London Bridge

References: Elmer, C. But this peculiar structure in the desert is in fact not the realLondon Bridge at all (if any bridge can in fact lay claim to that title,which seems unlikely), but the New London Bridge, designed in 1831 by theScottish engineer John Rennie -- a bridge that became quickly antiquatedwhen the car forever changed traffic patterns in England 's capital city,prompting the construction of the bridge that is still used. The workers who built Old London Bridge -- while still subject to a number of terrible parasites -- were nonethelessless likely than the Londoners of a century before to die of typhoid orcholera. Such work is the product of blueprintsdesigned to infinitesimal tolerances by computer programs and put intoplace by formally trained engineers and unionized work crews -- all unheardof in the 12th century. Entries on bridges, masonry, and history of London. Perhaps because of itseventual dissolution, today we tend to remember the first lines of thefamous nursery rhyme that tells us that "London Bridge is falling down" andforget the later words of the rhyme that promise that the people of Londonwill "Build it up with stone so strong that it will last for ages long."But perhaps it is indeed better that the stones once gathered fromthroughout the London area for the bridge have returned to where they came,allowing so many people the chance to own a little of the city 's patrimony. Although still open to the air (andso hardly meeting modern codes for the disposal of sewage) these were asignificant improvement over the practice of simply dumping sewage intostreets with no drainage system. The kind of movable span that Old LondonBridge contained is also called a bascule, and is related to one of theearliest forms of bridges -- the bascule bridge formed from a flap offramed timber across the moat of a castle, drawn up by chains from inside. Assoon as people began to walk upright on their hind legs, they began makingpaths (and then roads) to go from one place to the next. One fortunate aspect of the 11thcentury fire was the fact that in the rebuilding the city some streets werefitted out with sewers and conduits. (Repairs could beaffected to the piers when the river was at low tide.) The modern reader tends to associate bridges with the relativelylimited task of allowing people and vehicles to travel from one side of abody of water to the other, but the people of London (as well as of therest of medieval Europe) also saw bridges as gathering places, sites ofcommerce and as prime real estate. The Thames is an ideal span for the construction of a drawbridge --which must always have one or two spans hinged and counterweighted --because it is a narrow waterway with heavy traffic. The workers who created the bridge might seem primitive by today 'sstandards for they had few of the tools that modern bridge makers howemploy. It is hard to imagine that the inhabitants of theThames-divided city had not yet built some sort of structure. London Bridge. Surrounded by faked-up Tudor buildings and busloads of tourists,the large bridge is dwarfed by the majesty of the desert Southwest. Old London Bridge was designed in 1176 by a chantry priest of ColeChurch and was a masterpiece of construction, certainly in its time andarguably of any time, for any human creation that withstands six centuriesof daily use must be fundamentally sound. Bythe time of the Roman occupation of Britain in the 1st century AD, Londonwas already a town of considerable importance, although not yet anadministrative center (and the Romans in fact did not make it the center oftheir British colony). Certainly if another bridge were to be built today at the same pointon the Thames, it would not be constructed of masonry as it was in the 12thcentury. Bridgesthemselves are one of the most ancient forms of human construction. The 1894 Tower Bridgethat also lies across the Thames River is probably the most famous example of this type.