Fig. 1—The Undercroft of St. Thomas of Canterbury on the Bridge.
The history of the bridge only opens with the beginning of the twelfth century. According to tradition, the convent of St. Mary Overie, Southwark, had been originally endowed with the profits of a ferry across the river, and had in consequence undertaken the duty of maintaining the bridge in a proper state of repair when a bridge was built. This convent was refounded in 1106 as a priory of Austin Canons; and it is not a little remarkable, having regard to the duties it had undertaken, that of its founders, who were two Norman Knights, one was William de Pont de l'Arche. At the Norman town, where stood his castle and from which he took his name, was a bridge of twenty-two openings, erected, it was said, by Charles the Bald, but most likely a Roman work, across the Seine at the highest point reached by the tide. It is a further curious coincidence that this same William appears as a witness to a deed executed by Henry I., excusing the manor of Alciston, in Sussex, from paying any dues for the repairs of London Bridge.
It is recorded that in 1136 the bridge was burnt, which may perhaps merely mean that the deck was destroyed, whilst the piers remained sufficiently uninjured to allow of the structure being repaired; but in 1163 it had become so dangerous that Peter of Colechurch undertook the erection of a new bridge, which he constructed of elm timber. This sudden emergence of Peter from obscurity to carry out so important an engineering work is as dramatic as is that of St. Bénezet, who founded the confraternity of Hospitaliers pontifices, which undertook the building of bridges and the establishment of ferries. According to legend, this saint, although then only a young shepherd, essayed to bridge the Rhone at Avignon, and the ruined arches of his great work are still among the sights of that city. Peter may have possessed many more qualifications for building than a shepherd could have acquired, as large ecclesiastical works were in progress in London throughout his life, which he must have observed and perhaps profited by; but this is only surmise, as of his history, except in connection with his great work, we know no more than the fact that he was the chaplain of St. Mary Colechurch. His contemporary, Randulphus de Decito, Dean of London, says that he was a native of the city, so that it is scarcely likely that he had acquired his skill abroad; but we are told that he traversed the country to collect the moneys for his undertaking, and he may thus have obtained some knowledge of the many Roman bridges which still survived, or even have seen the great bridge which Bishop Flambard had recently erected across the Wear at Durham. His selection as the architect of the earlier bridge of 1163 may perhaps not be due in any way to his especial engineering skill, but rather to some intimate connection with the priory of St. Mary Overie, whose canons were primarily responsible for the bridge repairs; indeed, since he is merely described as the chaplain of his church, he may himself have been one of the canons. But be the cause what it may—and it was not his success in erecting this first bridge, for it soon became dilapidated—thirteen years after its erection he started afresh, on a site further up the river, to erect a bridge of stone. In 1176, two years before St. Bénezet began his great bridge at Avignon, he commenced his work, and thirty-three years passed before its completion. Whether the delay was due to lack of funds or the incapacity of the architect we do not know, though probably to both, for before Peter's death King John, who had manifested considerable interest in the new bridge, had urged Peter's dismissal, and, under the advice of the Archbishop of Canterbury, suggested the appointment of Isembert of Saintes to complete the work. This Isembert was credited with the erection of the great bridge across the Charante at Saintes, although that bridge was undoubtedly a Roman one, and all he appears to have done was to turn arches between the original piers, and make it a stone bridge throughout. The same master was said to have built another bridge at La Rochelle, and had evidently gained much experience in such engineering work; and it is perhaps a misfortune that the King's advice was neglected, as a skilled architect, which Peter certainly was not, might have saved the city of London much eventual loss and trouble. Peter was, however, suffered to continue the bridge until his death in 1205, when a commission of three city merchants completed the work in four years.
The bridge which these many years of labour had produced was in every way unsuitable to its position, and mean as compared to similar buildings erected elsewhere. Lacking the skill to form proper foundations, Peter had spread them out into wide piers, which formed an almost continuous dam, through the openings in which the water rushed like a mill-race. The result was that the scour soon affected the stability of the piers, which had to be protected round by masses of masonry and chalk in the form of sterlings, which still further contracted the narrow waterways. The passage of the bridge by boat—"shooting the bridge," it was called—was always a dangerous operation; and a writer of the last century speaks of "the noise of the falling waters, the clamours of the water-men, and the frequent shrieks of drowning wretches," in describing it. So imperfectly built was the bridge that within four years of its completion King John again interfered, and called upon the Corporation properly to repair it; and from this time, or perhaps from Peter's death, when the three merchants were elected to complete the work, the Corporation appears to have taken over the responsibility of the bridge; and for this purpose they were endowed with certain properties, which became the nucleus of the present "Bridge House Estates." The increasing dilapidation of the bridge, the debris of fallen arches, and the rubbish and waste material which was suffered to accumulate, still further impeded the natural flow of the water, and little effort at improvement was ever made. Of the three widest arches of the bridge, which were called the navigable locks, the most important had been the one nearest to the city end, which became known as the "Rock Lock," and it acquired that name on account of a popular delusion that in its fairway was a growing and vegetating rock, which was nothing more than an accumulation of fallen ruins, which caught and held the floating refuse carried to and fro by the tides. And thus year after year the river dam became more solid, and the waterfall increased in height until it was said by one who knew them both that it was almost as safe to attempt the Falls of Niagara as to shoot London Bridge.
As years went by, not only did the waterways become congested, but the roadway above began to be encroached on by houses and other buildings, for which a bridge was most unfitted. Two edifices, however, from the first formed necessary, or at least customary, adjuncts to such a building—the bridge gate and the bridge chapel. It was a Roman custom to erect gates at one end, or in the centre of their bridges—not triumphal arches, but twin gates, such as they built to their walled towns, and such as stood at the end of the bridge at Saintes, when it was altered by Isembert. Such gates as survived in mediæval times were generally fortified, and formed the model for imitation by mediæval builders; and such a gate was erected at the Southwark end of London, which, under its name of Bridge Gate, became one of the principal gates of the city. It was erected directly on one of the main piers, and was therefore of a substantial character, but suffered much in the various attacks made upon London from the Kentish side. In 1436 it collapsed, together with the Southwark end of the bridge, but was rebuilt at the cost of the citizens, chief among whom was Sir John Crosby, the builder of Crosby House; and although the gate was again in great part destroyed by the attack on London made in 1471 by Fauconbridge, one of the towers of Crosby's gate survived until the eighteenth century. In 1577 the tower which stood at the north end of the bridge, and on which were usually displayed the heads of traitors, became so dilapidated that it was taken down, and the heads then on it were transferred to the Bridge Gate, henceforward known as "Traitors' Gate." It was upon the earlier gate that the head of Sir Thomas More was affixed, when heads were so common that even his, as we know from its adventures until buried in the Roper vault at Canterbury, was thrown into the river to make room for a crowd of successors.
Fig. 2—The Surrey End of London Bridge.
Of the chapel, which the founder of the bridge is said to have erected, no account survives; and although it was believed at the time of the destruction of the bridge that his remains were discovered, no satisfactory evidence of their identity was forthcoming. The first chapel must have perished in one of the early misfortunes which befel the fabric, as no trace of any detail which could be referred to the thirteenth century was discovered when the pier on which the chapel stood was removed. The drawings made by Vertue before the last remains were cleared away show a structure which may be assigned to a date but little later than the Chapel Royal of St. Stephen at Westminster, to which, in many particulars, it must have borne a considerable resemblance. It consisted of two storeys, both apparently vaulted, measuring some sixty by twenty feet, with an apsidal termination. The undercroft was nearly twenty feet high, and our illustration ([fig. 1]) of a restoration of it, prepared from Vertue's drawings and dimensions, will give some idea of its beauty. The upper chapel seems to have been similar, but much more lofty, and had an arcade running round the walls under the windows. The buttresses of the exterior were crowned with crocketted pinnacles, and the effect of the whole, standing high above the surging waters of the river, must have been as striking as it was beautiful. The chapel was built on the centre pier of the bridge, on the east side, and the chapels were entered from the roadway, the lower one by a newel staircase, on which was found the holy-water stoup when the bridge was destroyed in the last century. At the Reformation the church was converted into a warehouse, but, thanks to the solidity of its construction, it remained almost intact till it was swept away with the houses in 1756.