The Big Smoke

We at ‘Big Smoke’ first set our sights on Old London Bridge (built in 1176AD, the first of three stone bridges on the site) back in 2007. We tracked down two eighteenth-century pedestrian alcoves which had been taken from London’s oldest river crossing and re-erected in the East End’s Victoria Park when the medieval bridge was demolished in 1831. We next found another alcove in Guy’s Hospital, and then the coat of arms from the bridge’s gateway, now hanging outside a pub. Finally, in Kew Gardens, we spotted stones from the second London Bridge, built by John Rennie in 1831 and located 180 feet upriver from the medieval bridge – this is the one famously sold and removed to Arizona in the late 1960s. Surely that was it for the two former London Bridges, we thought…

So imagine our surprise when we recently discovered that there are even more stones from both the previous London Bridges (the current one opened in 1973) – and a fourth pedestrian ‘refuge booth’ to boot – scattered throughout the city.

Outside Wren’s St Magnus the Martyr on Lower Thames Street lie a clutter of half-ton stones taken from the first arch of Old London Bridge. Unearthed in 1920, they’re unmistakably ancient, cut by masons and weathered by the elements. It’s hard to imagine this quiet churchyard as the approach to Old London Bridge – the busiest riverside thoroughfare in the city.
The church boasts a 20ft model of the old bridge, but better yet is a granite stone from the Rennie bridge, salted away here by God’s will as its millions of brethren made the trip to Lake Havasu, Arizona, purchased by American investors while the current bridge was being constructed.

Meanwhile, Peter Scott, who was a draughtsman at the Ministry of Public Building and Works which overlooked London Bridge in the 1960s, now offers first-hand testimony for one of London’s most popular urban myths: that the Americans really intended to buy Tower Bridge. He saw the American delegation walk on to London Bridge, and swears all eyes were on Tower Bridge for the duration.

The City didn’t get all the bridge relics, though. A nose around the gardens of the Courtlands estate, off Sheen Road in Richmond, is repaid with a glimpse of the fourth surviving alcove of the 14 installed on London Bridge in 1762. It’s a survivor from the gardens of a mansion demolished in the 1930s, and stands only a mile from those bridge stones we uncovered two years ago at Kew. How it got there is still a mystery.

With thanks to Peter Matthews. His book ‘London’s Bridges’ is published by Shire at £12.99.