Tower Bridge

Tower Bridge was the answer to a very Victorian problem: how to join the fast-growing East End to the south bank without cutting off the ships that still unloaded in the Pool of London, between London Bridge and the Tower. A conventional fixed bridge at street level would have blocked their masts. After more than fifty designs had been rejected, the City chose a bascule bridge, and Parliament authorised it in 1885 on the condition, among others, that it should harmonise with the Tower of London next door. The architect was the City Architect, Horace Jones, and the engineer John Wolfe Barry. Construction began in 1886 and took eight years; the bridge was opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales on 30 June 1894.

The Gothic look is a costume. Under the Cornish granite and Portland stone of the two towers is a steel frame of more than 11,000 tons, and the bridge actually combines three structures: suspension spans from each bank to the towers, a central opening span split into two bascules, and high-level walkways between the towers. Jones died in 1887 and his original arch was dropped in favour of the walkways; his assistant Stevenson then gave the towers their more ornate Victorian Gothic dress. Each bascule weighs more than a thousand tons and is counterbalanced so that it can rise in about five minutes. They were first driven by steam-pumped hydraulic power; the system was converted to electro-hydraulic operation in the 1970s, but the original steam engines survive in the engine rooms under the south approach.

The bridge still opens for river traffic, far less often than the seventeen times a day recorded in its first year but still about a thousand times a year, and lift times are published in advance on the bridge's website. Road traffic and pedestrians cross the lower deck free of charge. The Tower Bridge Exhibition, entered from the north-west side of the North Tower, takes visitors up into the towers and across the high-level walkways, about 44 metres above the river at high tide, where glass floor panels look straight down on the road and the Thames, and then to the Victorian engine rooms. The bridge is owned and maintained by the City Bridge Foundation, the charity founded in 1282 to look after the old London Bridge.

Getting there

The bridge crosses the Thames next to the Tower of London, about 1.4 km from Shadwell. London City Airport (LCY) is 9.1 km away and Heathrow (LHR) about 27 km. The nearest Underground station is Tower Hill (District and Circle lines), around seven minutes' walk; London Bridge (Northern and Jubilee lines, plus National Rail), Fenchurch Street and Tower Gateway on the DLR are also close. Riverboats stop at Tower Pier on the north bank and London Bridge City Pier on the south.