At length, the continual and large expence in maintaining a wooden bridge becoming burthensome to the people, who, when the lands appropriated to that use fell short of their produce, were taxed to make up the deficiencies, it was resolved in 1176, to build one of stone, a little to the west of the other, which in the time of William the Conqueror began at Botolph’s wharf; and this structure was completed in 1209.
The foundation is, by the vulgar, generally believed to be laid upon woolpacks, which opinion probably arose from a tax being laid upon every pack of wool, towards its construction. Mr. Stow is of opinion, that before the bridge was erected, they were obliged to turn the Thames into a large canal made for that purpose, which began at Battersea, and returned into the bed of the river at Rotherhithe; but this supposition has not the least foundation. Mr. Maitland justly observes, that the purchase of the ground through which this spacious water course was to run; the expence of digging and raising the banks of sufficient strength; and the prodigious expence of damming off the river above and below the intended bridge, would have amounted to treble the sum of erecting the bridge itself; and that the space of thirty-three years, which the bridge took up in building, is sufficient to destroy so wild a notion; since if the people concerned in erecting it had dry ground to build upon, it might have been finished in a tenth part of the time, and in a much more durable manner.
The same gentleman observes, that having carefully surveyed the bridge in the year 1730, in company with Mr. Sparruck, the water carpenter thereof, he observed in many places where the stones were washed from the sterlings, the vast frames of piles, whereon the stone piers were founded. The exterior part of these piles were extremely large, and driven as close as art could effect, and on the top were laid long beams of timber of the thickness of ten inches, strongly bolted; whereon was placed the base of the stone piers, nine feet above the bed of the river, and three below the sterlings; and that on the outside of this foundation were driven the piles called the sterlings.
Mr. Sparruck informed him, that he and the bridge-mason had frequently taken out of the lowermost layers of stones in the piers, several of the original stones, which had been laid in pitch instead of mortar; and that this occasioned their being of opinion, that all the outside stones of the piers, as high as the sterlings, were originally laid in the same matter, to prevent the waters damaging the work. This Mr. Maitland naturally supposes, was done at every tide of ebb, till the work was raised above the high water mark.
It is remarkable, that the master mason of this great work erected at his own expence a chapel on the east side of the ninth pier from the north end, and endowed it for two priests, four clerks, &c. This chapel, which was dedicated to St. Thomas, was a beautiful arched Gothic structure, sixty-five feet long, twenty feet and a half broad, and fourteen in height. Great part of this edifice lately remained very perfect; it was paved with black and white marble, and in the middle was a sepulchral monument in which was probably interred Peter, curate of Colechurch, the architect, or master mason, who began the work, but died before it was completed. Clusters of small pillars arise at equal distances on the sides, and bending over the roof, meet in the center of the arch, where they are bound together by large flowers cut in the same stone: between these pillars were the windows, which afforded a view of the Thames on each side, and were arched, and far from being unhandsome: but these have long been closed up with brick-work. It had an entrance from the river as well as the street, from which last there was a descent to it by a winding pair of stone steps twisting round a pillar. These stairs opened into a short passage, on the right hand of which was a cavity in the wall for holding the bason of holy water. On the 30th of September 1758, when we had the pleasure of seeing it, this edifice existed in the above form, only a part of the arch was obliged to make way for a shop floor, and some of the body was divided into an upper and lower story for the convenience of warehouse room, it then belonging to an eminent stationer.
But notwithstanding all this art and expence in building the bridge with stone, it was soon in great want of repairs: for about four years after it was finished, a fire broke out in Southwark, which taking hold of the church of our Lady of the Canons, or St. Mary Overy’s, a south wind communicated the flames to the houses on the north side of the bridge, which interrupted the passage, and stopped the return of a multitude of people who had run from London to help to extinguish the fire in Southwark: and while the amazed croud were endeavouring to force a passage back to the city through the flames on the north end of the bridge, the fire broke out at the south end also; so that being inclosed between two great fires, above three thousand people perished in the flames, or were drowned by overloading the vessels that ventured to come to their assistance.
By this dreadful accident, and other circumstances, this new stone bridge was in so ruinous a condition, that King Edward I. granted the bridgekeeper a brief to ask and receive the charity of his subjects throughout the kingdom, towards repairing it: besides which, he caused letters to be wrote to the clergy of all degrees, earnestly pressing them to contribute to so laudable a work; but these methods proving ineffectual, he granted a toll, by which every foot passenger carrying merchandize over the bridge, was to pay one farthing; every horseman with merchandize, 1d. and every saleable pack carried and palling over, a halfpenny.
But while these affairs were in agitation, the ruin of the bridge was completed, by five arches being borne down and destroyed by the ice and floods, after a great frost and deep snow in the year 1282.
However, the drawbridge, which had at first a tower on the north side, and was contrived to afford a passage for ships with provisions to Queenhithe, as well as to prevent the attempts of an enemy, was begun to be built in the year 1426; but about ten years after two of the arches at the south end, together with the bridgegate, fell down; and the ruins of the latter still remaining, one of the locks or passages for the water, was almost rendered useless; whence it received the name of the rock lock, which has occasioned the citizens to take it for a natural rock; and indeed though these ruins have lain in the water for above three centuries, they are still as impenetrable as a solid rock.
From that time the buildings on the bridge increased slowly; for in 1471, when Thomas Fauconbridge the Bastard, besieged the bridge, there were no more than thirteen houses besides the gate, and a few other buildings erected upon it.