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Between Richmond and the North Sea, 30 bridges span the Thames. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:13 | |
They carry people across a stretch of river 35 miles long, | 0:00:13 | 0:00:17 | |
bringing together a population of nearly eight million. | 0:00:17 | 0:00:20 | |
These extraordinary structures have been the making of London, | 0:00:22 | 0:00:27 | |
Britain's capital and, I think, Europe's greatest city. | 0:00:27 | 0:00:30 | |
Millions of Londoners cross these bridges every week. | 0:00:33 | 0:00:37 | |
Most, I don't suppose, give them a second thought. | 0:00:37 | 0:00:40 | |
But for me, bridges are far more than merely means of transport, | 0:00:40 | 0:00:44 | |
ways of getting from one place to another. | 0:00:44 | 0:00:47 | |
They are also ways of linking the present to the past. | 0:00:47 | 0:00:51 | |
London's bridges are not just functional objects, | 0:00:57 | 0:01:00 | |
they are also symbols, metaphors. | 0:01:00 | 0:01:02 | |
They transform, connect, inspire. | 0:01:02 | 0:01:05 | |
And they tell great stories. | 0:01:05 | 0:01:08 | |
Of Bronze-Age relics of the Vauxhall shore, | 0:01:08 | 0:01:11 | |
of why London Bridge was falling down, | 0:01:11 | 0:01:14 | |
of corpses splashing beneath Waterloo Bridge | 0:01:14 | 0:01:17 | |
and, above all, of the sublime ambition of London's bridge builders themselves. | 0:01:17 | 0:01:22 | |
I was born when London was still one of the world's great ports | 0:01:25 | 0:01:28 | |
and the Thames one of the world's great working rivers. | 0:01:28 | 0:01:32 | |
I well remember, as a child, the impression that London's bridges made on me. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:37 | |
I suppose bridges gave me | 0:01:37 | 0:01:40 | |
my first thrilling, stomach-churning architectural experience. | 0:01:40 | 0:01:45 | |
And, goodness me, they are doing the same now. | 0:01:45 | 0:01:50 | |
Oh! Brilliant view! | 0:01:50 | 0:01:52 | |
Some of London's bridges have vanished or been replaced. | 0:01:56 | 0:02:01 | |
They are ghost crosses of the past, | 0:02:01 | 0:02:03 | |
but each of them is a clue to the city's hidden history. | 0:02:03 | 0:02:06 | |
In some ways, they ARE that history, | 0:02:06 | 0:02:08 | |
a history that's lasted nearly 4,000 years. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:12 | |
In the beginning was the river, the Thames. | 0:02:34 | 0:02:36 | |
The greatest, the longest river in England. | 0:02:36 | 0:02:40 | |
200 miles from its source, the river meets the tidal stream. | 0:02:40 | 0:02:46 | |
The result is a landscape of marshes and islands, | 0:02:46 | 0:02:49 | |
indeterminate and always changing. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:52 | |
Only here, far downstream from the City of London, | 0:02:52 | 0:02:56 | |
can you understand the elemental world of sand, mud, pebbles and debris | 0:02:56 | 0:03:02 | |
that was the Thames before the city and its bridges were built. | 0:03:02 | 0:03:06 | |
For generations stretching back over centuries, | 0:03:08 | 0:03:11 | |
Londoners laboured in the marshes at now long-lost trades, | 0:03:11 | 0:03:16 | |
mud larks and scavengers, toshers and dredgers, | 0:03:16 | 0:03:21 | |
watermen and oyster-gatherers. All gone, a lost class. | 0:03:21 | 0:03:25 | |
The river has always been a portal into the past. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:31 | |
It's inspired artists and writers, none more so than Joseph Conrad, | 0:03:31 | 0:03:39 | |
who wrote that, "Nothing is easier | 0:03:39 | 0:03:41 | |
"than to evoke the great spirit of the past | 0:03:41 | 0:03:45 | |
"upon the lower reaches of the Thames." | 0:03:45 | 0:03:49 | |
From here, Conrad could see the great modern City of London | 0:03:49 | 0:03:53 | |
from an ancient perspective. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:56 | |
"The monstrous town was marked ominously on the sky, | 0:04:01 | 0:04:05 | |
"a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:10 | |
"And this also has been one of the dark places of the Earth. | 0:04:12 | 0:04:16 | |
"We live in the flicker, but darkness was here yesterday." | 0:04:18 | 0:04:23 | |
The marshy landscape on the banks of the Thames gave birth to London. | 0:04:26 | 0:04:30 | |
But the earliest bridge was built not here, | 0:04:30 | 0:04:33 | |
but 15 miles upstream to the west. | 0:04:33 | 0:04:36 | |
Past the city of London, beyond the seat of power at Westminster, | 0:04:36 | 0:04:40 | |
at a place which today we call Vauxhall. | 0:04:40 | 0:04:44 | |
Here, in 1500 BC, | 0:04:44 | 0:04:46 | |
before Troy fell and long before Julius Caesar came to Britain, | 0:04:46 | 0:04:51 | |
the people of the marshes made a first attempt at a crossing. | 0:04:51 | 0:04:54 | |
We are extremely lucky, | 0:04:54 | 0:04:56 | |
the remains are only completely exposed twice a year | 0:04:56 | 0:04:59 | |
at the very bottom of the spring tide, but what a find. | 0:04:59 | 0:05:04 | |
Tests have shown that these timber piles | 0:05:04 | 0:05:07 | |
have been preserved here for 3,500 years. | 0:05:07 | 0:05:10 | |
So you've had this dated with dendrochronology, have you? | 0:05:10 | 0:05:13 | |
-Yes. -So you're therefore sure... | 0:05:13 | 0:05:15 | |
It's 1,500 years calendar-dated BC, yes. | 0:05:15 | 0:05:19 | |
-1,500, so... -BC. -BC. -Which is about 3,500 years. | 0:05:19 | 0:05:24 | |
So therefore, this is, in a way, | 0:05:24 | 0:05:26 | |
it's the oldest of an in-situ bit of structure in London, isn't it? | 0:05:26 | 0:05:31 | |
Why did they build this bridge? | 0:05:34 | 0:05:37 | |
Some archaeologists think it carried people not across the river, | 0:05:37 | 0:05:40 | |
but to an island that probably existed in the stream. | 0:05:40 | 0:05:44 | |
We can't know for sure, but Gustav and his team think that, back then, | 0:05:44 | 0:05:48 | |
this was the highest point of the tidal stream. | 0:05:48 | 0:05:50 | |
It's also a place where three rivers met, | 0:05:50 | 0:05:53 | |
the Thames and two of its lost tributaries, | 0:05:53 | 0:05:56 | |
the Tyburn and the Effra. | 0:05:56 | 0:05:58 | |
That's obviously magical - three rivers meeting, | 0:05:58 | 0:06:01 | |
then weird and wonderful tidal things happen, I suppose. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:04 | |
That's right, and if this was the tidal head in the Bronze Age, that's a very magical place. | 0:06:04 | 0:06:07 | |
-Yes. -Because the moon is definitely saying when the tide will be low and when it will be high. | 0:06:07 | 0:06:12 | |
And when people can see this connection between those things in the sky, you know, | 0:06:12 | 0:06:16 | |
that the moon, and those things on Earth, the river, they connect, you know, as a sacred thing... | 0:06:16 | 0:06:21 | |
You would need to placate the river, | 0:06:21 | 0:06:22 | |
because very high tides would flood any settlements you had round here, | 0:06:22 | 0:06:25 | |
so we have, possibly, a sort of sacred river at this point. | 0:06:25 | 0:06:30 | |
When the bridge was discovered, | 0:06:33 | 0:06:36 | |
the archaeologists found two bronze spearheads | 0:06:36 | 0:06:38 | |
driven point down into the mud | 0:06:38 | 0:06:41 | |
beside the bridge. | 0:06:41 | 0:06:42 | |
Were they offerings to the deity of the river? | 0:06:42 | 0:06:44 | |
Like coins in the fountain, this urge is universal | 0:06:44 | 0:06:48 | |
and, even today, Londoners continue to make offerings. | 0:06:48 | 0:06:52 | |
All the way up and down the Thames these days, | 0:06:52 | 0:06:55 | |
we find this kind of stuff. | 0:06:55 | 0:06:56 | |
Now, these are not Bronze Age, these are Diwali lamps. | 0:06:58 | 0:07:02 | |
Oh, my goodness me. | 0:07:02 | 0:07:04 | |
So it's like in India. It's like in the sacred Ganges. | 0:07:04 | 0:07:07 | |
Hang on a minute. | 0:07:07 | 0:07:09 | |
-But they are modern, modern... -What's that? | 0:07:09 | 0:07:11 | |
Lord Ganesh! | 0:07:11 | 0:07:13 | |
Overcomer of obstacles, great fellow. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:15 | |
And that looks like Krishna or something, doesn't it? | 0:07:15 | 0:07:18 | |
And these chaps? | 0:07:18 | 0:07:19 | |
That looks like Krishna, doesn't it? | 0:07:19 | 0:07:21 | |
So you found these in the Thames. | 0:07:21 | 0:07:22 | |
So Hindus living in England, in London, are casting, | 0:07:22 | 0:07:25 | |
using the Thames as...like the Ganges, the sacred river? | 0:07:25 | 0:07:29 | |
Right, so they're replicating what we used to do in the Bronze Age. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:33 | |
A ritual river, a powerful god. | 0:07:33 | 0:07:36 | |
If Gustav is right, | 0:07:38 | 0:07:40 | |
this challenges a lot of our assumptions | 0:07:40 | 0:07:43 | |
about what bridges are for. | 0:07:43 | 0:07:45 | |
It didn't originate as a means of transport or trade, | 0:07:45 | 0:07:49 | |
but as sacred creations. | 0:07:49 | 0:07:52 | |
This was a bridge between a spiritual, not a material divide, | 0:07:52 | 0:07:58 | |
a bridge between worlds, a bridge between the world of man here | 0:07:58 | 0:08:01 | |
and the world of gods, between life and death. | 0:08:01 | 0:08:04 | |
The Thames was like the River Jordan, | 0:08:04 | 0:08:08 | |
to cross it was to cross to a promised land. | 0:08:08 | 0:08:11 | |
The link between bridges and the sacred echoes through the millennia. | 0:08:13 | 0:08:19 | |
It's in fact commemorated in our language. | 0:08:19 | 0:08:22 | |
The head of the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope, | 0:08:22 | 0:08:24 | |
is called in Latin the Pontifex, | 0:08:24 | 0:08:27 | |
which means both bridge builder and priest. | 0:08:27 | 0:08:30 | |
Indeed, it was the Romans, | 0:08:30 | 0:08:33 | |
about 1,500 years after our marsh people's activities here, | 0:08:33 | 0:08:37 | |
who built London's first traditional, conventional bridge. | 0:08:37 | 0:08:42 | |
Bridging the Thames is not easy. | 0:08:44 | 0:08:46 | |
The river bed is changing all the time, | 0:08:46 | 0:08:48 | |
because of tides and currents and human activity. | 0:08:48 | 0:08:51 | |
But in truth, it's very shallow. | 0:08:51 | 0:08:54 | |
Sometimes less than two metres deep at low tide. | 0:08:54 | 0:08:58 | |
The Romans knew this. | 0:08:58 | 0:09:00 | |
They were champion engineers of the ancient world. | 0:09:00 | 0:09:04 | |
They put their bridge on the shallowest, narrowest part of the river, | 0:09:04 | 0:09:07 | |
now spanned by the modern London Bridge, | 0:09:07 | 0:09:10 | |
right next to the ancient port, what is called the Pool Of London. | 0:09:10 | 0:09:15 | |
The consequences have been immense. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:19 | |
For centuries, this area was the heart of the British economy. | 0:09:19 | 0:09:25 | |
A key reason for that is that | 0:09:25 | 0:09:27 | |
this was the first place upstream from the sea, | 0:09:27 | 0:09:29 | |
about 40 miles in that direction, | 0:09:29 | 0:09:32 | |
that a bridge could be constructed | 0:09:32 | 0:09:34 | |
to connect the south and the north banks of the Thames. | 0:09:34 | 0:09:39 | |
In addition, by the bridge is a tidal pool, | 0:09:39 | 0:09:43 | |
allowing the large ships to anchor, very good for trade. | 0:09:43 | 0:09:46 | |
There's been a bridge here on and off for nearly 2,000 years | 0:09:46 | 0:09:51 | |
and that's been the making of London. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:54 | |
Because of the crossing, | 0:09:56 | 0:09:58 | |
London became an explosively successful settlement, | 0:09:58 | 0:10:01 | |
right from the beginning. | 0:10:01 | 0:10:03 | |
So successful, in fact, that only when building work takes place | 0:10:03 | 0:10:07 | |
can we get a glimpse of the Roman foreshore. | 0:10:07 | 0:10:09 | |
As conquerors, the Romans needed | 0:10:11 | 0:10:13 | |
a defensible riverside site and port, | 0:10:13 | 0:10:16 | |
so that reinforcements could be rushed in if needed | 0:10:16 | 0:10:19 | |
and an evacuation could take place at speed | 0:10:19 | 0:10:22 | |
in the case of an emergency. | 0:10:22 | 0:10:24 | |
The trauma of Boudica's rebellion in AD 61, | 0:10:24 | 0:10:28 | |
when the Roman capital of Colchester was burnt, | 0:10:28 | 0:10:31 | |
combined with the fact that, already at that time, | 0:10:31 | 0:10:34 | |
the bridge here made London the transport centre of Roman Britain | 0:10:34 | 0:10:38 | |
meant that when Roman authority was re-established, | 0:10:38 | 0:10:41 | |
London, not Colchester, became the provincial capital. | 0:10:41 | 0:10:45 | |
From here, the Romans could control England, | 0:10:45 | 0:10:50 | |
and they did that for several centuries. | 0:10:50 | 0:10:53 | |
You're looking at a slice of Roman London, | 0:10:53 | 0:10:55 | |
or the beginning of a slice of Roman London. | 0:10:55 | 0:10:57 | |
The very first of the First-Century waterfront would have come through | 0:10:57 | 0:11:01 | |
roughly where the guy down there is digging. | 0:11:01 | 0:11:05 | |
-We're looking south, at the moment, towards the river. -Yes, exactly. | 0:11:05 | 0:11:08 | |
So it would have cut across more or less there. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:11 | |
So you can see we're only just beginning to uncover... | 0:11:11 | 0:11:14 | |
We've only been here a couple of days, but you can see the difference | 0:11:14 | 0:11:17 | |
between this modern stuff which they're digging out | 0:11:17 | 0:11:19 | |
and the actual layers of archaeology which are left. | 0:11:19 | 0:11:23 | |
And that's what they're trying to do, they're trying to distinguish | 0:11:23 | 0:11:26 | |
real archaeology from modern rubbish. | 0:11:26 | 0:11:28 | |
'This is the first chance we've had to investigate the Roman bridge | 0:11:28 | 0:11:32 | |
'for more than 30 years.' | 0:11:32 | 0:11:34 | |
As far as we can make out, | 0:11:34 | 0:11:36 | |
we only saw one pier of the bridge in 1981, | 0:11:36 | 0:11:39 | |
-but quite a lot of it. -Yeah. | 0:11:39 | 0:11:41 | |
It's formed of a combination of horizontally laid timbers | 0:11:41 | 0:11:44 | |
-stacked on top of each other cantilevering out. -Yes. | 0:11:44 | 0:11:48 | |
And then the actual bridge platform, the deck, is laid along the top of that. | 0:11:48 | 0:11:52 | |
So that's, using the evidence | 0:11:52 | 0:11:54 | |
of what we actually found in the ground, | 0:11:54 | 0:11:56 | |
-how we speculate the bridge would have looked. -Yes. Fascinating. | 0:11:56 | 0:12:01 | |
As the excavation continues, | 0:12:03 | 0:12:05 | |
the archaeologists begin to find wooden piles, | 0:12:05 | 0:12:08 | |
survivors of nearly 2,000 years of urban development. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:12 | |
I can't resist coming to grips with Roman engineering. | 0:12:12 | 0:12:16 | |
This is a pile. Ooh! Very solid. | 0:12:16 | 0:12:19 | |
'These battered stumps | 0:12:21 | 0:12:22 | |
'are the remains of the wharves beside the bridge, | 0:12:22 | 0:12:25 | |
'through which the goods of empire flowed in and out, | 0:12:25 | 0:12:28 | |
'changing the physical geography and economy of Britain forever.' | 0:12:28 | 0:12:32 | |
'But the invaders never forgot | 0:12:34 | 0:12:36 | |
'that a bridge was still a sacred, metaphysical place too. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:40 | |
'When the Georgians built the predecessor | 0:12:40 | 0:12:42 | |
'to the bridge I'm standing on, | 0:12:42 | 0:12:44 | |
'they dredged the river bed to clear the bottom for ships to pass.' | 0:12:44 | 0:12:48 | |
Out there, in the middle of the river, | 0:12:50 | 0:12:52 | |
they found a large cache of Roman coins, | 0:12:52 | 0:12:54 | |
rather like these, wonderful things. | 0:12:54 | 0:12:56 | |
Bronze and brass and maybe silver. | 0:12:56 | 0:12:59 | |
Archaeologists believe there was a shrine in the middle of the bridge | 0:12:59 | 0:13:02 | |
and people passing over would cast coins | 0:13:02 | 0:13:05 | |
into the mighty Thames to appease its power. | 0:13:05 | 0:13:08 | |
So, for the Romans, | 0:13:08 | 0:13:11 | |
as with the Bronze-Age marsh people upstream at Vauxhall, | 0:13:11 | 0:13:14 | |
bridges were sacred things, things of religion. | 0:13:14 | 0:13:17 | |
We have to remember, of course, that in Rome, | 0:13:17 | 0:13:20 | |
the same word was used for bridge builder as for priest - Pontifex. | 0:13:20 | 0:13:24 | |
Indeed, it was one of the titles of the Roman Emperor. | 0:13:24 | 0:13:28 | |
Both emperors and empire are, of course, long gone | 0:13:33 | 0:13:35 | |
and the bridge with them. | 0:13:35 | 0:13:37 | |
For centuries, there was no attempt to rebuild it and no real need. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:41 | |
The main settlement in London now was a long way | 0:13:41 | 0:13:44 | |
from the remains of the Roman bridge. | 0:13:44 | 0:13:47 | |
A mile and a half upstream around what is now Covent Garden, | 0:13:47 | 0:13:52 | |
a new trading post grew up by a sharp bend in the river. | 0:13:52 | 0:13:55 | |
It was a beach market town | 0:13:55 | 0:13:57 | |
and the London street names preserve its memory, | 0:13:57 | 0:14:01 | |
of the Strand, where early English merchants pulled up their ships, | 0:14:01 | 0:14:04 | |
and the Aldwych, the old vicus or trading port. | 0:14:04 | 0:14:07 | |
And the river became, as it had been before the Romans, | 0:14:09 | 0:14:12 | |
a frontier, a border between warring kingdoms | 0:14:12 | 0:14:15 | |
with names like Essex, Middlesex, Surrey and Kent. | 0:14:15 | 0:14:21 | |
For London to achieve its destiny as a great city, | 0:14:24 | 0:14:27 | |
it needed a proper bridge. | 0:14:27 | 0:14:29 | |
Once King Alfred and his successors had reunited England | 0:14:29 | 0:14:33 | |
and reoccupied the Roman city, | 0:14:33 | 0:14:35 | |
a bridge was built. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:37 | |
But it was really no more than a flimsy causeway, | 0:14:37 | 0:14:40 | |
intended more to stop raiders travelling upstream | 0:14:40 | 0:14:44 | |
than to be an aid to transport. | 0:14:44 | 0:14:47 | |
For a proper and solid bridge, | 0:14:47 | 0:14:49 | |
London had to wait around 1,000 years after the Roman bridge. | 0:14:49 | 0:14:53 | |
But then, that bridge was very solid and very proper indeed. | 0:14:53 | 0:14:58 | |
# London Bridge is falling down | 0:14:58 | 0:15:01 | |
# Falling down, falling down... # | 0:15:01 | 0:15:04 | |
Of all the river crossings in London, | 0:15:04 | 0:15:06 | |
the one we actually call London Bridge is the most famous, | 0:15:06 | 0:15:09 | |
the one we remember in the nursery rhyme. | 0:15:09 | 0:15:13 | |
But the structure immortalised in the song | 0:15:13 | 0:15:15 | |
is not the ruthless concrete span we see today, | 0:15:15 | 0:15:18 | |
nor even the one that preceded it. | 0:15:18 | 0:15:20 | |
The bridge we remember is the mediaeval bridge, | 0:15:20 | 0:15:24 | |
the bridge of Thomas Becket and Dick Whittington, | 0:15:24 | 0:15:26 | |
the one Chaucer and Shakespeare knew. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:29 | |
But it's a ghost which haunts me still. | 0:15:29 | 0:15:32 | |
And the question I ask myself is, "What was it really like? | 0:15:32 | 0:15:36 | |
"What was London Bridge and why was it falling down?" | 0:15:36 | 0:15:40 | |
To find out, we have to go back 800 years to the 12th Century. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:45 | |
At the time, London was booming. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:51 | |
Much of the street plan of the modern city was laid down by then, | 0:15:51 | 0:15:55 | |
although very few of the actual buildings survive. | 0:15:55 | 0:15:58 | |
But what has endured are the records of the bridge, | 0:15:58 | 0:16:01 | |
preserved in the archives of the Corporation Of London. | 0:16:01 | 0:16:05 | |
They tell us that in 1173, a religious community - | 0:16:05 | 0:16:10 | |
the Chaplains, Brethren And Sisters Of The Bridge Of London - | 0:16:10 | 0:16:14 | |
were entrusted with building a new stone bridge. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:18 | |
And the mastermind of the project was a parish priest, | 0:16:18 | 0:16:20 | |
Peter of Colechurch, off Cheapside. | 0:16:20 | 0:16:24 | |
These ancient documents offer insights | 0:16:25 | 0:16:28 | |
into the creation, the use and maintenance | 0:16:28 | 0:16:31 | |
of one of London's greatest structures, | 0:16:31 | 0:16:34 | |
Old London Bridge. | 0:16:34 | 0:16:36 | |
Started in 1176, it's been long lost. | 0:16:36 | 0:16:40 | |
But this treasure trove of intimate and evocative documents | 0:16:40 | 0:16:44 | |
almost bring it back to life. | 0:16:44 | 0:16:47 | |
Look at this wonderful thing, for example. | 0:16:47 | 0:16:50 | |
It is a grant, dated 1205, | 0:16:50 | 0:16:54 | |
a grant from Peter the Priest, Peter of Colechurch, | 0:16:54 | 0:16:57 | |
the architect, the creator of London Bridge. Incredible. | 0:16:57 | 0:17:00 | |
And attached to this grant is something utterly wonderful. | 0:17:00 | 0:17:04 | |
It's a seal. | 0:17:04 | 0:17:05 | |
Here it is. | 0:17:05 | 0:17:07 | |
And it shows Peter of Colechurch | 0:17:07 | 0:17:09 | |
not as an architect or an engineer, | 0:17:09 | 0:17:12 | |
but as a priest offering communion. | 0:17:12 | 0:17:15 | |
Absolutely wonderful. | 0:17:15 | 0:17:17 | |
Such a direct connection with the main man behind Old London Bridge. | 0:17:17 | 0:17:22 | |
Now, this is a charter of about 1320, | 0:17:22 | 0:17:27 | |
and we have attached to it here another seal, again wonderful. | 0:17:27 | 0:17:34 | |
It shows an abstract representation of the bridge, I suppose. | 0:17:34 | 0:17:37 | |
Just simply an arch with Thomas Becket sitting on the top of it, | 0:17:37 | 0:17:42 | |
and below the arch, we see the city of London. | 0:17:42 | 0:17:46 | |
Absolutely wonderful image. | 0:17:46 | 0:17:48 | |
St Paul's in the centre. Old St Paul's with its spire intact, | 0:17:48 | 0:17:53 | |
flanked by city churches with their spires pointing to the heavens. | 0:17:53 | 0:17:57 | |
# London Bridge is falling down Falling down... # | 0:17:57 | 0:18:02 | |
One of the reasons the mediaeval London Bridge became such an icon for the city | 0:18:02 | 0:18:05 | |
was that it was a living bridge, | 0:18:05 | 0:18:07 | |
an astonishing structure with houses and shops built upon it. | 0:18:07 | 0:18:11 | |
The oldest image of it dates from the 15th century. | 0:18:11 | 0:18:15 | |
Here we see it. It's the first sort of drawn image of London Bridge. | 0:18:15 | 0:18:19 | |
In the foreground, the Tower Of London, | 0:18:19 | 0:18:22 | |
with various activities going on, | 0:18:22 | 0:18:23 | |
and there's the water gate for the Thames. | 0:18:23 | 0:18:25 | |
And in the background, | 0:18:25 | 0:18:27 | |
an incredible image of the northern half of London Bridge. | 0:18:27 | 0:18:30 | |
Great chapel in the centre | 0:18:30 | 0:18:33 | |
and the arches connecting that to land at the north bank. | 0:18:33 | 0:18:38 | |
And in the background, an uncannily similar image to that on the seal - | 0:18:38 | 0:18:42 | |
the skyline of London with the spires, | 0:18:42 | 0:18:45 | |
old St Paul's and the spires of the city churches. | 0:18:45 | 0:18:47 | |
It's a wonderful thing, this drawing, | 0:18:47 | 0:18:50 | |
manuscript drawing. | 0:18:50 | 0:18:52 | |
In our search for Old London Bridge, | 0:18:55 | 0:18:58 | |
the street plan of the city is a major clue. | 0:18:58 | 0:19:01 | |
We know that the mediaeval bridge | 0:19:01 | 0:19:03 | |
lay just to the east of its modern counterpart. | 0:19:03 | 0:19:06 | |
And if you decode the street plan, | 0:19:06 | 0:19:08 | |
its ghostly location begins to reveal itself. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:12 | |
The monument to London's great fire of 1666 | 0:19:12 | 0:19:15 | |
was put up beside the ancient northern approach to the bridge. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:19 | |
And at each end of the bridge, we're told there was a church. | 0:19:19 | 0:19:24 | |
Following the road here, Fish Street Hill, leads us down to the church of St Magnus Martyr, | 0:19:24 | 0:19:29 | |
which stood, like a kind of spiritual tollbooth, | 0:19:29 | 0:19:33 | |
at the northern end of the bridge. | 0:19:33 | 0:19:35 | |
Once you understand that Old London Bridge | 0:19:35 | 0:19:38 | |
stood slightly to the east of modern London Bridge, | 0:19:38 | 0:19:41 | |
everything here makes sense. | 0:19:41 | 0:19:43 | |
This splendid elevation on the tower of St Magnus Martyr Church, | 0:19:43 | 0:19:48 | |
which everybody crossing London Bridge would have passed, | 0:19:48 | 0:19:52 | |
because the carriageway, the roadway to London Bridge was here, | 0:19:52 | 0:19:55 | |
and inside there, within the arch, so to speak, | 0:19:55 | 0:19:58 | |
below the tower, was the pedestrian route. | 0:19:58 | 0:20:01 | |
And here, we have salvaged some of the stones from Old London Bridge. | 0:20:01 | 0:20:07 | |
I suppose they are part of the mid-18th century recasing of the bridge in Portland stone. | 0:20:07 | 0:20:13 | |
Inside the church, there's something of a relic. | 0:20:17 | 0:20:20 | |
Our next clue to what Old London Bridge might have been like. | 0:20:20 | 0:20:23 | |
This wonderful model shows London Bridge as it could have looked, | 0:20:25 | 0:20:30 | |
as indeed I'm sure it did look in about 1400. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:33 | |
It's, er, was then, 900-feet long from the city here to Southwark | 0:20:33 | 0:20:40 | |
with the carriageway, the roadway, carried on 19 stone-built arches, | 0:20:40 | 0:20:45 | |
the 20th arch being that of the drawbridge somewhat in the middle. | 0:20:45 | 0:20:50 | |
And on the stone-built arches, | 0:20:50 | 0:20:54 | |
we have an array of timber-built houses and shops, about 140 in 1400. | 0:20:54 | 0:21:00 | |
Also, one can see very clearly that about half the width of the river | 0:21:00 | 0:21:07 | |
is sort of constrained by the thick piers of the arches | 0:21:07 | 0:21:13 | |
and the breakwaters in front of them, they're called starlings, | 0:21:13 | 0:21:17 | |
with the edges protected by timber piles. | 0:21:17 | 0:21:19 | |
In the middle, roughly, is the great fortification, the drawbridge, | 0:21:19 | 0:21:25 | |
a reminder that London was defended to a degree by the Thames. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:28 | |
It was like a moat. And to span it | 0:21:28 | 0:21:30 | |
was to compromise the defence of the city, | 0:21:30 | 0:21:32 | |
so one needed to prevent invaders | 0:21:32 | 0:21:35 | |
coming across the bridge from the south. | 0:21:35 | 0:21:37 | |
Up comes the drawbridge, this is a fortification, | 0:21:37 | 0:21:40 | |
which, in a sense, is part of the defences of London, | 0:21:40 | 0:21:43 | |
along with the city wall. | 0:21:43 | 0:21:45 | |
I don't know. One just wonders, | 0:21:45 | 0:21:46 | |
can anything of this wonderful bridge still survive | 0:21:46 | 0:21:50 | |
below the waters of the Thames? | 0:21:50 | 0:21:54 | |
It was 30 years before this legendary crossing was completed, in 1209. | 0:21:59 | 0:22:04 | |
It stood longer than any other in London's history. | 0:22:04 | 0:22:08 | |
But like all bridges, it was never really finished. | 0:22:08 | 0:22:10 | |
To resist the huge force of currents and tide on the river, | 0:22:10 | 0:22:13 | |
it had to be maintained. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:16 | |
# Build it up with wood and clay My Fair Lady. # | 0:22:16 | 0:22:20 | |
And that offers us a clue to the real meaning of the nursery rhyme. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:24 | |
What we have here, bizarrely, is what the cut waters, | 0:22:27 | 0:22:32 | |
the piers for London Bridge would have looked like, | 0:22:32 | 0:22:35 | |
the medieval bridge. | 0:22:35 | 0:22:36 | |
They would have been round wood piles like this... | 0:22:36 | 0:22:39 | |
-Made out of what, chestnut, or oak, or...? -Elm? -Elm? | 0:22:39 | 0:22:43 | |
-Often. ..driven in with a ram... -Yeah. | 0:22:43 | 0:22:46 | |
..and then clad behind with timber planking. | 0:22:46 | 0:22:50 | |
That would have been made up with masonry, with earth... | 0:22:50 | 0:22:54 | |
all sorts of solid things in-between the timber posts and beams. | 0:22:54 | 0:22:58 | |
That's right. So the bridge would be supported | 0:22:58 | 0:23:00 | |
by the infill of these artificial islands, | 0:23:00 | 0:23:03 | |
-held in place by planks and round wood piles. -Right. | 0:23:03 | 0:23:06 | |
-Very laborious work. -But when do these date from, do you think? | 0:23:06 | 0:23:10 | |
These are contemporary with probably the last phase of the mediaeval bridge. | 0:23:10 | 0:23:14 | |
These would have been here in the late-18th century. | 0:23:14 | 0:23:17 | |
The obvious question for a layman is that these... | 0:23:17 | 0:23:20 | |
these piles are some centuries old, | 0:23:20 | 0:23:23 | |
they've survived underwater. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:24 | |
Well, at low tide. At high tide, the water is right up here. | 0:23:24 | 0:23:27 | |
It's astonishing, so timber is preserved by being kept wet? | 0:23:27 | 0:23:31 | |
Yes. If it's kept wet, it will be preserved. | 0:23:31 | 0:23:34 | |
If it's kept dry, it will be preserved. | 0:23:34 | 0:23:36 | |
The real problem is if a timber rises | 0:23:36 | 0:23:38 | |
from the bottom above the high water mark, | 0:23:38 | 0:23:41 | |
it will decay at the high water mark, | 0:23:41 | 0:23:43 | |
because part of it is dry and therefore doesn't expand, | 0:23:43 | 0:23:48 | |
and part of it is wet, and therefore it expands when it's wet | 0:23:48 | 0:23:51 | |
and then it shrinks when it's dry. | 0:23:51 | 0:23:52 | |
'It took huge quantities of timber and Kentish ragstone | 0:23:55 | 0:23:58 | |
'to maintain Old London Bridge. | 0:23:58 | 0:24:00 | |
'The enormous costs were paid for by the proceeds from tolls, | 0:24:00 | 0:24:04 | |
'from both people and ships.' | 0:24:04 | 0:24:07 | |
But sometimes, the money went astray | 0:24:07 | 0:24:10 | |
and the result could be catastrophic. | 0:24:10 | 0:24:13 | |
In 1282, five of the arches of the bridge collapsed. | 0:24:13 | 0:24:17 | |
About 12 years earlier, | 0:24:17 | 0:24:20 | |
King Henry III had given the revenues of the bridge | 0:24:20 | 0:24:23 | |
to his wife, Queen Eleanor, | 0:24:23 | 0:24:24 | |
and she spent it on herself, not on maintaining the bridge. | 0:24:24 | 0:24:28 | |
That's why London Bridge collapsed. | 0:24:28 | 0:24:30 | |
She is the "My Fair Lady" of the nursery rhyme. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:34 | |
A nursery rhyme which reveals Londoners' deep anxiety | 0:24:34 | 0:24:37 | |
about the future of their all-important bridge. | 0:24:37 | 0:24:40 | |
If it wasn't properly maintained on a regular basis, | 0:24:40 | 0:24:43 | |
it would indeed collapse. | 0:24:43 | 0:24:45 | |
After the disaster, there was a small revolution. | 0:24:48 | 0:24:50 | |
The City of London took back the revenues of the bridge | 0:24:50 | 0:24:54 | |
from the Crown and gave them permanently to the people. | 0:24:54 | 0:24:57 | |
Indeed, to the successors of Peter of Colechurch's community, | 0:24:57 | 0:25:01 | |
now called the Bridge House Estate. | 0:25:01 | 0:25:04 | |
The bridge now symbolised London's new-found civic independence, | 0:25:04 | 0:25:09 | |
but its religious roots were not forgotten. | 0:25:09 | 0:25:12 | |
There were churches at each end | 0:25:12 | 0:25:15 | |
and in the middle was a chapel on two levels. | 0:25:15 | 0:25:17 | |
One at the roadside, for travellers, | 0:25:17 | 0:25:19 | |
and one at the water's edge, for boatmen. | 0:25:19 | 0:25:22 | |
Spiritual tolls were paid then, and now. | 0:25:22 | 0:25:26 | |
Every year, on the feast of the baptism of Christ, | 0:25:26 | 0:25:29 | |
which is in January, | 0:25:29 | 0:25:30 | |
we process from this church to the middle of London Bridge | 0:25:30 | 0:25:33 | |
and there we meet some of our friends from Southwark Cathedral, | 0:25:33 | 0:25:36 | |
coming the other way. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:38 | |
We have a short service in the middle of the bridge | 0:25:38 | 0:25:41 | |
and we pray for people who work on the river, | 0:25:41 | 0:25:44 | |
who take their recreation on the river, | 0:25:44 | 0:25:46 | |
for people who've drowned in the river, indeed. | 0:25:46 | 0:25:48 | |
And then we throw a wooden cross into the river itself | 0:25:48 | 0:25:52 | |
as a sign of God's blessing. | 0:25:52 | 0:25:55 | |
These youngsters too are a direct link to that mediaeval world, | 0:25:58 | 0:26:02 | |
because the organisation which built and preserved Old London Bridge still exists. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:07 | |
It has an income of £700 million a year | 0:26:07 | 0:26:11 | |
derived from centuries of investment. | 0:26:11 | 0:26:13 | |
It's still responsible | 0:26:13 | 0:26:15 | |
for all the bridges within the bounds of the city, | 0:26:15 | 0:26:18 | |
but they have an annual surplus of up to £20 million, | 0:26:18 | 0:26:22 | |
which goes to London charities. | 0:26:22 | 0:26:24 | |
Like this dance group, | 0:26:24 | 0:26:26 | |
founded directly from the tolls and charity left by mediaeval Londoners | 0:26:26 | 0:26:29 | |
all those centuries ago. | 0:26:29 | 0:26:33 | |
Old London Bridge stood about 15 metres over there. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:39 | |
With its tall buildings, its houses and shops, | 0:26:39 | 0:26:42 | |
it was, in a sense, a city within the city. | 0:26:42 | 0:26:46 | |
In that space, people, Londoners, lived and died, | 0:26:46 | 0:26:50 | |
toiled and took their pleasures for nearly 600 years. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:57 | |
I live nearby and often come here | 0:26:57 | 0:26:59 | |
to look, to imagine this spectral bridge, | 0:26:59 | 0:27:03 | |
to listen, to see if I can pick up the sounds | 0:27:03 | 0:27:07 | |
echoing through the centuries | 0:27:07 | 0:27:09 | |
of the pilgrims, the merchants, the travellers, the soldiers | 0:27:09 | 0:27:14 | |
crossing one way and the other. | 0:27:14 | 0:27:16 | |
It may seem fanciful, | 0:27:16 | 0:27:18 | |
but who knows? Perhaps... Perhaps... | 0:27:18 | 0:27:22 | |
For 600 years, London Bridge dominated the city | 0:27:24 | 0:27:28 | |
and the massive iconic structure redefined the very river it spanned. | 0:27:28 | 0:27:33 | |
Its huge piers and starlings | 0:27:33 | 0:27:35 | |
interfered with the flow of the Thames itself. | 0:27:35 | 0:27:38 | |
The blockage caused by the bridge slowed the current. | 0:27:38 | 0:27:41 | |
As a result, the river regularly froze over. | 0:27:41 | 0:27:44 | |
Londoners took to the ice with gusto | 0:27:44 | 0:27:48 | |
and what were called "frost fairs," | 0:27:48 | 0:27:50 | |
with games and processions, stalls and even bull-baiting, | 0:27:50 | 0:27:53 | |
became a London institution. | 0:27:53 | 0:27:56 | |
By holding back the water, | 0:27:56 | 0:27:59 | |
the piers of the bridge also functioned as a giant weir. | 0:27:59 | 0:28:02 | |
In even the earliest manuscript, | 0:28:02 | 0:28:04 | |
we can clearly see the rapids pouring through the arches. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:07 | |
Passing through it was known as "shooting the bridge," | 0:28:07 | 0:28:11 | |
and boats were often overturned. | 0:28:11 | 0:28:14 | |
Framed by the arches of London Bridge, | 0:28:14 | 0:28:16 | |
the Thames became a theatre for the royal pageantry. | 0:28:16 | 0:28:21 | |
The more unpopular wives of Henry VIII | 0:28:21 | 0:28:23 | |
shot the bridge as a rite of passage, | 0:28:23 | 0:28:26 | |
rather than being given more conventional coronations. | 0:28:26 | 0:28:29 | |
And later on, royalty travelled on the Thames | 0:28:29 | 0:28:32 | |
in wonderful barges such as this. | 0:28:32 | 0:28:35 | |
This splendid thing was made in the 1730s for Frederick, Prince of Wales. | 0:28:35 | 0:28:41 | |
And, of course, ordinary Londoners enjoyed the Thames as well. | 0:28:41 | 0:28:44 | |
There were frost fairs, firework displays, | 0:28:44 | 0:28:47 | |
and the Lord Mayor's Show was originally held on the water. | 0:28:47 | 0:28:52 | |
Like Venice, London was a world of the water. | 0:28:55 | 0:28:58 | |
The whole city faced the foreshore. | 0:28:58 | 0:29:00 | |
Here in Greenwich, downstream from the City of London, | 0:29:00 | 0:29:04 | |
you can still catch a sense of how the river and city once merged. | 0:29:04 | 0:29:08 | |
Here stood one of the great Tudor palaces, right on the water. | 0:29:08 | 0:29:14 | |
Rebuilt by the Stuarts from 1610 onwards, | 0:29:14 | 0:29:18 | |
Greenwich never lost its river focus. | 0:29:18 | 0:29:20 | |
It's a relic of the world of the Royal river, | 0:29:20 | 0:29:23 | |
a world which, it seemed, would last forever. | 0:29:23 | 0:29:25 | |
But London's growth changed all that. | 0:29:25 | 0:29:27 | |
As the Industrial Revolution swept onwards, | 0:29:27 | 0:29:30 | |
London planned more bridges. | 0:29:30 | 0:29:32 | |
Bridges made possible by new technology. | 0:29:32 | 0:29:36 | |
This volume contains visionary proposals for Thames-side London. | 0:29:36 | 0:29:41 | |
They were drawn up in 1800 for the City Corporation | 0:29:41 | 0:29:45 | |
which, at that time, wanted to reorganise the port of London. | 0:29:45 | 0:29:50 | |
That involved rebuilding London Bridge and moving it significantly to the west. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:54 | |
This shows a rebuilt London Bridge. | 0:29:54 | 0:29:58 | |
This is the central arch. Cast iron, much higher, | 0:29:58 | 0:30:02 | |
so greater clearage for, indeed, high-masted ships shown going through. | 0:30:02 | 0:30:06 | |
This is an amazing image. | 0:30:06 | 0:30:07 | |
Incredible, of course, this did not happen. | 0:30:07 | 0:30:13 | |
But things weren't done, things didn't happened, all has changed. | 0:30:13 | 0:30:17 | |
Change, to a large degree, brought about by engines such as this. | 0:30:17 | 0:30:24 | |
This is a drawing of a pile driver, | 0:30:24 | 0:30:27 | |
designed in the late 1730s | 0:30:27 | 0:30:30 | |
for the construction of the foundations | 0:30:30 | 0:30:33 | |
of Westminster Bridge. | 0:30:33 | 0:30:35 | |
This is an early product of the Industrial Revolution, I suppose. | 0:30:35 | 0:30:38 | |
Here you see horses, | 0:30:38 | 0:30:41 | |
it says "horse-powered," | 0:30:41 | 0:30:42 | |
going round a sort of capstan, | 0:30:42 | 0:30:44 | |
with a gear devised to increase the power of the horses. | 0:30:44 | 0:30:48 | |
The ropes would rise this great hammer up here, | 0:30:48 | 0:30:52 | |
there it is, this hammer's brought up to the top here. | 0:30:52 | 0:30:54 | |
Then it would be released, | 0:30:54 | 0:30:56 | |
and rushed down - pow - | 0:30:56 | 0:30:58 | |
and drive the timber pile into the river bed. | 0:30:58 | 0:31:03 | |
So a very important movement in bridge construction. | 0:31:03 | 0:31:06 | |
The Industrial Revolution, of course, transformed London, | 0:31:06 | 0:31:09 | |
it transformed the world. | 0:31:09 | 0:31:10 | |
And very particularly for London, | 0:31:10 | 0:31:13 | |
it fuelled an explosion of bridge construction. | 0:31:13 | 0:31:16 | |
For more than 500 years, | 0:31:16 | 0:31:19 | |
London Bridge stood alone as the crossing of the Thames. | 0:31:19 | 0:31:22 | |
It defined the original city, the commercial giant. | 0:31:22 | 0:31:26 | |
But two miles upstream | 0:31:28 | 0:31:30 | |
was another big urban centre, Westminster. | 0:31:30 | 0:31:34 | |
From 1300 onwards, this area had been the seat | 0:31:34 | 0:31:37 | |
both of political power and social prestige in England, | 0:31:37 | 0:31:41 | |
but it had no bridge. | 0:31:41 | 0:31:43 | |
That's because the City of London | 0:31:43 | 0:31:45 | |
had fought to preserve Old London Bridge's lucrative monopoly. | 0:31:45 | 0:31:50 | |
So when plans for another crossing at Westminster | 0:31:50 | 0:31:52 | |
were mooted in the 1660s, there was uproar. | 0:31:52 | 0:31:56 | |
It wasn't just the city fathers who objected, | 0:31:56 | 0:31:59 | |
they were joined by thousands of watermen, | 0:31:59 | 0:32:01 | |
such as boatmen and ferrymen, | 0:32:01 | 0:32:02 | |
who believed their livelihoods would be threatened | 0:32:02 | 0:32:05 | |
if a second bridge was built. | 0:32:05 | 0:32:07 | |
Must remember that then, unlike now, | 0:32:07 | 0:32:09 | |
the Thames was London's main highway, | 0:32:09 | 0:32:11 | |
packed with crafts of all types, | 0:32:11 | 0:32:14 | |
carrying goods and people up and down and from side to side. | 0:32:14 | 0:32:17 | |
Now, the watermen were a very powerful lobby indeed. | 0:32:20 | 0:32:23 | |
They had their own city livery company and even their own poet, | 0:32:23 | 0:32:27 | |
the "Waterman Poet," John Taylor. | 0:32:27 | 0:32:31 | |
He complained about the competition | 0:32:31 | 0:32:33 | |
after the introduction in Tudor times of the sprung carriage. | 0:32:33 | 0:32:36 | |
"Carroaches, coaches, jades And Flanders mares | 0:32:36 | 0:32:41 | |
"Doe rob us of our shares Our wares, our fares | 0:32:41 | 0:32:46 | |
"Against the ground we stand And knocke our heeles | 0:32:46 | 0:32:49 | |
"Whilst all our profit runs away On wheels." | 0:32:49 | 0:32:54 | |
They couldn't charge more than the set fare, | 0:32:54 | 0:32:56 | |
as taxis do today. | 0:32:56 | 0:32:58 | |
But if you could persuade your passenger | 0:32:58 | 0:33:02 | |
that it was against the tide, | 0:33:02 | 0:33:03 | |
and it was a terrible evening and whatever, | 0:33:03 | 0:33:05 | |
and, "I'll do my best, sir, to get you there on time," | 0:33:05 | 0:33:08 | |
-then, of course, there might be a nice tip at the end of it. -Indeed. | 0:33:08 | 0:33:12 | |
So, OK, the watermen would be involved in many things, | 0:33:12 | 0:33:14 | |
but one, of course, was getting people across the Thames. | 0:33:14 | 0:33:17 | |
So in a sense, bridges were the enemy of watermen. | 0:33:17 | 0:33:20 | |
They took away the trade. | 0:33:20 | 0:33:21 | |
-Absolutely, yes. -And they objected to them. | 0:33:21 | 0:33:25 | |
They objected to every bridge | 0:33:25 | 0:33:26 | |
and were compensated very often for, | 0:33:26 | 0:33:29 | |
or at least the company was compensated very often, | 0:33:29 | 0:33:32 | |
for a bridge being built, taking trade away. | 0:33:32 | 0:33:35 | |
Would you object to another bridge being built, | 0:33:35 | 0:33:37 | |
did the Waterman's Company object to the Millennium Bridge? | 0:33:37 | 0:33:40 | |
-Oh, absolutely, yeah. -You did? -Oh, yes. -Excellent! | 0:33:40 | 0:33:42 | |
We thought that was hilarious. We call it "the wobbly bridge". | 0:33:42 | 0:33:45 | |
The wobbly bridge, yes. Vindicated! Wobbly... | 0:33:45 | 0:33:48 | |
But, no, seriously, you would object, did object to that bridge. | 0:33:48 | 0:33:52 | |
Yes, much more venomously in the past, | 0:33:52 | 0:33:55 | |
but we still say, you know, you don't need another bridge there. | 0:33:55 | 0:33:58 | |
THEY CHUCKLE | 0:33:58 | 0:33:59 | |
It was only in 1736, after centuries of argument, | 0:34:03 | 0:34:06 | |
that Parliament agreed to a bridge at Westminster. | 0:34:06 | 0:34:09 | |
Under the act, the watermen got £25,000 compensation, | 0:34:09 | 0:34:15 | |
the equivalent today of more than £2 million. | 0:34:15 | 0:34:18 | |
When Westminster Bridge officially opened in 1750, | 0:34:21 | 0:34:24 | |
London was transformed once again. | 0:34:24 | 0:34:27 | |
The Thames had been a kind of moat protecting the city. | 0:34:27 | 0:34:30 | |
Now, all that changed. | 0:34:30 | 0:34:33 | |
The commercial and political powers north of the river, | 0:34:33 | 0:34:36 | |
once represented mainly by the church, | 0:34:36 | 0:34:39 | |
now took charge across the river. | 0:34:39 | 0:34:42 | |
And so started the dramatic transformation | 0:34:42 | 0:34:45 | |
of the south bank of the Thames. | 0:34:45 | 0:34:47 | |
Traditionally, the south bank had been a place | 0:34:47 | 0:34:50 | |
independent of the city on the north bank, | 0:34:50 | 0:34:53 | |
a place free of the city's controls and statutes. | 0:34:53 | 0:34:56 | |
It was, I suppose, a land of liberty and libertines. | 0:34:56 | 0:35:00 | |
There were theatres, bear-baiting pits, brothels, | 0:35:00 | 0:35:04 | |
market gardens and pleasure grounds. | 0:35:04 | 0:35:07 | |
But now, it became something quite different. | 0:35:07 | 0:35:11 | |
It became, in a way, a province of the north bank of the Thames, | 0:35:11 | 0:35:15 | |
largely because, perhaps ironically, | 0:35:15 | 0:35:17 | |
one of the major landowners and developers | 0:35:17 | 0:35:20 | |
of the south side of the Thames was the City Corporation. | 0:35:20 | 0:35:23 | |
The City and the Bridge House Estate owned land across the river | 0:35:28 | 0:35:32 | |
which jumped in value once Westminster and then Blackfriars Bridge were built. | 0:35:32 | 0:35:38 | |
And the obelisk they erected here, | 0:35:38 | 0:35:40 | |
planned to be the focus of a grand new urban district, | 0:35:40 | 0:35:44 | |
marks the centre of their holdings. | 0:35:44 | 0:35:46 | |
As a result of the new bridges, | 0:35:46 | 0:35:48 | |
London north and south of the river had become one great city. | 0:35:48 | 0:35:53 | |
The new crossings were a distinctive part of | 0:35:54 | 0:35:57 | |
what was to be the zenith of Georgian London. | 0:35:57 | 0:36:00 | |
But like the Roman and mediaeval bridges before them, | 0:36:00 | 0:36:03 | |
they too are now ghosts, swept away by development. | 0:36:03 | 0:36:06 | |
Flying 14 miles upstream, however, we can experience their effect. | 0:36:09 | 0:36:15 | |
Richmond bridge, a classic 18th-century masonry arched structure, | 0:36:15 | 0:36:19 | |
is the only one of London's Georgian bridges to survive. | 0:36:19 | 0:36:23 | |
And it sits in a green riverside landscape, | 0:36:23 | 0:36:26 | |
a middle-class suburb surrounded by aristocratic houses and parks. | 0:36:26 | 0:36:31 | |
It allows us a glimpse of what Westminster might have been like | 0:36:31 | 0:36:35 | |
when the bridge was new | 0:36:35 | 0:36:37 | |
and the idea of London as a river city was at its height. | 0:36:37 | 0:36:42 | |
Early one morning, in September 1802, | 0:36:42 | 0:36:45 | |
William Wordsworth passed across Westminster Bridge | 0:36:45 | 0:36:49 | |
on the top of a coach. | 0:36:49 | 0:36:51 | |
He was inspired by what he saw, it was a vision. He wrote a poem. | 0:36:51 | 0:36:56 | |
And the poem, in a most charming way, is here, | 0:36:56 | 0:36:59 | |
in this bronze plate upon Westminster Bridge. | 0:36:59 | 0:37:03 | |
"Earth has not anything To show more fair | 0:37:09 | 0:37:13 | |
"Dull would he be of soul Who could pass by | 0:37:13 | 0:37:17 | |
"A sight so touching in its majesty | 0:37:17 | 0:37:20 | |
"This city now doth Like a garment wear | 0:37:20 | 0:37:23 | |
"The beauty of the morning... | 0:37:23 | 0:37:24 | |
"Ships, towers, domes Theatres, and temples lie | 0:37:24 | 0:37:28 | |
"Open unto the fields And to the sky." | 0:37:28 | 0:37:32 | |
Standing here, I can see the city as Wordsworth saw it. | 0:37:35 | 0:37:39 | |
It haunts my imagination, Georgian London, | 0:37:39 | 0:37:42 | |
one of the greatest urban creations ever achieved by mankind, I argue. | 0:37:42 | 0:37:47 | |
And to think that, from here, | 0:37:47 | 0:37:50 | |
that great city unfolded itself to Wordsworth | 0:37:50 | 0:37:54 | |
in a way he could not resist. | 0:37:54 | 0:37:56 | |
Wordsworth's poem was actually a swansong for Georgian London. | 0:38:00 | 0:38:05 | |
Between 1750 and 1850, nine bridges were thrown across the Thames. | 0:38:05 | 0:38:09 | |
But despite this, the city began to turn its back on the water, | 0:38:09 | 0:38:14 | |
as a population of more than two and a half million | 0:38:14 | 0:38:17 | |
pushed further and further away from the river banks. | 0:38:17 | 0:38:21 | |
London was fast becoming an industrial megacity. | 0:38:21 | 0:38:27 | |
It needed rapid transit and bridge builders like John Rennie. | 0:38:27 | 0:38:30 | |
Rennie built three great bridges - | 0:38:33 | 0:38:35 | |
Southwark Bridge, Waterloo Bridge and a new London Bridge. | 0:38:35 | 0:38:39 | |
But sadly, none of them survive. | 0:38:39 | 0:38:42 | |
So, like Old London Bridge, | 0:38:42 | 0:38:44 | |
you have to search for Rennie's bridge. | 0:38:44 | 0:38:48 | |
This is part of the southern approach to Rennie's London Bridge. | 0:38:48 | 0:38:52 | |
It's a fragment that offers a glimpse of the character, | 0:38:52 | 0:38:57 | |
of the power, of the whole, | 0:38:57 | 0:38:58 | |
a reminder of the architectural and engineering wonder that we've lost. | 0:38:58 | 0:39:03 | |
I love the bold classical cornice | 0:39:03 | 0:39:06 | |
and the tremendously strong granite walling. | 0:39:06 | 0:39:09 | |
It all has a Roman solidity and grandeur. | 0:39:09 | 0:39:15 | |
Rennie's new London Bridge was his final work. | 0:39:15 | 0:39:19 | |
It was built alongside the mediaeval bridge. | 0:39:19 | 0:39:23 | |
New roads had to be built, much demolition was carried out | 0:39:23 | 0:39:26 | |
and the historic street plan of London was changed. | 0:39:26 | 0:39:31 | |
And although, to my mind, it never rivalled the mediaeval bridge, | 0:39:31 | 0:39:34 | |
it too became a signature of the city. | 0:39:34 | 0:39:37 | |
Famous enough to be dismantled and sold to rich Americans in the 1960s. | 0:39:37 | 0:39:42 | |
The whole structure was rebuilt stone by stone | 0:39:42 | 0:39:46 | |
to grace a housing development in the Arizona desert. | 0:39:46 | 0:39:51 | |
# I must be going No longer staying | 0:39:51 | 0:39:58 | |
# The burning Thames I have to cross... # | 0:39:58 | 0:40:05 | |
The new bridges reduced Londoners' reliance on the river even more. | 0:40:05 | 0:40:09 | |
Once, it was common to row on the river at night, like this. | 0:40:09 | 0:40:13 | |
Not anymore. | 0:40:13 | 0:40:15 | |
Success came with a price. | 0:40:15 | 0:40:18 | |
The 1840s and '50s were grim years in London's history. | 0:40:18 | 0:40:23 | |
The population of the city had swollen, | 0:40:23 | 0:40:25 | |
London's infrastructure couldn't cope | 0:40:25 | 0:40:28 | |
with the megacity London had become. | 0:40:28 | 0:40:31 | |
The river was filthy, polluted with sewage and industrial waste. | 0:40:31 | 0:40:36 | |
It was poisoning Londoners, | 0:40:36 | 0:40:38 | |
it was killing them in their tens of thousands. | 0:40:38 | 0:40:40 | |
Waterborne diseases like cholera were rife. | 0:40:40 | 0:40:43 | |
The city was poisoning the wells of London and killing its population. | 0:40:43 | 0:40:49 | |
The bridges shared in the sickness. | 0:40:51 | 0:40:53 | |
Waterloo Bridge became notorious for suicides, | 0:40:53 | 0:40:57 | |
particularly for despairing women jumping from its parapets. | 0:40:57 | 0:41:01 | |
And statistics confirm its reputation. | 0:41:01 | 0:41:05 | |
In the 1840s, about 15% of London's suicides | 0:41:05 | 0:41:09 | |
jumped from Waterloo Bridge. | 0:41:09 | 0:41:11 | |
This aspect of London's bridges and the Thames | 0:41:11 | 0:41:16 | |
as theatres of death is etched into our literature. | 0:41:16 | 0:41:20 | |
Charles Dickens, in Our Mutual Friend, | 0:41:20 | 0:41:23 | |
essentially a novel about the river and river life, | 0:41:23 | 0:41:27 | |
starts the story with these characters | 0:41:27 | 0:41:30 | |
fishing in the Thames for corpses. | 0:41:30 | 0:41:34 | |
A valuable commodity. | 0:41:34 | 0:41:36 | |
# When shall I see you again? | 0:41:36 | 0:41:40 | |
# When the fishes fly, love... # | 0:41:40 | 0:41:43 | |
London had now become the largest, richest | 0:41:43 | 0:41:45 | |
and most powerful city in the world. | 0:41:45 | 0:41:47 | |
And yet, it was awash with disease and poverty. | 0:41:47 | 0:41:50 | |
# ..In the heat of the sun. # | 0:41:50 | 0:41:54 | |
The solution was a brutal taming of the Thames itself. | 0:41:57 | 0:42:00 | |
An embankment, which contained not just a giant new sewer, | 0:42:00 | 0:42:03 | |
but a railway line as well. | 0:42:03 | 0:42:06 | |
It was the work of one London's great engineers - Joseph Bazalgette. | 0:42:06 | 0:42:11 | |
I'm standing on the Victoria embankment. | 0:42:11 | 0:42:15 | |
In front of me and above me is the Hungerford Bridge. | 0:42:15 | 0:42:18 | |
Below me is Bazalgette's mighty sewer, | 0:42:18 | 0:42:22 | |
the underground railway, a gas mains and a telegraph cable. | 0:42:22 | 0:42:27 | |
This was, and remains, spectacular engineering. | 0:42:27 | 0:42:31 | |
When completed, London would never be the same again. | 0:42:31 | 0:42:36 | |
This was the death knell of the riverside, | 0:42:38 | 0:42:41 | |
almost Venetian-looking London. | 0:42:41 | 0:42:43 | |
Grand buildings like Somerset House once had spectacular water gates | 0:42:43 | 0:42:47 | |
where, at high tide, people and goods could arrive by boat. | 0:42:47 | 0:42:51 | |
But Bazalgette built a vast wall to separate the river from the city. | 0:42:51 | 0:42:55 | |
Inside it, 22 acres of land were reclaimed, | 0:42:55 | 0:42:59 | |
pushing the river back in places by more than 100 metres. | 0:42:59 | 0:43:03 | |
This 17th-century water gate | 0:43:03 | 0:43:07 | |
is the last surviving relic of the old waterfront | 0:43:07 | 0:43:11 | |
and it's now marooned on the edge of Embankment Gardens. | 0:43:11 | 0:43:14 | |
You can clearly see it in this painting, | 0:43:14 | 0:43:16 | |
which shows just how splendid the Georgian waterfront must have been. | 0:43:16 | 0:43:21 | |
Safer transport and cleaner water came with a cost. | 0:43:21 | 0:43:25 | |
The legacy has been really rather appalling. | 0:43:25 | 0:43:28 | |
It's cut off the river from the life of London. | 0:43:28 | 0:43:31 | |
And the great riverside boulevard that may have looked wonderful | 0:43:31 | 0:43:34 | |
just full of horse-drawn traffic and pedestrians | 0:43:34 | 0:43:37 | |
is now a noisy and polluted urban motorway. | 0:43:37 | 0:43:41 | |
And the buildings that once rose from the river, | 0:43:41 | 0:43:44 | |
like some of the towers behind me, rose like places in Venice, | 0:43:44 | 0:43:50 | |
now rise in swathes of traffic. | 0:43:50 | 0:43:53 | |
So really, the embankment had a terrible effect on the city. | 0:43:53 | 0:43:58 | |
It's one of the reason's why Londoners, in a way, | 0:43:58 | 0:44:00 | |
have forgotten the wonders and beauty of the river. | 0:44:00 | 0:44:05 | |
Nonetheless, Victorian modernity still had its triumphs. | 0:44:09 | 0:44:13 | |
Hammersmith Bridge, in the western suburbs, is one of them. | 0:44:13 | 0:44:16 | |
It is one of three built by the same Joseph Bazalgette. | 0:44:16 | 0:44:20 | |
Unsurprisingly, construction at Hammersmith employed the latest technology. | 0:44:20 | 0:44:25 | |
It's a suspension bridge, | 0:44:25 | 0:44:27 | |
with the roadway supported from above rather than below, | 0:44:27 | 0:44:31 | |
unlike traditional arch bridges. | 0:44:31 | 0:44:33 | |
The road hangs from wrought-iron cables | 0:44:33 | 0:44:36 | |
strung over cast-iron towers, | 0:44:36 | 0:44:38 | |
with each end anchored firmly in the ground. | 0:44:38 | 0:44:43 | |
It's wonderful looking at the bridge, | 0:44:43 | 0:44:45 | |
it's a real window into mid-Victorian London. | 0:44:45 | 0:44:47 | |
The engineering, of course, the epitome of Victorian engineering. | 0:44:47 | 0:44:51 | |
A combination of beauty and of incredible strength. | 0:44:51 | 0:44:55 | |
Cast iron, very strong, as I say, | 0:44:55 | 0:44:57 | |
in compression, pushing down, very strong. | 0:44:57 | 0:45:00 | |
That's perfect for the suspension towers, | 0:45:00 | 0:45:03 | |
but the chains, of course, they have to be a bit more elastic, | 0:45:03 | 0:45:07 | |
so they have a tensile strength, | 0:45:07 | 0:45:10 | |
and hence wrought iron is used, so wonderful again. | 0:45:10 | 0:45:12 | |
It doesn't seem much now to the casual observer, | 0:45:12 | 0:45:14 | |
but a lot of engineering technology going on here. | 0:45:14 | 0:45:17 | |
Functional, strong, also beautiful. | 0:45:17 | 0:45:20 | |
And in cast iron, of course, you can cast lovely detail. | 0:45:20 | 0:45:24 | |
Hence the suspension towers have this classical detail at the top. | 0:45:24 | 0:45:27 | |
The cornices, and various acanthus leaves, rather wonderful mouldings. | 0:45:27 | 0:45:31 | |
So every time you look at this bridge, you can read more into it | 0:45:31 | 0:45:34 | |
and understand more about the wonder of the engineering | 0:45:34 | 0:45:37 | |
in Victorian London. | 0:45:37 | 0:45:39 | |
It's a complete Victorian piece. | 0:45:39 | 0:45:42 | |
One of London's best bridges, I love it. | 0:45:42 | 0:45:45 | |
Bazalgette's triumph at Hammersmith was commissioned | 0:45:47 | 0:45:49 | |
by the newly-created Metropolitan Board Of Works. | 0:45:49 | 0:45:53 | |
The Board was the first overall government | 0:45:53 | 0:45:56 | |
for the new Victorian megacity. | 0:45:56 | 0:45:58 | |
In 1869, it had taken over all the private bridges across the Thames | 0:45:58 | 0:46:03 | |
and abolished all the remaining tolls. | 0:46:03 | 0:46:05 | |
And it was determined to proclaim its authority. | 0:46:07 | 0:46:10 | |
I love the ornament on this bridge, the iconography. It's so revealing. | 0:46:12 | 0:46:17 | |
Look, for example, | 0:46:17 | 0:46:19 | |
at this wonderful piece of heraldry, I suppose, behind me. | 0:46:19 | 0:46:22 | |
In the middle is a royal coat of arms. | 0:46:22 | 0:46:25 | |
To the left, the arms of the City of London. | 0:46:25 | 0:46:27 | |
And to the right, the arms of the City of Westminster. | 0:46:27 | 0:46:30 | |
But also, the arms of Kent, of Surrey, of Middlesex and of Essex. | 0:46:30 | 0:46:36 | |
This bridge really defines London as it was in the late 19th century. | 0:46:36 | 0:46:40 | |
It also reveals the power of bridge building. | 0:46:40 | 0:46:44 | |
London was no longer simply a city, | 0:46:44 | 0:46:47 | |
it was a city state. | 0:46:47 | 0:46:48 | |
By the 1890s, Bazalgette and the Board Of Works had shaped the city, | 0:46:51 | 0:46:55 | |
preparing it for the 20th century | 0:46:55 | 0:46:58 | |
and, with it, the climax of the British Empire. | 0:46:58 | 0:47:02 | |
The city of more than five million people | 0:47:02 | 0:47:04 | |
stretched down both banks of the Thames. | 0:47:04 | 0:47:07 | |
But for more than half that distance, | 0:47:07 | 0:47:09 | |
from London Bridge to the sea, there were still no bridges. | 0:47:09 | 0:47:13 | |
Just dangerous and expensive tunnels. | 0:47:13 | 0:47:16 | |
They were dug because despite all the changes, | 0:47:16 | 0:47:19 | |
London was still a port. | 0:47:19 | 0:47:21 | |
Indeed, it was the greatest port city in the world. | 0:47:21 | 0:47:24 | |
And a bridge would prevent big ships from coming upstream. | 0:47:24 | 0:47:29 | |
The docks downstream - West India Dock, St Katharine's Dock - | 0:47:29 | 0:47:33 | |
had been constructed in the early 19th century. | 0:47:33 | 0:47:35 | |
But in the late 19th century, | 0:47:35 | 0:47:37 | |
London's traditional port, the Pool Of London over there, | 0:47:37 | 0:47:41 | |
still functioned, with ships moored several feet deep into the Thames, | 0:47:41 | 0:47:45 | |
some almost as large as HMS Belfast over there. | 0:47:45 | 0:47:49 | |
So any crossing of the Thames downstream from here | 0:47:49 | 0:47:52 | |
had to allow the largest of ships still to reach the Pool. | 0:47:52 | 0:47:57 | |
Everybody had their own idea of how to solve the problem. | 0:48:00 | 0:48:03 | |
Two architects contributed different swing bridge plans. | 0:48:03 | 0:48:07 | |
Another contemplated a tunnel under the Thames. | 0:48:07 | 0:48:10 | |
Yet another hoped to build a transporter bridge | 0:48:10 | 0:48:13 | |
which lifted people and traffic high enough to let the ships through. | 0:48:13 | 0:48:16 | |
But the winning plan returned to a feature | 0:48:16 | 0:48:20 | |
of the legendary mediaeval crossing, a drawbridge. | 0:48:20 | 0:48:24 | |
The completed Tower Bridge deployed a vast hydraulic system | 0:48:24 | 0:48:30 | |
powered by steam engines to pivot the entire roadway | 0:48:30 | 0:48:34 | |
to let ships sail through. | 0:48:34 | 0:48:36 | |
In the bowels of the structure, the scale of it all becomes clear. | 0:48:36 | 0:48:39 | |
This vast cavernous space is a bascule chamber | 0:48:39 | 0:48:44 | |
below the south tower. | 0:48:44 | 0:48:46 | |
Water level is roughly here, | 0:48:46 | 0:48:48 | |
and above me is the underside of the roadway. | 0:48:48 | 0:48:52 | |
You can hear the traffic echoing. Quite uncanny. | 0:48:52 | 0:48:57 | |
Everything that's painted white moves, | 0:48:57 | 0:49:00 | |
so when the Tower Bridge roadway goes up, | 0:49:00 | 0:49:05 | |
the white elements here, that's the counter weight, | 0:49:05 | 0:49:08 | |
come down to occupy this space. | 0:49:08 | 0:49:11 | |
Must be very scary to see that. Amazing. | 0:49:11 | 0:49:17 | |
Of course, this a bridge like no other in London - it's a moving bridge, | 0:49:17 | 0:49:20 | |
a living bridge, in a sense, | 0:49:20 | 0:49:22 | |
with a crew, people in control rooms, machinery operating it. | 0:49:22 | 0:49:26 | |
Living, vibrating, almost speaking, I can hear it! | 0:49:26 | 0:49:31 | |
But all this engineering expertise was invisible | 0:49:35 | 0:49:38 | |
in the completed bridge. | 0:49:38 | 0:49:40 | |
Instead, the architecture was deliberately designed | 0:49:40 | 0:49:43 | |
to merge with the Tower Of London next door. | 0:49:43 | 0:49:46 | |
This is one of the most astonishing things about Tower Bridge. | 0:49:46 | 0:49:51 | |
It's not a Gothic structure built out of stone, | 0:49:51 | 0:49:55 | |
but it's a steel-frame structure, a modern building. | 0:49:55 | 0:50:00 | |
And through this window, you can see exactly what I mean. | 0:50:00 | 0:50:03 | |
I'm looking at the companion tower to this one. | 0:50:03 | 0:50:05 | |
Outside, all this wonderful Tudor, Gothic finials, | 0:50:05 | 0:50:09 | |
lovely ornamental details, | 0:50:09 | 0:50:11 | |
all designed to fit in with the ancient Tower Of London. | 0:50:11 | 0:50:14 | |
All history. And, in here, all is modern, steel, | 0:50:14 | 0:50:18 | |
a functional building. | 0:50:18 | 0:50:20 | |
Very strong. Very, very sort of... | 0:50:20 | 0:50:23 | |
I'd say almost brutally honest in its construction. Inside. | 0:50:23 | 0:50:28 | |
Outside, all is ornament, history, beauty, pedigree... | 0:50:28 | 0:50:33 | |
evocation of dreams and a past. | 0:50:33 | 0:50:36 | |
Hiding the brute functional realities behind a Gothic facade | 0:50:42 | 0:50:45 | |
may have been a triumph of late Victorian genteel propriety. | 0:50:45 | 0:50:51 | |
But the effect was to create a sense of immemorial age, | 0:50:51 | 0:50:53 | |
that it had always been there. | 0:50:53 | 0:50:56 | |
Old London Bridge, with its houses and shops, | 0:51:00 | 0:51:03 | |
had been a unique icon of London. | 0:51:03 | 0:51:05 | |
Now, the city had found its successor - Tower Bridge. | 0:51:05 | 0:51:11 | |
The Imperial city's gateway to the massive docks downstream | 0:51:11 | 0:51:14 | |
and its vast empire beyond. | 0:51:14 | 0:51:17 | |
After 150 years of frantic bridge building, | 0:51:19 | 0:51:22 | |
London had reinvented itself. | 0:51:22 | 0:51:24 | |
After so much of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, | 0:51:24 | 0:51:27 | |
London's bridges were sort of steeped in nostalgia, instantly historic. | 0:51:27 | 0:51:34 | |
Look at Tower Bridge, utterly amazing. | 0:51:34 | 0:51:37 | |
Now, there was to be a century of quiet on London's river, | 0:51:37 | 0:51:41 | |
apart from two bridges built far upstream. | 0:51:41 | 0:51:44 | |
A quiet that seemed timeless, as TS Eliot observed, | 0:51:44 | 0:51:48 | |
as he, like me, slipped quietly downstream in The Waste Land. | 0:51:48 | 0:51:56 | |
"The river sweats Oil and tar | 0:51:59 | 0:52:03 | |
"The barges drift With the turning tide | 0:52:03 | 0:52:06 | |
"Red sails Wide | 0:52:06 | 0:52:08 | |
"To leeward, swing on the heavy spar | 0:52:08 | 0:52:11 | |
"The barges wash Drifting logs | 0:52:11 | 0:52:14 | |
"Down Greenwich reach Past the Isle of Dogs." | 0:52:14 | 0:52:19 | |
By the end of the 20th century, the vast sprawl of Greater London | 0:52:19 | 0:52:23 | |
meant travellers now had to be able to go round it as well as through it. | 0:52:23 | 0:52:26 | |
By the time the bridge at Dartford was completed in 1991, | 0:52:26 | 0:52:32 | |
carrying the orbital motorway across the Thames, | 0:52:32 | 0:52:35 | |
engineering had moved into a new league. | 0:52:35 | 0:52:38 | |
Between the towers, it's three times as long as Old London Bridge | 0:52:38 | 0:52:42 | |
and runs 57 metres above the water. | 0:52:42 | 0:52:46 | |
It's among the largest bridges of its kind in the world. | 0:52:46 | 0:52:50 | |
Dartford's a cable-stayed bridge. | 0:52:50 | 0:52:53 | |
This is not the same as a suspension bridge. | 0:52:53 | 0:52:56 | |
Here, the forces, the loads, travel up the cables | 0:52:56 | 0:52:59 | |
and then directly down the towers. | 0:52:59 | 0:53:02 | |
Unlike in a suspension bridge, where they're anchored on each bank, | 0:53:02 | 0:53:07 | |
this is a more stable design. | 0:53:07 | 0:53:09 | |
It allows for the creation of vastly wide and high spans. | 0:53:09 | 0:53:14 | |
This is a bridge that is making a statement. What's it saying? | 0:53:14 | 0:53:17 | |
Well, it's proclaiming that the whole of the Thames estuary belongs to London. | 0:53:17 | 0:53:24 | |
Crossing the Thames far downstream from the historic city, | 0:53:26 | 0:53:30 | |
Dartford Bridge defines London as being larger than ever, | 0:53:30 | 0:53:34 | |
a city state within South-East England. | 0:53:34 | 0:53:38 | |
The claims of the Board Of Works, | 0:53:38 | 0:53:41 | |
as displayed at Hammersmith far upstream, | 0:53:41 | 0:53:43 | |
now seem vindicated. | 0:53:43 | 0:53:46 | |
Here, you really do understand the nature of this bridge, | 0:53:46 | 0:53:49 | |
it does command the estuary. | 0:53:49 | 0:53:51 | |
It is this great gate, the approach to London is here now. | 0:53:51 | 0:53:55 | |
The city over there, the sea over there. | 0:53:55 | 0:53:57 | |
Ships come and go. | 0:53:57 | 0:53:59 | |
My goodness me, I'm just about to see the towers of Canary Wharf. | 0:53:59 | 0:54:03 | |
But however magnificent the bridge is in itself, however modern, | 0:54:05 | 0:54:09 | |
it doesn't erase the echoes of the past | 0:54:09 | 0:54:12 | |
that so intrigued Joseph Conrad. | 0:54:12 | 0:54:14 | |
I'm about 15 miles downstream from the Pool Of London, | 0:54:16 | 0:54:19 | |
where everything started, around 2,000 years ago. | 0:54:19 | 0:54:23 | |
There, of course, things have changed many times, | 0:54:23 | 0:54:26 | |
but here, in places like this, | 0:54:26 | 0:54:29 | |
it feels well, surely, much as it did | 0:54:29 | 0:54:31 | |
when the Roman triremes passed by. | 0:54:31 | 0:54:34 | |
This is a strange location, seemingly lost between worlds, | 0:54:34 | 0:54:41 | |
a very odd place indeed, an ancient frontier. | 0:54:41 | 0:54:44 | |
Yet emerging from the primordial ooze and mud, | 0:54:44 | 0:54:47 | |
and the slime and the reeds, | 0:54:47 | 0:54:49 | |
much as London emerged all those centuries before. | 0:54:49 | 0:54:54 | |
Ah, now, this is why I love the Thames. | 0:54:54 | 0:54:57 | |
It carries memories of all the people | 0:54:57 | 0:55:00 | |
who have travelled on it, who've lived beside it. | 0:55:00 | 0:55:03 | |
Look, here. | 0:55:03 | 0:55:04 | |
Bits of pottery, porcelain, earthenware. | 0:55:04 | 0:55:06 | |
Look at this lovely, delicate handle from a teacup, I suppose. | 0:55:06 | 0:55:12 | |
Beautiful, such an intimate connection | 0:55:12 | 0:55:15 | |
with the person that owned it, loved it, lost it. | 0:55:15 | 0:55:18 | |
That's what's so incredible about this place, | 0:55:18 | 0:55:21 | |
that it's a living connection with the ghosts of the past. | 0:55:21 | 0:55:24 | |
You stand here and one finds and connects and remembers. | 0:55:24 | 0:55:28 | |
By AD 2000, London had lived through | 0:55:34 | 0:55:37 | |
nearly 20 centuries of its own history. | 0:55:37 | 0:55:40 | |
And what better way to celebrate that history than with a bridge? | 0:55:40 | 0:55:43 | |
But not a giant, a jewel. | 0:55:43 | 0:55:45 | |
One designed not for transport, but for human delight, | 0:55:45 | 0:55:48 | |
a pedestrian bridge that opened up | 0:55:48 | 0:55:50 | |
a new way through the city | 0:55:50 | 0:55:53 | |
and, in a nod to its noble forebears, | 0:55:53 | 0:55:55 | |
a spiritual bridge pointing directly to London's cathedral - St Paul's. | 0:55:55 | 0:56:01 | |
Although it suffered teething troubles, | 0:56:01 | 0:56:03 | |
the design, by engineers Ove Arup, architect Norman Foster | 0:56:03 | 0:56:09 | |
and even a sculptor, Anthony Caro, is a work of art. | 0:56:09 | 0:56:14 | |
This bridge has redefined London once again. | 0:56:14 | 0:56:17 | |
By creating a new link across the Thames, | 0:56:17 | 0:56:19 | |
it has brought added life to Southwark, in front of me, | 0:56:19 | 0:56:23 | |
and the city behind me. | 0:56:23 | 0:56:25 | |
It's created a wonderful connection | 0:56:25 | 0:56:27 | |
between Tate Modern up there and St Paul's Cathedral. | 0:56:27 | 0:56:30 | |
Doesn't it look absolutely fantastic? | 0:56:30 | 0:56:33 | |
Also, the bridge has created spectacular new vistas of the city. | 0:56:33 | 0:56:39 | |
From here, I can see an array of bridges to the left and to the right. | 0:56:39 | 0:56:42 | |
Wonderful. Tower Bridge, over there in the distance. | 0:56:42 | 0:56:44 | |
But also, a wonderful object, lovely to walk across, | 0:56:44 | 0:56:48 | |
lovely to explore it, to touch it and to look at it. | 0:56:48 | 0:56:51 | |
It reminds me, in a way, | 0:56:51 | 0:56:53 | |
of other great pedestrian bridges around the world. | 0:56:53 | 0:56:56 | |
The Rialto Bridge in Venice, for example, also exquisite. | 0:56:56 | 0:56:59 | |
It, of course, is lined with shops, | 0:56:59 | 0:57:01 | |
a lovely living thing, the Rialto Bridge. | 0:57:01 | 0:57:04 | |
It puts me in mind of inhabited bridges. | 0:57:04 | 0:57:06 | |
I wonder if London could ever recapture the glory | 0:57:06 | 0:57:09 | |
of Old London Bridge with its houses. | 0:57:09 | 0:57:11 | |
Could there be a new inhabited bridge in London? | 0:57:11 | 0:57:14 | |
Perhaps, perhaps, I hope so. | 0:57:14 | 0:57:16 | |
People have been building bridges in London for 3,000 years and more. | 0:57:21 | 0:57:27 | |
And those extraordinary structures have defined the city. | 0:57:27 | 0:57:31 | |
From the beginning, they were sites of primal spiritual power, | 0:57:31 | 0:57:34 | |
as man attempted to tame and harness the brute forces of nature. | 0:57:34 | 0:57:39 | |
But they've also shaped London's economic and political dominance. | 0:57:39 | 0:57:44 | |
Once a permanent bridge was built, | 0:57:44 | 0:57:45 | |
wealth and power found their way to London | 0:57:45 | 0:57:48 | |
and, with them, the talents of millions of people. | 0:57:48 | 0:57:51 | |
And so, these crossings became not only a vehicle | 0:57:51 | 0:57:53 | |
for royal and political display, | 0:57:53 | 0:57:57 | |
they helped London become, to my mind, | 0:57:57 | 0:57:59 | |
the greatest city in the world. | 0:57:59 | 0:58:03 | |
There will be new bridges, and different Londons, in the future. | 0:58:03 | 0:58:06 | |
Even now, a cable car bridge is being built downstream at the docks. | 0:58:06 | 0:58:11 | |
That, like this bridge, can only be a good thing | 0:58:11 | 0:58:14 | |
to help Londoners regain the pleasures of the Thames. | 0:58:14 | 0:58:19 | |
And only through the Thames and its bridges, | 0:58:19 | 0:58:22 | |
can you grasp the true nature of London | 0:58:22 | 0:58:25 | |
and understand those diverse people - | 0:58:25 | 0:58:29 | |
costermongers and kings, warriors and merchants - | 0:58:29 | 0:58:32 | |
who have made London the fantastic city it is. | 0:58:32 | 0:58:36 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:57 | 0:59:00 |