| Waterloo Bridge | |
|---|---|
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| River Thames and Waterloo Bridge (as seen from the London Eye observation wheel) |
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| Carries | Motor vehicles Pedestrians |
| Crosses | River Thames |
| Locale | London, England |
| Design | Arch Bridge |
| Longest span | 71 m |
| Opened | 1945 |
| Heritage status | Grade II* listed structure |
Waterloo Bridge is a road and foot traffic bridge crossing the River Thames in London, England between Blackfriars Bridge and Hungerford Bridge. The name of the bridge is in memory of the British victory at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Thanks to its location at a strategic bend in the river, the views of London (Westminster, the South Bank and London Eye to the west, the City of London and Canary Wharf to the east) from the bridge are widely held to be the finest from any spot at ground level.
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History
The first bridge on the site was designed in 1809-10 by John Rennie for the Strand Bridge Company and opened in 1817 as a toll bridge. The granite bridge had nine arches, each of 120 feet (36.6 m) span, separated by double Grecian-Doric stone columns and was 2,456 feet (748.6 m) long, including approaches. Before its opening it was known as 'Strand Bridge'. During the 1840s the bridge gained a reputation as a popular place for suicide attempts. In 1844 Thomas Hood wrote the poem The Bridge of Sighs about the suicide of a prostitute there.[1] Paintings of the bridge were created by the French Impressionist Claude Monet and English Impressionist, John Constable. The bridge was nationalised in 1878 and given to the Metropolitan Board of Works, who removed the toll from it.
Construction of the second bridge
From 1884 serious problems were found in Rennie's bridge piers, after scour from the increased river flow after Old London Bridge was demolished damaged their foundations. By the 1920s the problems had increased, with settlement at pier five necessitating closure of the whole bridge while some heavy superstructure was removed and temporary reinforcements put in place.[2] London County Council decided to demolish the bridge and replace it with a new structure designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. Scott, however, by his own admission was no engineer and his design, with reinforced concrete beams (illustrated below) under the footways, leaving the road to be supported by transverse slabs, was difficult to implement. The pairs of spans on each side of the river were supported by beams continuous over their piers, and these were cantilevered out at their ends to support the centre span and the short approach slabs at the banks. The beams were shaped "to look as much like arches as...beams can".[2] The engineers were Ernest Buckton and John Cueral of Rendel Palmer & Tritton. To guard against the possibility of further subsidence from scour, each pier was given a number of jacks which can be used to level the structure.[2] The new crossing was partially opened in 1942 and completed in 1945.[3] The new bridge was the only Thames bridge to have been damaged by German bombers during World War II. The building contractor was Peter Lind & Company Limited. It is frequently asserted that the work force was largely female and it is sometimes referred to as "the ladies' bridge".[4] The arches are clad in Portland stone from the South West of England; the stone cleans itself whenever it rains.[5]
Granite stones from the original bridge were subsequently "presented to various parts of the British world to further historic links in the British Commonwealth of Nations". Two of these stones are in Canberra, the capital city of Australia, sited between the parallel spans of the Commonwealth Avenue Bridge, one of two major crossings of Lake Burley Griffin in the heart of the city. Stones from the bridge were used to build a monument in Wellington, New Zealand, to Paddy the Wanderer, a dog that roamed the wharves from 1928 to 1939 and was befriended by seamen, watersiders, Harbour Board workers and taxi drivers. The monument includes a bronze likeness of Paddy and drinking bowls for dogs [6].
The south end of the bridge is the area known as The South Bank and includes the Royal Festival Hall, Waterloo station, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Royal National Theatre, and the National Film Theatre (directly beneath the bridge).
In the 1950s the National Film Theatre (a legacy from the Festival of Britain) was built directly underneath Waterloo Bridge. In the 1980s The award winning Museum of the Moving Image was also built directly underneath the bridge and became perhaps the only museum in the world to have stalactites (from water leaking through the Bridge) growing within it.
The north end passes above the Victoria Embankment where the road joins the Strand and Aldwych alongside Somerset House. This end previously housed the southern portal of the Kingsway Tramway Subway until the late 1950s. The entire bridge was given Grade II* listed structure protection in 1981.[7]
Georgi Markov
Georgi Markov was a Bulgarian dissident assassinated on Waterloo Bridge by agents of the Bulgarian secret police assisted by the KGB. On 7 September 1978, Markov crossed Waterloo Bridge to wait at a bus stop on the other side, when he was jabbed in the leg by a man holding an umbrella. The man apologized and walked away. Markov would later tell doctors that the man had spoken in a foreign accent.
On the evening of 7 September, Markov developed a high fever. He died in agony three days later. After his death, doctors found a small platinum pellet embedded in his calf. Further examination found that two small holes had been drilled in the bullet containing traces of the poison ricin.
Structure of the second bridge
 The design called for supporting beams only at the outside edges, to bring "light and sweetness" to the underside[8] |
 The centre span of the bridge, showing how it is carried on the cantilevered ends of the main beams |
 The completed bridge with the City of London behind |
Miscellaneous facts
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Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (June 2008) |
- Robert E. Sherwood's 1930 play, Waterloo Bridge, about a soldier who falls in love and marries a woman he meets on the bridge during an air raid in WWI,was made into films released in 1931 and 1940. The latter starred Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor.
- The bridge also featured in the title of another motion picture: the comedy The Waterloo Bridge Handicap (1978) [1] starring Leonard Rossiter.
- Michael Faraday tried in 1832 to measure the potential difference between each side of the bridge caused by the ebbing salt water flowing through the Earth's magnetic field. See magnetohydrodynamics.
- After the Lunch, a poem by Wendy Cope about two lovers parting on the bridge, have been used as the lyrics for the song Waterloo Bridge by Jools Holland and Louise Marshall.
- Most of the stones of the demolished Waterloo Bridge were taken to Harmondsworth Moor on the western edge of London. Many of them still remain there in various places around the moor.
Transport
The nearest London Underground station is Waterloo. London Waterloo is also a National Rail station.
References
- ^ Ebeneezer Brewer (1970), Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Cassell. p.152.
- ^ a b c Hopkins, Henry (1970). A Span of Bridges. Newton Abbot England: David and Charles. pp. 257–260.
- ^ Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide
- ^ Staff writer. "The Ladies Bridge". Peter Lind & Company Limited. http://www.peterlind.co.uk/ladies_bridge.htm. Retrieved 2009-05-07.
- ^ Sutcliffe, Anthony (2006). London: an architectural history. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. p. 212.
- ^ Haworth, Dianne (2007). Paddy the Wanderer. Auckland, New Zealand: Harper Collins. pp. 158–159.
- ^ Images of England — details from listed building database (204770) accessed 27 November 2008
- ^ Giles Gilbert Scott, quoted in Hopkins (1970)
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Waterloo Bridge |
- Survey of London entry
- Peter Lind & Company
- Waterloo Bridge (1917) in the Structurae database
- Waterloo Bridge (1945) in the Structurae database
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