As the popular nursery rhyme tell us, London Bridge indeed fell down, but did you know you can still find pieces of the bridge scattered all over London?
The original London Bridge which the rhyme talks about was most likely a wooden structure and collapsed under the weight of the houses which were built upon it, but this was later rebuilt from the remains and new stone structures with extensive work between the 1700s and 1800s.
Even this London Bridge eventually secumed to time, although mostly for other reasons, and was demolished by the Victorians. However, parts of the bridge dating from the 1700s onwards can still be found scattered around the capital.
The Great Wen London Blog documents the pieces of London Bridge, including several of the covered domes which once sat at the end of the piers and can now be found in Victoria Park, Tower Hamlets, and Guy’s Hospital offering shelter for visitors.
One of the most spectacular pieces was the coat of arms which was added to the tollgate in 1728, but removed when the gatehouse was demolished in 1760. Somehow this survived and ended up above the King’s Arms on Newcomen Street in Borough where it can be seen today.
Other parts which were rescued from the bridge have since disappeared, but it’s pretty likely that many of the older buildings around the site will contain quite a few stones from the bridge, even if we may never know all of their locations.
Sidenote: The Victorian’s rebuilt London Bridge in the 1890s, but it was again demolished in the 1960s and shipped stone by stone to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where it stands today amongst an English theme park and has become the 2nd most popular attraction in Arizona after the Grand Canyon. It’s replacement is the bridge we see today which also forms part of the A3.
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