Escorts in Tower Bridge, SE1 and E1W: who is close, and how soon
"It is younger than it looks, and it was built to fool you," Sylvie says of the bridge, and she has a point. The bridge opened in 1894, some eight centuries after the White Tower went up beside it, and its designers dressed a modern steel frame in stone towers and Gothic turrets so that it would sit politely next to the fortress. Much of what a visitor sees at the southern end, from the bridge itself to the warehouses of Shad Thames, is Victorian, and nearly all of it was built for trade rather than for show. The board's homes all lie well to the west, so Tower Bridge escorts need an hour or thereabouts from the office's yes, more while the traffic is at its worst, and the chat names the minute; the lengths are on the rates.
On the ground
Tower Bridge in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameSE1 2BY, E1W 1LD, EC3N 4AJ, EC3N 4DJ.
Nearest stations
Walking timeTower Gateway, 7 minutes. Tower Hill, 8 minutes. London Bridge, 10 minutes.
Getting there
SE1, E1WTravel is included across Zones 1 and 2, and counted from the moment the hour is set rather than from when she leaves.
On the board
Nearest prints to Tower Bridge
Who works here
On the board in Tower Bridge
The six prints above are a first shortlist for Tower Bridge tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
A steel bridge in stone clothes
By the 1870s the East End had grown so far that a crossing below London Bridge could not be put off any longer, but the Pool of London was still crowded with sailing ships, so the new bridge had to let tall masts through. The answer, from the City Architect Horace Jones and the engineer John Wolfe Barry, was a bascule bridge: two roadway leaves that swing up, and high walkways between the towers so people could keep crossing while the leaves were raised.
Work began in 1886. Jones died the following year and never saw it finished; the steel frame was clad in Cornish granite and Portland stone, and the Prince of Wales opened it in 1894.
Note 03
Steam, walkways and a jubilee coat
The leaves were first lifted by steam engines pumping water under pressure into great accumulators, and the Victorian engine rooms at the southern end still hold that machinery, now part of the bridge's exhibition. The system ran until 1976, when oil and electricity took over. The high walkways had a shorter first life: so few people climbed the stairs that they were closed in 1910, and they reopened only in 1982, with glass floors added much later.
Its bright paint goes back to 1977, when it was painted red, white and blue for the Queen's Silver Jubilee; before then it had been a sober brown. And in 1952 a double-decker bus, caught on a leaf as it began to rise, jumped the widening gap and came down safely on the far side.
Note 04
Wharves, a dock and a novel
East of the southern end, Shad Thames runs between the tall warehouses of Butler's Wharf, which once stored tea, coffee and spices landed from the river. When the port moved downstream and the upriver docks closed, the buildings stood empty for years before they were turned into flats, shops and restaurants in the 1980s. A little further east, at the mouth of St Saviour's Dock, lay Jacob's Island, the riverside slum where Dickens let Bill Sikes meet his end in Oliver Twist.
West of the bridge, the lawns of Potters Fields Park take their name from the potteries that worked this bank in the seventeenth century. Across the water, the Tower and St Katharine Docks lead on to Wapping, and Bermondsey lies behind the wharves to the south, so a single stroll with escorts in Tower Bridge can take in eight centuries.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for Tower Bridge
Asked most often
Tower Bridge, asked and answered
Why does a Victorian bridge look medieval?
Can we still see the original engines?
What were the Shad Thames buildings before they were flats?
One zone either way
Next along from Tower Bridge
Last strip
Say a name and an hour
Write in with a length, a time and the zone you are staying in, and a name from the board comes back with a window attached. That is the whole of the arrangement.