The “Silent Highway”—London Bridge—The Bridge Houses and their Signs—Waterworks—Ice Fairs—Swan-upping—Borough of Southwark—City Jurisdiction—Early Lords of Southwark—Winchester House—Our Lady Fair—Paris Garden Manor—Bull and Bear Baiting—Famous Inns—The Marshalsea and King’s Bench Prisons—Tooley Street—Bridge House and the Bridge Masters—Sports on the Thames—Water Pageantry.
The facilities of transit afforded by the river highway led to the extension of the City towards the East, where the necessities of commerce converted its banks into a continuous succession of quays and wharves; whilst on the West the social life of the Court and City filled the entire frontage of the waterway between London and Westminster with the palaces of the great. Here, on “the Silent Highway,” all classes met. Kings and queens in the royal pomp of their state-barges were rowed from the Tower to the Palace of Westminster; nobles passed East or West from their river mansions in their journeys to the City and the Court; the merchant brought his goods to Queenhithe and the wharves; fish and other provisions were landed at Billingsgate; watermen carried passengers to Greenwich, or up stream to Hampton Court; and the City apprentices practised water-quintain and other sports, in preparation for the grand Easter aquatic tournament described by the old chronicler of Henry the Second’s time, FitzStephen.
The great obstacle to the navigation of the river was the picturesque but obstructive Old London Bridge. Its numerous narrow arches, whose piers rested on huge sterlings, caused so great a fall in the stream that the passage through was a feat which none but experienced boatmen could safely attempt. John Mowbray, the second Duke of Norfolk, a companion of Henry V. in his French wars, nearly perished here in 1428. Taking barge with his retinue at St. Mary Overy, he prepared to pass through the bridge; but, through unskilful steering, the barge struck against the piles, and was overturned. Several of the party perished, but the Duke and two or three other gentlemen saved themselves by leaping on to the piles, and were drawn up with ropes to the bridge above.
The great fall of the rushing tide through the narrow arches is well shown in the earliest known view of the bridge, which is given in the beautiful illumination of the manuscript poems of Charles, duke of Orleans, who was a prisoner in the Tower of London. The date of this interesting pictorial record has been assigned to the year 1500.
The bridge consisted of a drawbridge and nineteen broad-pointed arches, with massive piers varying in breadth from twenty-five to thirty-four feet. Outside the piers were immense wooden sterlings, which were probably added later to keep the foundations of the piers from being undermined. By these obstructions the entire channel of the river was reduced from its normal breadth of 900 feet to a total waterway of 194 feet, or less than one-fourth of the whole.
Peter of Colechurch was the architect and builder of London Bridge, replacing the older wooden bridge by a stone structure which was finished in 1176. The weakness of the new building, however, soon showed itself. In 1280, less than eighty years after its completion, the bridge was so decayed that men were afraid to pass over it, and a subsidy was granted towards its restoration. A hundred years later its condition engaged the attention of “a great collection or gathering of all archbishops, bishops, and other persons.” Notwithstanding the counsels of this distinguished assembly, things went from bad to worse; and in a professional survey made in 1425, one of the arches was found to be cracked, and the water-course of the Thames was seen below. This was the reason of an Act made by the Court of Aldermen, that no person should drive a cart or car shod with iron over the bridge, upon pain of “punishment of his body and to pay 6s. 8d.” In 1492, a reward of five shillings was given to John Johnson, that the King’s “great gonne should not pass over the bridge, but rather by another way.” “The other way” involved at this date a journey up river to Kingston, where the first bridge was to be found.
For the greater part of its length, houses were built completely over the bridge, leaving only three vacancies, one an open space called the Square, not far from the city, and another at the Southwark end where the drawbridge was. The thoroughfare passed through the centre of the bridge beneath the houses, forming a kind of tunnel with shops on either side. As there was no footway, it was the safest and most usual custom to follow a carriage which might be passing across.
The practice of erecting houses on bridges frequently prevailed in early times, the object doubtless being to secure property for the maintenance of the bridge. In many instances, too, a chapel was added. A curious instance of this custom was on the bridge at Droitwich, where the road passed through the chapel, and separated the congregation from the reading-desk and pulpit. Another famous bridge chapel was erected over the river Calder at Wakefield.
London Bridge had a beautiful chapel dedicated to St. Thomas of Acon, and consisting of two floors, the upper being on a level with the Bridge road, and the lower only slightly above the level of the river, its apartment occupying the interior of the chapel pier. Another notable building was the Bridge Gate or Tower, situated at a distance of about one-third of the length from the Southwark end, and forming the boundary limit between the City and that borough. Adjoining it on the Surrey side was the drawbridge, which could be lowered for the passage of vessels up the river, and for defence of the City from the south in times of invasion. Another tower stood almost at the entrance into Southwark, on the second pier. Here, in 1263, Simon de Montfort forced a passage into the city. In 1471 the Kentish Mariners, under the bastard Falconbridge, burnt the gate, and some fourteen houses on the bridge. Sir Thomas Wyatt, in 1554, was repulsed, after a determined attack on the bridge and its defenders; not, however, before he had attacked the Bishop of Winchester’s palace at the bridge foot, and cut to pieces all his books, “so that men might have gone up to their knees in the leaves so torn out.” Over this tower the traitors’ heads were fixed in the sixteenth century, having been removed from the Gate Tower, north of the drawbridge. These gates were decorated with leafy boughs and garlands of flowers on Midsummer Day. On the west wall, set up in 1492, was a statue of the patron and supposed guardian of the bridge and City, St. Thomas of Canterbury.
From a period which may perhaps be assigned to the earlier part of the thirteenth century, enterprising City tradesmen had availed themselves of the excellent business situation of the bridge thoroughfare. A grant of the above-named period exists, made to the fraternity and proctors of the bridge, of “one shop upon the bridge, between the shop of Andrew le Ferun and the shop of the bridge.” The shops with their various quaint signs tempted the wayfarer with a great variety of enticing wares. The Bridge Records of the fourteenth century refer to the trades of Cutter, Pouchmaker, Glover, Goldsmith, and Bowyer. At a later date we meet with the sign of the “Three Shepherds,” “The Botell,” “Floure-de-Lice,” “Horshede,” “Ravynshede,” “Bell,” “Bore,” “Cheker,” “Castell,” “Bulle,” “Whyte Horse,” “Panyer,” “Tonne,” the “Nonnes,” “Holy Lambe,” the “Chales” (chalice), “Catte,” “Bore’s Head,” “Seint Savyoures,” “Redde Rose,” “Three Cornysshe Chowys” (choughs), and many others.