From the bridge down to the left opposite the Victoria Embankment, and for the entire distance opposite that part of the city, are wharves, docks, storehouses, such as may be found along the shore of any commercial place; but the shipping proper lies farther down the river, below London bridge. There are the docks, built at enormous cost, and extending for miles below the Tower, which is not far from a mile below St. Paul's. On the opposite side is the city of Southwark, containing a population of 200,000. The shore is lined with quays, and has an unfinished appearance. The tide runs very low, and often the mud is exposed to view against the buildings on both sides of the river, especially on the London side in the vicinity of Blackfriars.
The river is crossed by many fine bridges; among them are London, Southwark, Blackfriars, Waterloo, Hungerford, Westminster, Vauxhall, and Chelsea, besides two or three large ones for the railroads. London and Waterloo bridges are of stone, and are respectively 928 feet and 1,242 feet long, and 53 feet and 42 feet wide. The first has five arches, and the other nine. Built in 1831 and 1817, they cost $10,000,000 and $5,750,000, respectively. Southwark, Blackfriars, Westminster, and Vauxhall are iron bridges. Hungerford is a suspension bridge, and Chelsea is wooden. Blackfriars and Westminster are elegant structures, somewhat recently built.
Steamers in great numbers ply between London and Westminster bridges, and to Chelsea and points beyond. So frequent are these in their passages up and down the river, that the passenger makes no especial calculation as regards time, but goes to the nearest floating-station, and need not wait long for a conveyance. This is a comfortable method of travel, of which hundreds of thousands daily avail themselves. It has been aptly called the Silent Highway, for, in spite of the traffic on the shores, there is a peculiar quiet on the river.
We can hardly think of a subject we should be more pleased to write about, and there are few by which our readers would be more entertained, than these old bridges in London. Only one of them can have attention, and that shall be London Bridge, more especially the old one. A London Bridge is mentioned in a charter of William the Conqueror, granted to the monks of Westminster Abbey in 1067; but the earliest historical account of any is that made by the old chroniclers of its destruction, Nov. 16, 1091, "on which day a furious southeast wind threw down six hundred private houses in the city, besides several churches; and the tide in the river came rushing up with a violence that swept the bridge entirely away."
Next, in 1097, we learn from a Saxon chronicle, the credit of rebuilding it is given to King Rufus. It was of wood, and destroyed in 1136, by a fire which "laid the city in waste from St. Paul's to Aldgate." The historian Stow speaks of it as having been wholly rebuilt in 1163 by Peter Colechurch, priest and chaplain.
The first London Bridge of stone was begun in 1173, or 710 years ago, and finished in 1209. Stow says, "the new stone bridge was founded somewhat to the west of the old timber one." The new one had twenty arches. The road was 926 feet long and 40 feet wide between the parapets,—surely a magnificent structure to be erected six hundred years before the American Revolution. This great thoroughfare was destined to be despoiled of its ample dimensions, for, as soon as 1280, mention is made, on the pay-roll of the ninth year of Edward I., of "innumerable people dwelling upon the bridge." In course of time it was resolved into a complete street, buildings having been built on each side, partly on the bridge and partly projecting over the river, in solid line, with the exception of three openings on each side, at unequal distances, from which might be obtained views up and down the river. Strange to say, on the east side, over the tenth pier, was a fine Gothic chapel, dedicated to Thomas à Becket. It was thirty feet in front on the bridge, and consisted of a crypt, and a chapel above, and was used for divine services down to the Reformation.
Near the Southwark end of the bridge, on the eleventh pier, was a tower, which Stow tells us was begun in 1426. On the top of this tower the heads of persons who had been executed were "stuck up for public gaze." When it was removed in 1577, the exposed heads were taken to the Southwark end of the bridge, and the gate there received the name of Traitor's Gate.
When William Wallace resisted Edward I., his heart was plucked out, and his head placed aloft on this old tower. This was in 1305. There was displayed, in 1408, the head of the Earl of Northumberland, the father of the gallant Hotspur. There also were placed here, in 1535, the heads of Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and his friend Sir Thomas More. That of the former was first shown to Queen Anne Boleyn, and the next day "parboiled and placed upon the pole." It is related:—
In spite of the parboiling, it grew fresher and fresher, so that in his lifetime he never looked so well, for his cheeks being beautified with a comely red, the face looked as though it had beholden the people passing by, and would have spoken to them; wherefore the people coming daily to see the strange sight, the passage, even the bridge, was so stopped with their going and coming, that almost neither cart nor horse could pass; therefore at the end of fourteen days the executioner was commanded to throw down the head in the night time into the river of Thames, and in place thereof was set the head of the most blessed and constant martyr, Sir Thomas More, his companion in all his troubles.