place, which tower was finished in September 1579.[86] The great wonder of the bridge was the beautiful wooden structure, called Nonesuch House, which stood on the seventh and eighth arches from the Southwark side, and gave its name to the Nonesuch lock.
The great weight of the buildings caused occasional sinkings and a general insecurity. In 1481 it is recorded that a block of buildings toppled over into the river. In 1633 a fire swept from one end of the bridge to the other, and many of the houses were destroyed, which were not rebuilt. In 1757-1758 all the remaining houses were cleared away in order to make the structure more secure.
The bridge was one of the chief sights of London, and a great deal of history has grown up about it, but it would require a volume to do justice to these circumstances. One of the most curious of these was the duel between Sir David Lindsay, Earl of Crawfurd, and John Lord Welles (fifth Baron), Ambassador at the Scottish Court in 1390. Lord Crawfurd chose the place, and, furnished with a safe conduct from Richard II., came from Scotland to London for this special purpose. The duel took place in this apparently inappropriate locality in the presence of a great concourse of sightseers.
Most of the travellers in England who have written on the subject speak of the bridge with high praise. Frederick Duke of Wirtemberg, who visited this country in 1592, was pleased with what he saw, and his secretary wrote: ‘Over the river at London there is a beautiful long bridge, with quite splendid, handsome and well-built houses, which are occupied by merchants of consequence. Upon one of the towers, nearly in the middle of the bridge, are stuck up about thirty-four heads of persons of distinction, who had in former times been condemned and beheaded for creating riots and from other causes.’ It will be seen from this passage that when the new tower was built the heads which had been removed during the rebuilding to the Bridge-foot were taken back to the new tower. Six years later Hentzner wrote of London Bridge as ‘a bridge of stone, 800 feet in length, of wonderful work; it is supported upon 20 piers of square stone, 60 feet high and 30 broad, joined by arches of about 20 feet diameter. The whole is covered on each side with houses, so disposed as to have the appearance of a continued street, not at all of a bridge.’ Correr, the Venetian Ambassador in 1610, states that the bridge was so narrow that it was very difficult for two coaches meeting to pass each other without danger.[87]
Englishmen were not behindhand in singing the praises of the bridge; thus Lyly wrote in Euphues and his England: ‘Among all the straunge and beautiful showes, mee thinketh there is none so notable as the bridge which crosseth the Theames, which is in manner of a continuall streete, well replenyshed with large and stately houses on both sides, and situate upon twentie arches, whereof each one is made of excellent free stone squared, everie one of them being three score foote in height, and full twentie in distaunce one from another.’
The chapel on the bridge had an endowment for two priests or chaplains, four clerks and other brethren, with certain chantries annexed. A dwelling-house was afterwards attached to the chapel, which, at the close of the thirteenth century, was known as the Bridge House. In the year 1298 John de Leuesham [Lewisham], brother of the London ‘Bridge House,’ was made bailiff of the manor of Lewisham, ‘the proceeds of which were then, as they still are, devoted to the maintenance and repair of the bridge.’[88]