In the 1860s, London had a problem: TRAFFIC! (Does that sound familiar?) Thousands of people and carts horses made journeys across London. Crossing the River Thames was especially difficult. You could take a boat across, but that was slow and expensive. You could cross London Bridge for free, but it was really crowded. Every day over 100,000 people crossed London Bridge – and that only counts the people traveling on foot!
So, the City of London decided to build a new river crossing. It needed to allow carts and horses and people to cross over it, without blocking the ships coming up the River Thames. After all, the Thames was one of the world's busiest shipping channels. The big question was: How do you design a bridge which will allow carts & horses to cross over it, while allowing the tall ships to cross under it?
All sorts of architects submitted all sorts of designs: Some were tunnels, dug deep underneath the river; others were really tall bridges, or bridges with steep roads; one was a "rolling" bridge; one had a special interlocking loops which would keep the traffic flowing above and below the bridge. But none of these ideas seemed practical.
Enter Horace Jones, the City Architect. Officially, he was the "Architect and Surveyor to the City of London Corporation," a post dating back to the 15th century. Horace Jones submitted an idea for a bascule bridge. (The word bascule comes from the French word for "seesaw.") Horace Jones' bridge would raise its bascules to let the tall ships pass through, and it had walkways, high above the ships' masts, where pedestrians could cross as the ships passed underneath. Problem solved!
Funded in part by a small grant from the Pool of London Partnership in association with PriceWaterhouseCoopers.