Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
LONDON BRIDGE
Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
The Waste Land
, T.S. Eliot
At rush hour, you can still see Eliot's “undead” trudging to work across
London Bridge
, which
was, until 1750, the only bridge across the Thames. The Romans were the first to build a
permanent crossing here, a structure succeeded by a Saxon version that was pulled down by
King Olaf of Norway in 1014, and commemorated in the popular nursery rhyme
London Bridge is
Falling Down
. It was the medieval bridge, however, that achieved world fame: built of stone and
crowded with timber-framed houses, it became one of London's greatest attractions. At the
centre stood the richly ornate
Nonsuch House
, decorated with onion domes and Dutch gables,
and a chapel dedicated to Thomas Becket; at the Southwark end was the Great Gatehouse, on
which the heads of traitors were displayed, dipped in tar to preserve them. The houses were
removed in the mid-eighteenth century, and a new stone bridge erected in 1831 - that one now
stands near
Lake Havasu
in the Arizona desert, having been bought in the 1960s by a guy who,
so the apocryphal story goes, thought he'd purchased Tower Bridge. The present concrete
structure - without doubt the ugliest yet - dates from 1972.
11
Old Billingsgate Market
16 Lower Thames St •
T
020 7283 2800,
W
oldbillingsgate.co.uk •
!
Monument
Along the river from St Magnus is
Old
Billingsgate Market
, a handsome Victorian
market hall that once housed London's chief wholesale fish market, but has since been
turned into a corporate events venue. It's di
cult now to imagine the noise and smell
of old Billingsgate, whose porters used to carry the fish in towers of baskets on their
heads, and whose wives were renowned for their bad language even in Shakespeare's
day: “as bad a tongue…as any oyster-wife at Billingsgate” (
King Lear
). Next door
stands the Neoclassical
Custom House
, from 1825, which has been collecting duties
from incoming ships since around 1275, and still houses a department of HM
Customs and Revenue.
St Olave
8 Hart St • Mon-Fri 10am-5pm • Free •
T
020 7488 4318,
W
sanctuaryinthecity.net •
!
Tower Hill
Saved from the Fire, but left as an empty shell by the Blitz, the Kentish ragstone church
of
St Olave
was dubbed “St Ghastly Grim” by Dickens after the skulls and crossbones
and vicious-looking spikes adorning the 1658 entrance to the graveyard on Seething
Lane, a short stroll from St Dunstan's. Samuel Pepys lived in Seething Lane for much
of his life, and he and his wife, Elizabeth, are both buried here amid the pre-Fire
brasses and monuments - Elizabeth's monument was raised by Pepys himself; Pepys'
own is Victorian.
All Hallows-by-the-Tower
Byward St • Mon-Fri 8am-5pm, Sat 10am-4pm, Sun 10am-1pm • Guided tours daily 2-4pm • Free • Brassrubbing Mon-Fri 2-4pm; £5
per brass •
T
020 7481 2928,
W
ahbtt.org.uk •
!
Tower Hill
All Hallows-by-the-Tower
, another pre-Fire church, only just survived the Blitz - most
of the church is a postwar neo-Gothic pastiche wrought in concrete. The furnishings
are fascinating, however, and include lots of maritime memorials, model ships, two
wings of a Flemish triptych from around 1500, and, best of all, the exquisitely carved
Gibbons limewood font cover, in the southwest chapel. Close by is an arch from the
original seventh-century church; remains of a tessellated Roman pavement can also be
found in the tiny Crypt Museum. All Hallows also has some superb pre-Reformation
brasses, and offers brassrubbing.
