London and Its Environs Described, vol. 4 (of 6) / Containing an Account of Whatever is Most Remarkable for Grandeur, Elegance, Curiosity or Use, in the City and in the Country Twenty Miles Round It

by Anonymous

To prevent posterity being deceived by the pompous elogiums bestowed on this bridge, which has been stiled The wonder of the world, The bridge of the world, and The bridge of wonders, the following faithful description of it, we apprehend, will not be improper. And indeed this is the more necessary, as no accurate description of this bridge has ever yet been published. The Thames in this part is 915 feet broad, and that is the length of the bridge, which was forty-three feet seven inches in height. The street, which before the houses fell to decay, consisted of handsome lofty edifices, pretty regularly built; it was twenty feet broad, and the houses on each side generally 26½ feet deep. Across the middle of the street ran several lofty arches extending from side to side, the bottom part of each arch terminating at the first story, and the upper part reaching near the top of the buildings, the work over the arches extending in a strait line from side to side. These arches were designed to prevent the houses giving way. They were therefore formed of strong timbers bolted into the timbers of the houses on each side, and being covered with laths and plaister, appeared as if built with stone; and in some of them a closet, or little room, was formed in the cavities next the houses, with a window to the north, and another to the south.

It has been already observed, that this street had three openings on each side, adorned with iron rails, to afford the passengers a view of the river, and placed over three of the widest arches, called navigable locks; because vessels of considerable burthen have been used to pass thro’ them. That arch next the gate has obtained the name of the rock lock, from the cause already mentioned: that under the drawbridge was called the drawbridge lock; and the third, near the chapel (which could not easily be distinguished from the rest of the houses) was called St. Mary’s lock: and there was a fourth between St. Magnus’s church at the foot of the bridge, and the first vacancy northward, called the King’s lock; from its being customary for the King to go thro’ it in his passage through the bridge.

Thus the street on the bridge had nothing to distinguish it from a common handsome narrow street; but the high arches towards the middle, and the three openings on each side, which afforded an agreeable view of the river. But on the outside the view from the water, and from the keys, was as disagreeable as possible. Nineteen unequilateral arches, with sterlings increased to a monstrous size by frequent repairs, supported the street above. These arches were of very different sizes, and several that were low and narrow, were placed between others that were broad and lofty. The back part of the houses next the Thames had neither uniformity nor any degree of beauty; the line was broken by a great number of closets projecting from the buildings, and by mean necessary houses hanging over the sterlings. This deformity was increased by the houses extending a considerable distance over the sides of the bridge, and by some of them projecting farther over it than others: by which means the tops of almost all the arches, except those that were nearest, were concealed from the view of the passengers on the keys, and gave the bridge the appearance of a multitude of rude piers, with only an arch or two at the end, and the rest consisting of beams extending from the tops of flat piers, without any other arches, quite across the river.

But most of these deformities will be soon removed. Instead of a narrow street of twenty feet wide, there will be a passage of thirty-one feet broad for carriages; with a handsome raised pavement of stone on each side, seven feet broad, for the use of foot passengers; and, instead of houses projecting over the river, the sides will be secured and adorned by an elegant balustrade. Like Westminster bridge, it will be handsomely enlightened with lamps from sun-setting to sun-rising, and guarded in the night by a number of watchmen; the expences of both which are to be defrayed out of the bridge-house estate.

London Bridge Water Works. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth were erected in the arches at the south end of this bridge, mills for grinding corn, in order that the city might supply the poor with meal, at a reasonable rate, in a time of scarcity, or when the price was unjustly raised by avaricious badgers and mealmen. Afterwards, in the year 1582, Peter Morice, a Dutchman, contrived a water engine to supply the citizens with Thames water: this was, about fifty years ago, improved by Mr. Sorocold; and, since that time, by that great master of hydraulics, Mr. Hadley, who rendered it far superior to the so much famed water-engine at Marli in France; which is so ill contrived in its cranks, that it is said to cost 25,000l. sterling per annum to keep it in repair.

This machine was at first made to force the water no higher than Gracechurch street. The first engineer obtained from the city a lease for 500 years, at the annual rent of 10s. for the use of the Thames, and one arch, with a place for fixing his mill upon. The citizens soon experienced the benefit of this invention, and granted him a like lease, two years after, for another arch: by which means he grew very wealthy; and it continued in his family, under various improvements, till the year 1701; when the property was sold to one Richard Soams, a citizen and goldsmith. Morice having first, at the purchaser’s request, obtained another lease of the fourth arch, for the further improvement of the said works, after selling the whole property thereof for 36,000l. Mr. Soams, to prevent all disputes with the citizens, then applied to the city for a confirmation of his bargain with Mr. Morice, and obtained a fresh lease from them for the term unexpired of that gentleman’s lease, at the yearly rent of 20s. and 300l. fine. After which he divided the whole property into three hundred shares, at 500l. each share, and made it a Company.

The wheels placed under the arches are moved by the common stream of the tidewater of the river Thames. The axle-tree of the water wheel is nineteen feet long, and three feet diameter; in which are four sets of arms, eight in each place, whereon are fixed four rings on sets of felloes, twenty feet in diameter, and twenty-six floats, fourteen inches long, and eighteen inches deep.

The wheel lies, with its two gudgeons or center pins, upon two brasses, fixed on two great levers, whose fulcrum or top, is an arched piece of timber, the levers being made circular on their lower sides to an arch, and kept in their places by two arching studs, fixed with a sock through two mortises in the lever.

By these levers the wheel is thus made to rise and fall with the tide: the levers are sixteen feet long, that is, from the fulcrum to the gudgeon of the water wheel six feet, and thence to the arch ten feet. To the bottom of this arch is fixed a strong triple chain, made like a watch chain, but the links are arched to a circle of one foot diameter, having notches or teeth to take hold of the leaves of a pinion of cast iron, ten inches diameter, with eight teeth in it, moving on an axis. The other loose end of this chain has a large weight hanging at it, to help to counterpoise the wheel, and to preserve the chain from sliding on the pinion. On the same axis is fixed a cog-wheel, six feet in diameter, with forty-eight cogs; to this is applied a trundle or pinion of six rounds or teeth; and upon the same axis is fixed another cog-wheel of fifty-one cogs, into which a trundle of six rounds works, on whose axis is a winch or windlass, by which one man with the two windlasses raises or lets down the wheel, as there is occasion.

By means of this machine, the strength of an ordinary man will raise about fifty tons weight. But, besides these levers and wheels, there is a cog-wheel eight feet diameter, fixed near the end of the great axis, and working into a trundle of four feet and a half diameter, and twenty rounds; whose axis or spindle is of cast iron, four inches diameter, and lying in brass at each end: a quadruple crank of cast iron, six inches square, each of the necks being turned one foot from the center, which is fixed in brass at each end, in two head-stocks fastened down by caps. The end of one of these cranks is placed close abutting to the end of the axle-tree last mentioned, and fixed thereunto by an iron wedge drove through a slit in them both for that purpose. The four necks of the crank have each an iron spear or rod fixed at their upper ends to the respective lever, within three feet of the end; which levers are twenty-four feet long, moving on centers in a frame, at the end of which are jointed four rods, with their forcing-plugs, working into four iron cylinders, cast four feet three quarters long, seven inches bore above, and nine below, where the valves lie, fastened by screwed flanches over the four holes of a hollow trunk of cast iron, having four valves in it, just at the joining-on at the bottom of the barrels or cylinders, and at one end a sucking pipe or grate, going into the water, which supplies all the four cylinders alternately.