splendid elevation on the tower of St Magnus Martyr Church,

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which everybody crossing London Bridge would have passed,

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because the carriageway, the roadway to London Bridge was here,

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and inside there, within the arch, so to speak,

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below the tower, was the pedestrian route.

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And here, we have salvaged some of the stones from Old London Bridge.

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I suppose they are part of the mid-18th century recasing of the bridge in Portland stone.

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Inside the church, there's something of a relic.

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Our next clue to what Old London Bridge might have been like.

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This wonderful model shows London Bridge as it could have looked,

0:20:250:20:30

as indeed I'm sure it did look in about 1400.

0:20:300:20:33

It's, er, was then, 900-feet long from the city here to Southwark

0:20:330:20:40

with the carriageway, the roadway, carried on 19 stone-built arches,

0:20:400:20:45

the 20th arch being that of the drawbridge somewhat in the middle.

0:20:450:20:50

And on the stone-built arches,

0:20:500:20:54

we have an array of timber-built houses and shops, about 140 in 1400.

0:20:540:21:00

Also, one can see very clearly that about half the width of the river

0:21:000:21:07

is sort of constrained by the thick piers of the arches

0:21:070:21:13

and the breakwaters in front of them, they're called starlings,

0:21:130:21:17

with the edges protected by timber piles.

0:21:170:21:19

In the middle, roughly, is the great fortification, the drawbridge,

0:21:190:21:25

a reminder that London was defended to a degree by the Thames.

0:21:250:21:28

It was like a moat. And to span it

0:21:280:21:30

was to compromise the defence of the city,

0:21:300:21:32

so one needed to prevent invaders

0:21:320:21:35

coming across the bridge from the south.

0:21:350:21:37

Up comes the drawbridge, this is a fortification,

0:21:370:21:40

which, in a sense, is part of the defences of London,

0:21:400:21:43

along with the city wall.

0:21:430:21:45

I don't know. One just wonders,

0:21:450:21:46

can anything of this wonderful bridge still survive

0:21:460:21:50

below the waters of the Thames?

0:21:500:21:54

It was 30 years before this legendary crossing was completed, in 1209.

0:21:590:22:04

It stood longer than any other in London's history.

0:22:040:22:08

But like all bridges, it was never really finished.

0:22:080:22:10

To resist the huge force of currents and tide on the river,

0:22:100:22:13

it had to be maintained.

0:22:130:22:16

# Build it up with wood and clay My Fair Lady. #

0:22:160:22:20

And that offers us a clue to the real meaning of the nursery rhyme.

0:22:200:22:24

What we have here, bizarrely, is what the cut waters,

0:22:270:22:32

the piers for London Bridge would have looked like,

0:22:320:22:35

the medieval bridge.

0:22:350:22:36

They would have been round wood piles like this...

0:22:360:22:39

-Made out of what, chestnut, or oak, or...?

-Elm?

-Elm?

0:22:390:22:43

-Often. ..driven in with a ram...

-Yeah.

0:22:430:22:46

..and then clad behind with timber planking.

0:22:460:22:50

That would have been made up with masonry, with earth...

0:22:500:22:54

all sorts of solid things in-between the timber posts and beams.

0:22:540:22:58

That's right. So the bridge would be supported

0:22:580:23:00

by the infill of these artificial islands,

0:23:000:23:03

-held in place by planks and round wood piles.

-Right.

0:23:030:23:06

-Very laborious work.

-But when do these date from, do you think?

0:23:060:23:10

These are contemporary with probably the last phase of the mediaeval bridge.

0:23:100:23:14

These would have been here in the late-18th century.

0:23:140:23:17

The obvious question for a layman is that these...

0:23:170:23:20

these piles are some centuries old,

0:23:200:23:23

they've survived underwater.

0:23:230:23:24

Well, at low tide. At high tide, the water is right up here.

0:23:240:23:27

It's astonishing, so timber is preserved by being kept wet?

0:23:270:23:31

Yes. If it's kept wet, it will be preserved.

0:23:310:23:34

If it's kept dry, it will be preserved.

0:23:340:23:36

The real problem is if a timber rises

0:23:360:23:38

from the bottom above the high water mark,

0:23:380:23:41

it will decay at the high water mark,

0:23:410:23:43

because part of it is dry and therefore doesn't expand,

0:23:430:23:48

and part of it is wet, and therefore it expands when it's wet

0:23:480:23:51

and then it shrinks when it's dry.

0:23:510:23:52

'It took huge quantities of timber and Kentish ragstone

0:23:550:23:58

'to maintain Old London Bridge.

0:23:580:24:00

'The enormous costs were paid for by the proceeds from tolls,

0:24:000:24:04

'from both people and ships.'

0:24:040:24:07

But sometimes, the money went astray

0:24:070:24:10

and the result could be catastrophic.

0:24:100:24:13

In 1282, five of the arches of the bridge collapsed.

0:24:130:24:17

About 12 years earlier,

0:24:170:24:20

King Henry III had given the revenues of the bridge

0:24:200:24:23

to his wife, Queen Eleanor,

0:24:230:24:24

and she spent it on herself, not on maintaining the bridge.

0:24:240:24:28

That's why London Bridge collapsed.

0:24:280:24:30

She is the "My Fair Lady" of the nursery rhyme.

0:24:300:24:34

A nursery rhyme which reveals Londoners' deep anxiety

0:24:340:24:37

about the future of their all-important bridge.

0:24:370:24:40

If it wasn't properly maintained on a regular basis,

0:24:400:24:43

it would indeed collapse.

0:24:430:24:45

After the disaster, there was a small revolution.

0:24:480:24:50

The City of London took back the revenues of the bridge

0:24:500:24:54

from the Crown and gave them permanently to the people.

0:24:540:24:57

Indeed, to the successors of Peter of Colechurch's community,

0:24:570:25:01

now called the Bridge House Estate.

0:25:010:25:04

The bridge now symbolised London's new-found civic independence,

0:25:040:25:09

but its religious roots were not forgotten.

0:25:090:25:12

There were churches at each end

0:25:120:25:15

and in the middle was a chapel on two levels.

0:25:150:25:17

One at the roadside, for travellers,

0:25:170:25:19

and one at the water's edge, for boatmen.

0:25:190:25:22

Spiritual tolls were paid then, and now.

0:25:220:25:26

Every year, on the feast of the baptism of Christ,

0:25:260:25:29

which is in January,

0:25:290:25:30

we process from this church to the middle of London Bridge

0:25:300:25:33

and there we meet some of our friends from Southwark Cathedral,

0:25:330:25:36

coming the other way.

0:25:360:25:38

We have a short service in the middle of the bridge

0:25:380:25:41

and we pray for people who work on the river,

0:25:410:25:44

who take their recreation on the river,

0:25:440:25:46

for people who've drowned in the river, indeed.

0:25:460:25:48

And then we throw a wooden cross into the river itself

0:25:480:25:52

as a sign of God's blessing.

0:25:520:25:55

These youngsters too are a direct link to that mediaeval world,

0:25:580:26:02

because the organisation which built and preserved Old London Bridge still exists.

0:26:020:26:07

It has an income of £700 million a year

0:26:070:26:11

derived from centuries of investment.

0:26:110:26:13

It's still responsible

0:26:130:26:15

for all the bridges within the bounds of the city,

0:26:150:26:18

but they have an annual surplus of up to £20 million,

0:26:180:26:22

which goes to London charities.

0:26:220:26:24

Like this dance group,

0:26:240:26:26

founded directly from the tolls and charity left by mediaeval Londoners

0:26:260:26:29

all those centuries ago.

0:26:290:26:33

Old London Bridge stood about 15 metres over there.

0:26:360:26:39

With its tall buildings, its houses and shops,

0:26:390:26:42

it was, in a sense, a city within the city.

0:26:420:26:46

In that space, people, Londoners, lived and died,

0:26:460:26:50

toiled and took their pleasures for nearly 600 years.

0:26:500:26:57

I live nearby and often come here

0:26:570:26:59

to look, to imagine this spectral bridge,

0:26:590:27:03

to listen, to see if I can pick up the sounds

0:27:030:27:07

echoing through the centuries

0:27:070:27:09

of the pilgrims, the merchants, the travellers, the soldiers

0:27:090:27:14

crossing one way and the other.

0:27:140:27:16

It may seem fanciful,

0:27:160:27:18

but who knows? Perhaps... Perhaps...

0:27:180:27:22

For 600 years, London Bridge dominated the city

0:27:240:27:28

and the massive iconic structure redefined the very river it spanned.

0:27:280:27:33

Its huge piers and starlings

0:27:330:27:35

interfered with the flow of the Thames itself.

0:27:350:27:38

The blockage caused by the bridge slowed the current.

0:27:380:27:41

As a result, the river regularly froze over.

0:27:410:27:44

Londoners took to the ice with gusto

0:27:440:27:48

and what were called "frost fairs,"

0:27:480:27:50

with games and processions, stalls and even bull-baiting,

0:27:500:27:53

became a London institution.

0:27:530:27:56

By holding back the water,

0:27:560:27:59

the piers of the bridge also functioned as a giant weir.

0:27:590:28:02

In even the earliest manuscript,

0:28:020:28:04

we can clearly see the rapids pouring through the arches.

0:28:040:28:07

Passing through it was known as "shooting the bridge,"

0:28:070:28:11

and boats were often overturned.

0:28:110:28:14

Framed by the arches of London Bridge,

0:28:140:28:16

the Thames became a theatre for the royal pageantry.

0:28:160:28:21

The more unpopular wives of Henry VIII

0:28:210:28:23

shot the bridge as a rite of passage,

0:28:230:28:26

rather than being given more conventional coronations.

0:28:260:28:29

And later on, royalty travelled on the Thames

0:28:290:28:32

in wonderful barges such as this.

0:28:320:28:35

This splendid thing was made in the 1730s for Frederick, Prince of Wales.

0:28:350:28:41

And, of course, ordinary Londoners enjoyed the Thames as well.

0:28:410:28:44

There were frost fairs, firework displays,

0:28:440:28:47

and the Lord Mayor's Show was originally held on the water.

0:28:470:28:52

Like Venice, London was a world of the water.

0:28:550:28:58

The whole city faced the foreshore.

0:28:580:29:00

Here in Greenwich, downstream from the City of London,

0:29:000:29:04

you can still catch a sense of how the river and city once merged.

0:29:040:29:08

Here stood one of the great Tudor palaces, right on the water.

0:29:080:29:14

Rebuilt by the Stuarts from 1610 onwards,

0:29:140:29:18

Greenwich never lost its river focus.

0:29:180:29:20

It's a relic of the world of the Royal river,

0:29:200:29:23

a world which, it seemed, would last forever.

0:29:230:29:25

But London's growth changed all that.

0:29:250:29:27

As the Industrial Revolution swept onwards,

0:29:270:29:30

London planned more bridges.

0:29:300:29:32

Bridges made possible by new technology.

0:29:320:29:36

This volume contains visionary proposals for Thames-side London.

0:29:360:29:41

They were drawn up in 1800 for the City Corporation

0:29:410:29:45

which, at that time, wanted to reorganise the port of London.

0:29:450:29:50

That involved rebuilding London Bridge and moving it significantly to the west.

0:29:500:29:54

This shows a rebuilt London Bridge.

0:29:540:29:58

This is the central arch. Cast iron, much higher,

0:29:580:30:02

so greater clearage for, indeed, high-masted ships shown going through.

0:30:020:30:06

This is an amazing image.

0:30:060:30:07

Incredible, of course, this did not happen.

0:30:070:30:13

But things weren't done, things didn't happened, all has changed.

0:30:130:30:17

Change, to a large degree, brought about by engines such as this.

0:30:170:30:24

This is a drawing of a pile driver,

0:30:240:30:27

designed in the late 1730s

0:30:270:30:30

for the construction of the foundations

0:30:300:30:33

of Westminster Bridge.

0:30:330:30:35

This is an early product of the Industrial Revolution, I suppose.

0:30:350:30:38

Here you see horses,

0:30:380:30:41

it says "horse-powered,"

0:30:410:30:42

going round a sort of capstan,

0:30:420:30:44

with a gear devised to increase the power of the horses.

0:30:440:30:48

The ropes would rise this great hammer up here,

0:30:480:30:52

there it is, this hammer's brought up to the top here.

0:30:520:30:54

Then it would be released,

0:30:540:30:56

and rushed down - pow -

0:30:560:30:58

and drive the timber pile into the river bed.

0:30:580:31:03

So a very important movement in bridge construction.

0:31:030:31:06

The Industrial Revolution, of course, transformed London,

0:31:060:31:09

it transformed the world.

0:31:090:31:10

And very particularly for London,

0:31:100:31:13

it fuelled an explosion of bridge construction.

0:31:130:31:16

For more than 500 years,

0:31:160:31:19

London Bridge stood alone as the crossing of the Thames.

0:31:190:31:22

It defined the original city, the commercial giant.

0:31:220:31:26

But two miles upstream

0:31:280:31:30

was another big urban centre, Westminster.

0:31:300:31:34

From 1300 onwards, this area had been the seat

0:31:340:31:37

both of political power and social prestige in England,

0:31:370:31:41

but it had no bridge.

0:31:410:31:43

That's because the City of London

0:31:430:31:45

had fought to preserve Old London Bridge's lucrative monopoly.

0:31:450:31:50

So when plans for another crossing at Westminster

0:31:500:31:52

were mooted in the 1660s, there was uproar.

0:31:520:31:56

It wasn't just the city fathers who objected,

0:31:560:31:59

they were joined by thousands of watermen,

0:31:590:32:01

such as boatmen and ferrymen,

0:32:010:32:02

who believed their livelihoods would be threatened

0:32:020:32:05

if a second bridge was built.

0:32:050:32:07

Must remember that then, unlike now,

0:32:070:32:09

the Thames was London's main highway,

0:32:090:32:11

packed with crafts of all types,

0:32:110:32:14

carrying goods and people up and down and from side to side.

0:32:140:32:17

Now, the watermen were a very powerful lobby indeed.

0:32:200:32:23

They had their own city livery company and even their own poet,

0:32:230:32:27

the "Waterman Poet," John Taylor.

0:32:270:32:31

He complained about the competition

0:32:310:32:33

after the introduction in Tudor times of the sprung carriage.

0:32:330:32:36

"Carroaches, coaches, jades And Flanders mares

0:32:360:32:41

"Doe rob us of our shares Our wares, our fares

0:32:410:32:46

"Against the ground we stand And knocke our heeles

0:32:460:32:49

"Whilst all our profit runs away On wheels."

0:32:490:32:54

They couldn't charge more than the set fare,

0:32:540:32:56

as taxis do today.

0:32:560:32:58

But if you could persuade your passenger

0:32:580:33:02

that it was against the tide,

0:33:020:33:03

and it was a terrible evening and whatever,

0:33:030:33:05

and, "I'll do my best, sir, to get you there on time,"

0:33:050:33:08

-then, of course, there might be a nice tip at the end of it.

-Indeed.

0:33:080:33:12

So, OK, the watermen would be involved in many things,

0:33:120:33:14

but one, of course, was getting people across the Thames.

0:33:140:33:17

So in a sense, bridges were the enemy of watermen.

0:33:170:33:20

They took away the trade.

0:33:200:33:21

-Absolutely, yes.

-And they objected to them.

0:33:210:33:25

They objected to every bridge

0:33:250:33:26

and were compensated very often for,

0:33:260:33:29

or at least the company was compensated very often,

0:33:290:33:32

for a bridge being built, taking trade away.

0:33:320:33:35

Would you object to another bridge being built,

0:33:350:33:37

did the Waterman's Company object to the Millennium Bridge?

0:33:370:33:40

-Oh, absolutely, yeah.

-You did?

-Oh, yes.

-Excellent!

0:33:400:33:42

We thought that was hilarious. We call it "the wobbly bridge".

0:33:420:33:45

The wobbly bridge, yes. Vindicated! Wobbly...

0:33:450:33:48

But, no, seriously, you would object, did object to that bridge.

0:33:480:33:52

Yes, much more venomously in the past,

0:33:520:33:55

but we still say, you know, you don't need another bridge there.

0:33:550:33:58

THEY CHUCKLE

0:33:580:33:59

It was only in 1736, after centuries of argument,

0:34:030:34:06

that Parliament agreed to a bridge at Westminster.

0:34:060:34:09

Under the act, the watermen got £25,000 compensation,

0:34:090:34:15

the equivalent today of more than £2 million.

0:34:150:34:18

When Westminster Bridge officially opened in 1750,

0:34:210:34:24

London was transformed once again.

0:34:240:34:27

The Thames had been a kind of moat protecting the city.

0:34:270:34:30

Now, all that changed.

0:34:300:34:33

The commercial and political powers north of the river,

0:34:330:34:36

once represented mainly by the church,

0:34:360:34:39

now took charge across the river.

0:34:390:34:42

And so started the dramatic transformation

0:34:420:34:45

of the south bank of the Thames.

0:34:450:34:47

Traditionally, the south bank had been a place

0:34:470:34:50

independent of the city on the north bank,

0:34:500:34:53

a place free of the city's controls and statutes.

0:34:530:34:56

It was, I suppose, a land of liberty and libertines.

0:34:560:35:00

There were theatres, bear-baiting pits, brothels,

0:35:000:35:04

market gardens and pleasure grounds.

0:35:040:35:07

But now, it became something quite different.

0:35:070:35:11

It became, in a way, a province of the north bank of the Thames,

0:35:110:35:15

largely because, perhaps ironically,

0:35:150:35:17

one of the major landowners and developers

0:35:170:35:20

of the south side of the Thames was the City Corporation.

0:35:200:35:23

The City and the Bridge House Estate owned land across the river

0:35:280:35:32

which jumped in value once Westminster and then Blackfriars Bridge were built.

0:35:320:35:38

And the obelisk they erected here,

0:35:380:35:40

planned to be the focus of a grand new urban district,

0:35:400:35:44

marks the centre of their holdings.

0:35:440:35:46

As a result of the new bridges,

0:35:460:35:48

London north and south of the river had become one great city.

0:35:480:35:53

The new crossings were a distinctive part of

0:35:540:35:57

what was to be the zenith of Georgian London.

0:35:570:36:00

But like the Roman and mediaeval bridges before them,

0:36:000:36:03

they too are now ghosts, swept away by development.

0:36:030:36:06

Flying 14 miles upstream, however, we can experience their effect.

0:36:090:36:15

Richmond bridge, a classic 18th-century masonry arched structure,

0:36:150:36:19

is the only one of London's Georgian bridges to survive.

0:36:190:36:23

And it sits in a green riverside landscape,

0:36:230:36:26

a middle-class suburb surrounded by aristocratic houses and parks.

0:36:260:36:31

It allows us a glimpse of what Westminster might have been like

0:36:310:36:35

when the bridge was new

0:36:350:36:37

and the idea of London as a river city was at its height.

0:36:370:36:42

Early one morning, in September 1802,

0:36:420:36:45

William Wordsworth passed across Westminster Bridge

0:36:450:36:49

on the top of a coach.

0:36:490:36:51

He was inspired by what he saw, it was a vision. He wrote a poem.

0:36:510:36:56

And the poem, in a most charming way, is here,

0:36:560:36:59

in this bronze plate upon Westminster Bridge.

0:36:590:37:03

"Earth has not anything To show more fair

0:37:090:37:13

"Dull would he be of soul Who could pass by

0:37:130:37:17

"A sight so touching in its majesty

0:37:170:37:20

"This city now doth Like a garment wear

0:37:200:37:23

"The beauty of the morning...

0:37:230:37:24

"Ships, towers, domes Theatres, and temples lie

0:37:240:37:28

"Open unto the fields And to the sky."

0:37:280:37:32

Standing here, I can see the city as Wordsworth saw it.

0:37:350:37:39

It haunts my imagination, Georgian London,

0:37:390:37:42

one of the greatest urban creations ever achieved by mankind, I argue.

0:37:420:37:47

And to think that, from here,

0:37:470:37:50

that great city unfolded itself to Wordsworth

0:37:500:37:54

in a way he could not resist.

0:37:540:37:56

Wordsworth's poem was actually a swansong for Georgian London.

0:38:000:38:05

Between 1750 and 1850, nine bridges were thrown across the Thames.

0:38:050:38:09

But despite this, the city began to turn its back on the water,

0:38:090:38:14

as a population of more than two and a half million

0:38:140:38:17

pushed further and further away from the river banks.

0:38:170:38:21

London was fast becoming an industrial megacity.

0:38:210:38:27

It needed rapid transit and bridge builders like John Rennie.

0:38:270:38:30

Rennie built three great bridges -

0:38:330:38:35

Southwark Bridge, Waterloo Bridge and a new London Bridge.

0:38:350:38:39

But sadly, none of them survive.

0:38:390:38:42

So, like Old London Bridge,

0:38:420:38:44

you have to search for Rennie's bridge.

0:38:440:38:48

This is part of the southern approach to Rennie's London Bridge.

0:38:480:38:52

It's a fragment that offers a glimpse of the character,

0:38:520:38:57

of the power, of the whole,

0:38:570:38:58

a reminder of the architectural and engineering wonder that we've lost.

0:38:580:39:03

I love the bold classical cornice

0:39:030:39:06

and the tremendously strong granite walling.

0:39:060:39:09

It all has a Roman solidity and grandeur.

0:39:090:39:15

Rennie's new London Bridge was his final work.

0:39:150:39:19

It was built alongside the mediaeval bridge.

0:39:190:39:23

New roads had to be built, much demolition was carried out

0:39:230:39:26

and the historic street plan of London was changed.

0:39:260:39:31

And although, to my mind, it never rivalled the mediaeval bridge,

0:39:310:39:34

it too became a signature of the city.

0:39:340:39:37

Famous enough to be dismantled and sold to rich Americans in the 1960s.

0:39:370:39:42

The whole structure was rebuilt stone by stone

0:39:420:39:46

to grace a housing development in the Arizona desert.

0:39:460:39:51

# I must be going No longer staying

0:39:510:39:58

# The burning Thames I have to cross... #

0:39:580:40:05

The new bridges reduced Londoners' reliance on the river even more.

0:40:050:40:09

Once, it was common to row on the river at night, like this.

0:40:090:40:13

Not anymore.

0:40:130:40:15

Success came with a price.

0:40:150:40:18

The 1840s and '50s were grim years in London's history.

0:40:180:40:23

The population of the city had swollen,

0:40:230:40:25

London's infrastructure couldn't cope

0:40:250:40:28

with the megacity London had become.

0:40:280:40:31

The river was filthy, polluted with sewage and industrial waste.

0:40:310:40:36

It was poisoning Londoners,

0:40:360:40:38

it was killing them in their tens of thousands.

0:40:380:40:40

Waterborne diseases like cholera were rife.

0:40:400:40:43

The city was poisoning the wells of London and killing its population.

0:40:430:40:49

The bridges shared in the sickness.

0:40:510:40:53

Waterloo Bridge became notorious for suicides,

0:40:530:40:57

particularly for despairing women jumping from its parapets.

0:40:570:41:01

And statistics confirm its reputation.

0:41:010:41:05

In the 1840s, about 15% of London's suicides

0:41:050:41:09

jumped from Waterloo Bridge.

0:41:090:41:11

This aspect of London's bridges and the Thames

0:41:110:41:16

as theatres of death is etched into our literature.

0:41:160:41:20

Charles Dickens, in Our Mutual Friend,

0:41:200:41:23

essentially a novel about the river and river life,

0:41:230:41:27

starts the story with these characters

0:41:270:41:30

fishing in the Thames for corpses.

0:41:300:41:34

A valuable commodity.

0:41:340:41:36

# When shall I see you again?

0:41:360:41:40

# When the fishes fly, love... #

0:41:400:41:43

London had now become the largest, richest

0:41:430:41:45

and most powerful city in the world.

0:41:450:41:47

And yet, it was awash with disease and poverty.

0:41:470:41:50

# ..In the heat of the sun. #

0:41:500:41:54

The solution was a brutal taming of the Thames itself.

0:41:570:42:00

An embankment, which contained not just a giant new sewer,

0:42:000:42:03

but a railway line as well.

0:42:030:42:06

It was the work of one London's great engineers - Joseph Bazalgette.

0:42:060:42:11

I'm standing on the Victoria embankment.

0:42:110:42:15

In front of me and above me is the Hungerford Bridge.

0:42:150:42:18

Below me is Bazalgette's mighty sewer,

0:42:180:42:22

the underground railway, a gas mains and a telegraph cable.

0:42:220:42:27

This was, and remains, spectacular engineering.

0:42:270:42:31

When completed, London would never be the same again.

0:42:310:42:36

This was the death knell of the riverside,

0:42:380:42:41

almost Venetian-looking London.

0:42:410:42:43

Grand buildings like Somerset House once had spectacular water gates

0:42:430:42:47

where, at high tide, people and goods could arrive by boat.

0:42:470:42:51

But Bazalgette built a vast wall to separate the river from the city.

0:42:510:42:55

Inside it, 22 acres of land were reclaimed,

0:42:550:42:59

pushing the river back in places by more than 100 metres.

0:42:590:43:03

This 17th-century water gate

0:43:030:43:07

is the last surviving relic of the old waterfront

0:43:070:43:11

and it's now marooned on the edge of Embankment Gardens.

0:43:110:43:14

You can clearly see it in this painting,

0:43:140:43:16

which shows just how splendid the Georgian waterfront must have been.

0:43:160:43:21

Safer transport and cleaner water came with a cost.

0:43:210:43:25

The legacy has been really rather appalling.

0:43:250:43:28

It's cut off the river from the life of London.

0:43:280:43:31

And the great riverside boulevard that may have looked wonderful

0:43:310:43:34

just full of horse-drawn traffic and pedestrians

0:43:340:43:37

is now a noisy and polluted urban motorway.

0:43:370:43:41

And the buildings that once rose from the river,

0:43:410:43:44

like some of the towers behind me, rose like places in Venice,

0:43:440:43:50

now rise in swathes of traffic.

0:43:500:43:53

So really, the embankment had a terrible effect on the city.

0:43:530:43:58

It's one of the reason's why Londoners, in a way,

0:43:580:44:00

have forgotten the wonders and beauty of the river.

0:44:000:44:05

Nonetheless, Victorian modernity still had its triumphs.

0:44:090:44:13

Hammersmith Bridge, in the western suburbs, is one of them.

0:44:130:44:16

It is one of three built by the same Joseph Bazalgette.

0:44:160:44:20

Unsurprisingly, construction at Hammersmith employed the latest technology.

0:44:200:44:25

It's a suspension bridge,

0:44:250:44:27

with the roadway supported from above rather than below,

0:44:270:44:31

unlike traditional arch bridges.

0:44:310:44:33

The road hangs from wrought-iron cables

0:44:330:44:36

strung over cast-iron towers,

0:44:360:44:38

with each end anchored firmly in the ground.

0:44:380:44:43

It's wonderful looking at the bridge,

0:44:430:44:45

it's a real window into mid-Victorian London.

0:44:450:44:47

The engineering, of course, the epitome of Victorian engineering.

0:44:470:44:51

A combination of beauty and of incredible strength.

0:44:510:44:55

Cast iron, very strong, as I say,

0:44:550:44:57

in compression, pushing down, very strong.

0:44:570:45:00

That's perfect for the suspension towers,

0:45:000:45:03

but the chains, of course, they have to be a bit more elastic,

0:45:030:45:07

so they have a tensile strength,

0:45:070:45:10

and hence wrought iron is used, so wonderful again.

0:45:100:45:12

It doesn't seem much now to the casual observer,

0:45:120:45:14

but a lot of engineering technology going on here.

0:45:140:45:17

Functional, strong, also beautiful.

0:45:170:45:20

And in cast iron, of course, you can cast lovely detail.

0:45:200:45:24

Hence the suspension towers have this classical detail at the top.

0:45:240:45:27

The cornices, and various acanthus leaves, rather wonderful mouldings.

0:45:270:45:31

So every time you look at this bridge, you can read more into it

0:45:310:45:34

and understand more about the wonder of the engineering

0:45:340:45:37

in Victorian London.

0:45:370:45:39

It's a complete Victorian piece.

0:45:390:45:42

One of London's best bridges, I love it.

0:45:420:45:45

Bazalgette's triumph at Hammersmith was commissioned

0:45:470:45:49

by the newly-created Metropolitan Board Of Works.

0:45:490:45:53

The Board was the first overall government

0:45:530:45:56

for the new Victorian megacity.

0:45:560:45:58

In 1869, it had taken over all the private bridges across the Thames

0:45:580:46:03

and abolished all the remaining tolls.

0:46:030:46:05

And it was determined to proclaim its authority.

0:46:070:46:10

I love the ornament on this bridge, the iconography. It's so revealing.

0:46:120:46:17

Look, for example,

0:46:170:46:19

at this wonderful piece of heraldry, I suppose, behind me.

0:46:190:46:22

In the middle is a royal coat of arms.

0:46:220:46:25

To the left, the arms of the City of London.

0:46:250:46:27

And to the right, the arms of the City of Westminster.

0:46:270:46:30

But also, the arms of Kent, of Surrey, of Middlesex and of Essex.

0:46:300:46:36

This bridge really defines London as it was in the late 19th century.

0:46:360:46:40

It also reveals the power of bridge building.

0:46:400:46:44

London was no longer simply a city,

0:46:440:46:47

it was a city state.

0:46:470:46:48

By the 1890s, Bazalgette and the Board Of Works had shaped the city,

0:46:510:46:55

preparing it for the 20th century

0:46:550:46:58

and, with it, the climax of the British Empire.

0:46:580:47:02

The city of more than five million people

0:47:020:47:04

stretched down both banks of the Thames.

0:47:040:47:07

But for more than half that distance,

0:47:070:47:09

from London Bridge to the sea, there were still no bridges.

0:47:090:47:13

Just dangerous and expensive tunnels.

0:47:130:47:16

They were dug because despite all the changes,

0:47:160:47:19

London was still a port.

0:47:190:47:21

Indeed, it was the greatest port city in the world.

0:47:210:47:24

And a bridge would prevent big ships from coming upstream.

0:47:240:47:29

The docks downstream - West India Dock, St Katharine's Dock -

0:47:290:47:33

had been constructed in the early 19th century.

0:47:330:47:35

But in the late 19th century,

0:47:350:47:37

London's traditional port, the Pool Of London over there,

0:47:370:47:41

still functioned, with ships moored several feet deep into the Thames,

0:47:410:47:45

some almost as large as HMS Belfast over there.

0:47:450:47:49

So any crossing of the Thames downstream from here

0:47:490:47:52

had to allow the largest of ships still to reach the Pool.

0:47:520:47:57

Everybody had their own idea of how to solve the problem.

0:48:000:48:03

Two architects contributed different swing bridge plans.

0:48:030:48:07

Another contemplated a tunnel under the Thames.

0:48:070:48:10

Yet another hoped to build a transporter bridge

0:48:100:48:13

which lifted people and traffic high enough to let the ships through.

0:48:130:48:16

But the winning plan returned to a feature

0:48:160:48:20

of the legendary mediaeval crossing, a drawbridge.

0:48:200:48:24

The completed Tower Bridge deployed a vast hydraulic system

0:48:240:48:30

powered by steam engines to pivot the entire roadway

0:48:300:48:34

to let ships sail through.

0:48:340:48:36

In the bowels of the structure, the scale of it all becomes clear.

0:48:360:48:39

This vast cavernous space is a bascule chamber

0:48:390:48:44

below the south tower.

0:48:440:48:46

Water level is roughly here,

0:48:460:48:48

and above me is the underside of the roadway.

0:48:480:48:52

You can hear the traffic echoing. Quite uncanny.

0:48:520:48:57

Everything that's painted white moves,

0:48:570:49:00

so when the Tower Bridge roadway goes up,

0:49:000:49:05

the white elements here, that's the counter weight,

0:49:050:49:08

come down to occupy this space.

0:49:080:49:11

Must be very scary to see that. Amazing.

0:49:110:49:17

Of course, this a bridge like no other in London - it's a moving bridge,

0:49:170:49:20

a living bridge, in a sense,

0:49:200:49:22

with a crew, people in control rooms, machinery operating it.

0:49:220:49:26

Living, vibrating, almost speaking, I can hear it!

0:49:260:49:31

But all this engineering expertise was invisible

0:49:350:49:38

in the completed bridge.

0:49:380:49:40

Instead, the architecture was deliberately designed

0:49:400:49:43

to merge with the Tower Of London next door.

0:49:430:49:46

This is one of the most astonishing things about Tower Bridge.

0:49:460:49:51

It's not a Gothic structure built out of stone,

0:49:510:49:55

but it's a steel-frame structure, a modern building.

0:49:550:50:00

And through this window, you can see exactly what I mean.

0:50:000:50:03

I'm looking at the companion tower to this one.

0:50:030:50:05

Outside, all this wonderful Tudor, Gothic finials,

0:50:050:50:09

lovely ornamental details,

0:50:090:50:11

all designed to fit in with the ancient Tower Of London.

0:50:110:50:14

All history. And, in here, all is modern, steel,

0:50:140:50:18

a functional building.

0:50:180:50:20

Very strong. Very, very sort of...

0:50:200:50:23

I'd say almost brutally honest in its construction. Inside.

0:50:230:50:28

Outside, all is ornament, history, beauty, pedigree...

0:50:280:50:33

evocation of dreams and a past.

0:50:330:50:36

Hiding the brute functional realities behind a Gothic facade

0:50:420:50:45

may have been a triumph of late Victorian genteel propriety.

0:50:450:50:51

But the effect was to create a sense of immemorial age,

0:50:510:50:53

that it had always been there.

0:50:530:50:56

Old London Bridge, with its houses and shops,

0:51:000:51:03

had been a unique icon of London.

0:51:030:51:05

Now, the city had found its successor - Tower Bridge.

0:51:050:51:11

The Imperial city's gateway to the massive docks downstream

0:51:110:51:14

and its vast empire beyond.

0:51:140:51:17

After 150 years of frantic bridge building,

0:51:190:51:22

London had reinvented itself.

0:51:220:51:24

After so much of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain,

0:51:240:51:27

London's bridges were sort of steeped in nostalgia, instantly historic.

0:51:270:51:34

Look at Tower Bridge, utterly amazing.

0:51:340:51:37

Now, there was to be a century of quiet on London's river,

0:51:370:51:41

apart from two bridges built far upstream.

0:51:410:51:44

A quiet that seemed timeless, as TS Eliot observed,

0:51:440:51:48

as he, like me, slipped quietly downstream in The Waste Land.

0:51:480:51:56

"The river sweats Oil and tar

0:51:590:52:03

"The barges drift With the turning tide

0:52:030:52:06

"Red sails Wide

0:52:060:52:08

"To leeward, swing on the heavy spar

0:52:080:52:11

"The barges wash Drifting logs

0:52:110:52:14

"Down Greenwich reach Past the Isle of Dogs."

0:52:140:52:19

By the end of the 20th century, the vast sprawl of Greater London

0:52:190:52:23

meant travellers now had to be able to go round it as well as through it.

0:52:230:52:26

By the time the bridge at Dartford was completed in 1991,

0:52:260:52:32

carrying the orbital motorway across the Thames,

0:52:320:52:35

engineering had moved into a new league.

0:52:350:52:38

Between the towers, it's three times as long as Old London Bridge

0:52:380:52:42

and runs 57 metres above the water.

0:52:420:52:46

It's among the largest bridges of its kind in the world.

0:52:460:52:50

Dartford's a cable-stayed bridge.

0:52:500:52:53

This is not the same as a suspension bridge.

0:52:530:52:56

Here, the forces, the loads, travel up the cables

0:52:560:52:59

and then directly down the towers.

0:52:590:53:02

Unlike in a suspension bridge, where they're anchored on each bank,

0:53:020:53:07

this is a more stable design.

0:53:070:53:09

It allows for the creation of vastly wide and high spans.

0:53:090:53:14

This is a bridge that is making a statement. What's it saying?

0:53:140:53:17

Well, it's proclaiming that the whole of the Thames estuary belongs to London.

0:53:170:53:24

Crossing the Thames far downstream from the historic city,

0:53:260:53:30

Dartford Bridge defines London as being larger than ever,

0:53:300:53:34

a city state within South-East England.

0:53:340:53:38

The claims of the Board Of Works,

0:53:380:53:41

as displayed at Hammersmith far upstream,

0:53:410:53:43

now seem vindicated.

0:53:430:53:46

Here, you really do understand the nature of this bridge,

0:53:460:53:49

it does command the estuary.

0:53:490:53:51

It is this great gate, the approach to London is here now.

0:53:510:53:55

The city over there, the sea over there.

0:53:550:53:57

Ships come and go.

0:53:570:53:59

My goodness me, I'm just about to see the towers of Canary Wharf.

0:53:590:54:03

But however magnificent the bridge is in itself, however modern,

0:54:050:54:09

it doesn't erase the echoes of the past

0:54:090:54:12

that so intrigued Joseph Conrad.

0:54:120:54:14

I'm about 15 miles downstream from the Pool Of London,

0:54:160:54:19

where everything started, around 2,000 years ago.

0:54:190:54:23

There, of course, things have changed many times,

0:54:230:54:26

but here, in places like this,

0:54:260:54:29

it feels well, surely, much as it did

0:54:290:54:31

when the Roman triremes passed by.

0:54:310:54:34

This is a strange location, seemingly lost between worlds,

0:54:340:54:41

a very odd place indeed, an ancient frontier.

0:54:410:54:44

Yet emerging from the primordial ooze and mud,

0:54:440:54:47

and the slime and the reeds,

0:54:470:54:49

much as London emerged all those centuries before.

0:54:490:54:54

Ah, now, this is why I love the Thames.

0:54:540:54:57

It carries memories of all the people

0:54:570:55:00

who have travelled on it, who've lived beside it.

0:55:000:55:03

Look, here.

0:55:030:55:04

Bits of pottery, porcelain, earthenware.

0:55:040:55:06

Look at this lovely, delicate handle from a teacup, I suppose.

0:55:060:55:12

Beautiful, such an intimate connection

0:55:120:55:15

with the person that owned it, loved it, lost it.

0:55:150:55:18

That's what's so incredible about this place,

0:55:180:55:21

that it's a living connection with the ghosts of the past.

0:55:210:55:24

You stand here and one finds and connects and remembers.

0:55:240:55:28

By AD 2000, London had lived through

0:55:340:55:37

nearly 20 centuries of its own history.

0:55:370:55:40

And what better way to celebrate that history than with a bridge?

0:55:400:55:43

But not a giant, a jewel.

0:55:430:55:45

One designed not for transport, but for human delight,

0:55:450:55:48

a pedestrian bridge that opened up

0:55:480:55:50

a new way through the city

0:55:500:55:53

and, in a nod to its noble forebears,

0:55:530:55:55

a spiritual bridge pointing directly to London's cathedral - St Paul's.

0:55:550:56:01

Although it suffered teething troubles,

0:56:010:56:03

the design, by engineers Ove Arup, architect Norman Foster

0:56:030:56:09

and even a sculptor, Anthony Caro, is a work of art.

0:56:090:56:14

This bridge has redefined London once again.

0:56:140:56:17

By creating a new link across the Thames,

0:56:170:56:19

it has brought added life to Southwark, in front of me,

0:56:190:56:23

and the city behind me.

0:56:230:56:25

It's created a wonderful connection

0:56:250:56:27

between Tate Modern up there and St Paul's Cathedral.

0:56:270:56:30

Doesn't it look absolutely fantastic?

0:56:300:56:33

Also, the bridge has created spectacular new vistas of the city.

0:56:330:56:39

From here, I can see an array of bridges to the left and to the right.

0:56:390:56:42

Wonderful. Tower Bridge, over there in the distance.

0:56:420:56:44

But also, a wonderful object, lovely to walk across,

0:56:440:56:48

lovely to explore it, to touch it and to look at it.

0:56:480:56:51

It reminds me, in a way,

0:56:510:56:53

of other great pedestrian bridges around the world.

0:56:530:56:56

The Rialto Bridge in Venice, for example, also exquisite.

0:56:560:56:59

It, of course, is lined with shops,

0:56:590:57:01

a lovely living thing, the Rialto Bridge.

0:57:010:57:04

It puts me in mind of inhabited bridges.

0:57:040:57:06

I wonder if London could ever recapture the glory

0:57:060:57:09

of Old London Bridge with its houses.

0:57:090:57:11

Could there be a new inhabited bridge in London?

0:57:110:57:14

Perhaps, perhaps, I hope so.

0:57:140:57:16

People have been building bridges in London for 3,000 years and more.

0:57:210:57:27

And those extraordinary structures have defined the city.

0:57:270:57:31

From the beginning, they were sites of primal spiritual power,

0:57:310:57:34

as man attempted to tame and harness the brute forces of nature.

0:57:340:57:39

But they've also shaped London's economic and political dominance.

0:57:390:57:44

Once a permanent bridge was built,

0:57:440:57:45

wealth and power found their way to London

0:57:450:57:48

and, with them, the talents of millions of people.

0:57:480:57:51

And so, these crossings became not only a vehicle

0:57:510:57:53

for royal and political display,

0:57:530:57:57

they helped London become, to my mind,

0:57:570:57:59

the greatest city in the world.

0:57:590:58:03

There will be new bridges, and different Londons, in the future.

0:58:030:58:06

Even now, a cable car bridge is being built downstream at the docks.

0:58:060:58:11

That, like this bridge, can only be a good thing

0:58:110:58:14

to help Londoners regain the pleasures of the Thames.

0:58:140:58:19

And only through the Thames and its bridges,

0:58:190:58:22

can you grasp the true nature of London

0:58:220:58:25

and understand those diverse people -

0:58:250:58:29

costermongers and kings, warriors and merchants -

0:58:290:58:32

who have made London the fantastic city it is.

0:58:320:58:36

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