Our Footprints guides have chosen 10 of their favourite London Bridges.  Not all of them number among London’s most famous bridges, nor are they all bridges across the River Thames, but they all hold a fascination for the guides in question.  For some guides, the bridge they describe is part of their neighbourhood.  For others, it is a key feature of one of their guided walks.  So do enjoy some interesting bridge crossing.

Putney Bridge by Daniella King

Opposed by local landowners and the ferrymen who operated the crossing between Fulham and Putney, Putney Bridge was almost never built.  However, when Sir Robert Walpole was late for a parliamentary debate because the ferrymen had stopped working for the day, he decided to support the first Act of Parliament proposing that the bridge should be built.

Initially known as Fulham Bridge when constructed in 1729, it would be only the second bridge over the Thames in Central London.  Designed by Sir Joseph Ackworth and William Cheselden, the bridge was made of wood with a central panel which could be removed to allow tall boats to pass, with toll booths to finance the building and maintenance.

By the 1880s, Sir Joseph Bazalgette, the Victorian Civil Engineer who was also responsible for the building of London’s sewer system, was commissioned to build a new stone bridge to be located slightly to the west of the original bridge. This new bridge was opened by the future Edward VII.

This bridge was widened in the 1930s and then restored in 2014.  It claims to be only bridge in England to have a church at each end – All Saints in Fulham and St Mary’s in Putney.

Other claims to fame – it is the bridge from which authoress Mary Wollstonecraft dived into the icy water in an attempted suicide attempt after having her heart broken by Captain Imlay.  It was also the location of the clandestine meetings between painter John Constable and his future wife Maria Bicknell, when family opposition threatened to keep them apart.

Most famously, Putney Bridge will always be associated with the annual Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, which starts nearby.

Deptford Creek Railway Bridge by Sean Patterson

Deptford Creek has been an impediment to Londoners travelling to or from Kent since before the Romans, ‘Deptford’ being a corruption of the Deep Ford crossing just south of this bridge.

The real challenge, however, was for the London Bridge to Greenwich Railway that became the first commuter line in the world in 1840.

As masted ships needed to be able to go upstream at high tide a solution was found in the form of a construction very similar to Tower Bridge.  Two weighted sections lifted apart with the help of eight men who needed an hour’s notice to enable this to happen. As ships had priority this was a pain for the railways as the timetable had to work around tide times!

A quicker version followed in 1884 and the framed lifting version you see here arrived in 1963. Cables, pulleys and counterweights lift a whole track section up so the boats can come through at high tide.

Of course, most boats don’t have masts now and there is little commercial traffic on the Creek, so the mechanism was welded shut in 2000 and recently the listed structure was checked for safety. Luckily it passed, and this much loved piece of industrial heritage looks set to remain. It’s easily viewed from the twenty-year-old Halfpenny Hatch footbridge that runs right next to it between Deptford and Greenwich.

Lambeth Bridge by Richard Watkins

Lambeth Bridge, one of London’s most underappreciated bridges, has some lineage as a crossing site. Some say it was forded in Roman times.  A horse ferry crossing was first recorded in 1513.  For hundreds of years, it was the only place to cross the Thames with horses.  Often used by Royals and Bishops, in 1633 it farcically sank under the weight of Archbishop Laud’s possessions while he was moving into Lambeth Palace.

A bridge was first mooted in the1660s, but one didn’t arrive till 1862 and it was a flop!  Ironically, the steel suspension bridge had three wide spans and a steep curve, which made it difficult for horse drawn transport to cross.  Its cables and girders soon rusted badly, and by 1910 it was made pedestrian only.

The current bridge dates from 1932.  It has five broad, elegant arches, around 50 meters wide in the centre, the two either side 45 and then at either end 38 meters.  I love the red colouring designed to match the seating in the House of Lords, the lattice work iron pillars supporting the lamps, and most of all the fantastic obelisks topped with pinecones.  Pineapples are an ancient sign of hospitality – so a nice welcome to Lambeth.

They specifically honour the Tradescants, the seventeenth century royal gardeners buried in St Mary’s Church on the Lambeth side who cultivated and popularized the exotic fruit. Ornamenting its Westminster entrance, a magnificent Canary Island Date Palm has stood on a traffic island since the early 1980s, nicely complimenting the pinecones.

Cannon Street Railway Bridge by Stephen Benton

Cannon Street Railway Bridge, seen as a bit of an ugly duckling, is often overlooked.

The bridge originally opened in 1866 and was built by the South Eastern Railway who were extending their line from London Bridge to a more centrally located station in the City.

It consists of five chunky spans supported by cast iron Doric pillars. The original bridge incorporated two footpaths, one a public toll-path and the other used exclusively by railway employees. The footpaths were removed in 1893, when the bridge was widened and strengthened by adding four extra cast-iron cylinders to the upstream side of each pier.

In the last 100 years the bridge has been rebuilt twice. Sadly, many of the original ornamental features were removed during extensive renovations in 1982.

Cannon Street station sits on the north end of the bridge and has also been extensively rebuilt. However, two brick towers from the original station remain on the riverfront. These flank the bridge and conceal large tanks which were used to hold enough water to power Cannon Street station’s hydraulic lifts.

Historically, Cannon Street Railway Bridge was not illuminated at night. However, this changed in 2019 when the first phase of the Illuminated River project was launched.  This is a scheme to light most of the central London bridges using programmable LED lights. It is being designed and programmed by New York-based artist Leo Villareal. More details about the project can be found on this link. There is also a free audio guide to a walk on the south side.

Viaduct Bridge on Hampstead Heath by Jenni Bowley

Looking at this bridge you would be forgiven for imagining that it carries a country road between two market towns – or maybe it is part of the network of disused railway lines that now provide peaceful footpaths in our busy capital city?

In fact, it’s a bridge to nowhere.  It should have been the centrepiece of a grand development on the slopes of Hampstead Heath, but “Wilson’s Folly” as it became known was the only completed structure of a planned estate of 28 substantial villas, each one standing in 2 acres of land. 

The landowner, Thomas Maryon Wilson, was keen to develop his land and tried for decades to get parliamentary approval.  Not a pleasant man, he had alienated his influential neighbours who successfully blocked all applications, but in anticipation of the development he had drained land to form an ornamental pond and started construction on an access road. The viaduct was built in the 1840s from bricks dug and fired on site – and took three years to build as the foundations repeatedly collapsed.

Maryon Wilson resorted to mining clay and granted a lease for brickfields – and the only use made of this beautiful bridge was to transport the finished bricks to construction sites elsewhere in Hampstead.

Rob Smith and Jenni Bowley lead an occasional all-day walk following the route of the river Fleet from Hampstead to Blackfriars; the walk enjoys this view of the Viaduct Bridge.

Blackfriars Rail Bridge by Marilyn Greene

The Blackfriars Rail bridges fascinate me.

The older bridge, which originally served Blackfriars Bridge station located on the south bank, was designed in 1864 by Joseph Cubitt for the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway.  It was in alignment with the second Blackfriars road bridge.  All that remains are the red piers protruding out of the Thames along with the grade II listed London and Chatham and Dover railway insignia on bankside.  With the opening of St Pauls station on the north-bank in 1885, the southern station closed.  Trains stopped using the old bridge in 1971 and the bridge deck was removed in 1985.

The spectacular current railway bridge is supported by the iron structure of the original St Paul’s Bridge. It opened in 1886 and was designed by John Wolfe-Barry and Henry Marc Brunel. When St Paul’s railway station changed its name to Blackfriars in 1937, the bridge changed its name too.

As part of the Thameslink Programme, Blackfriars station was completely rebuilt between 2009 and 2012. The station platforms have been extended across the Thames with a new entrance on the south side of the river. The western edge of the bridge was extended and supported by a set of the 1864 bridge piers.

Designed by Will Alsop and built by Balfour Beatty, the roof over the platforms is covered with photovoltaic solar panels which generate electricity. It is the largest of three solar bridges in the world: the others being Kennedy Bridge in Bonn, Germany, and Kurilpa Bridge in Brisbane, Australia.

Vauxhall Bridge by Michael Duncan

Perhaps Vauxhall Bridge’s most famous moment came during the James Bond movie ‘Skyfall’, when the police stop M (played by Judy Dench) on her way to MI6 headquarters. As she is saying “Just get out of the way! Don’t you recognise the car?”, the Terry Farrell building is blown up.  Bond villain Raoul Silva (played by Javier Bardem) may have been a murderous sociopath, but he knew an ugly building when he saw one.

The bridge itself is not ugly but is simply functional from street level.  It’s the second on the site and opened in 1906. During its development it was criticised for lacking aesthetic merit.

After consultations with the architect Richard Norman Shaw (of New Scotland Yard fame) it was decided to erect eight huge bronze statues above the piers. Sadly, they can only be fully appreciated on a boat or with binoculars from the Embankments.

On the upstream piers local boy Frederick Pomeroy gave us Architecture, Agriculture, Engineering and Pottery (perhaps a nod to the nearby and still magnificent Royal Doulton building).

Downstream Alfred Drury portrayed Education, Fine Arts, Local Government and Science.

There was a proposal in the 1960s to replace the bridge with ‘The Crystal Span’, a double decker bridge topped off with a seven story building housing a  hotel, shops and entertainment venues. Like the more contemporary Garden Bridge some may think it an opportunity lost. But I think Bond villain and noted architecture critic Raoul Silva wouldn’t have known what to do.

Archway Bridge by Jen Pedler

The current Archway Bridge – dated 1897 to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee but officially opened in 1900 – was designed by Sir Alexander Binnie, the chief engineer of the LCC, also responsible for the Blackwall Tunnel, the Greenwich Foot Tunnel and Vauxhall Bridge. It was the second bridge on the site, replacing the original 1813 bridge designed by John Nash. But there was never intended to be a bridge here at all.

When Archway Road was originally built to by-pass the steep Highgate Hill, the plan was to take it under Hornsey Lane in a tunnel. Tunnelling was in its infancy in those days and mining engineer Robert Vazie was commissioned to build it. Unfortunately, when the tunnel was less than a quarter of its proposed length, it collapsed, cutting off Hornsey Lane. The obvious solution was to build a bridge instead. Nash’s bridge was built in the style of a Roman aqueduct. Its central arch was 36 feet high but only 18 feet wide and soon became a traffic bottleneck and so was replaced by the current bridge.

For many years the bridge was commonly referred to as suicide bridge and objections to proposed anti-suicide measures were often made on the grounds of its Grade 2 listed status. Fortunately, these have recently been overcome and railings installed on each side of the road on the bridge. Controversial and somewhat ugly they may be, but they do mean that the bridge no longer merits its sad nickname, which must be a good thing.

Find out more about Archway, the road, the bridge and its fabulous views across London on  ‘Archway, My Way’, my virtual tour.

Wandsworth Bridge by Rob Smith

Understated and functional, Wandsworth Bridge rarely tops anyone’s list of favourite London bridges; however, it’s one I appreciate if only for it being opened during World War Two.

The first Wandsworth Bridge was built in 1876 and had never been a success, built to handle anticipated traffic from a London Underground Terminus in Fulham that was never built. The bridge generated insufficient toll revenue to cover its maintenance costs, and, like most other privately owned bridges in London, was taken over by the London County Council. By the 1930s the bridge was pretty feeble, unable to take the weight of buses, and the LCC proposed a replacement.

Today’s Wandsworth Bridge was designed by Sir Thomas Pierson Frank – a real London hero who was responsible for running repairs to London’s infrastructure during the Blitz. His design for Wandsworth Bridge was low key; an ostentatious bridge wouldn’t have matched its then industrial surroundings.

In 1939, when the bridge was due to open, most of Britain’s steel was being diverted to building armaments. It did not open until September 1940, at the height of the German air raids on London. As a consequence, the bridge was painted a grey colour to camouflage it, and it has remained grey ever since.

The Blitz is one of the defining chapters in London history, but there are few structures around that were built during WW2. Wandsworth Bridge, now undergoing refurbishment,  stands as a reminder of those tough days in 1940, looking all the more defiant in the face of the 21^st century flats that surround it. A fine reminder too of Sir Thomas Pierson Frank.

Blackfriars Road Bridge by Marilyn Green

Blackfriars Road Bridge is the second bridge to be located in this position. The first was opened in 1769 once the River Fleet, which enters the Thames at this point, had been covered over. This bridge was made from Portland stone in an Italianate style by Scottish architect, Robert Mylne. It was named William Pitt Bridge after the Prime Minister but was changed to Blackfriars when he went out of favour. The Black Friars had had their Dominican monastery in this area from the thirteenth century until it was dissolved by King Henry VIII in 1538.

Although beautifully designed, the stone started to erode. Eventually, the Bridge House Estates that maintain the bridge called for a new one to be made.  The new Blackfriars Bridge was designed by Joseph Cubit who also designed the first railway bridge.  It was opened by Queen Victoria in 1869.

It is 923 feet (281 m.) long, consisting of five wrought iron arches; it was a condition that the spans and piers of the two bridges be aligned.  From the east side the piers of the bridge have stone carvings of marine life and sea birds, and from the west freshwater birds are depicted by sculptor John Birnie Philip.

The Bridge marks the boundary with Westminster. Having originally been widened for tram use, it is the widest bridge across the Thames. It will be the next bridge to be illuminated by the Illuminate River Foundation in the spring of 2021.