London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down.
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady.
I can remember singing this in the school playground. I didn't know then that it is just the first verse of a very long nursery rhyme about the numerous bridges that have been known over the years as London Bridge.
In 1968, when I was 11 years old, London Bridge was sold to an American oil tycoon, Robert P McCulloch, for $2,460,000. I can just about remember the astonishment this sale caused and the assumption was that the buyer probably thought he was buying Tower Bridge which looks completely different. It was later dismantled and shipped to Lake Havasu in Arizona, where it was reassembled and still stands today. I've just had a look at some photographs of the bridge in its present location and it looks lovely and as though it was designed for the place.
That bridge was built of granite and was designed by John Rennie in the 19th century and replaced a previous bridge which was built in 1760 by Sir Robert Taylor and George Dance the Younger, and demolished 1823. The stone alcove you can see above is one of a pair from that earlier bridge that found their way to Victoria Park in 1860.
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| You can just see the second alcove in the distance |
This alcove which stood on
Old London Bridge
was presented to
Her Majesty (Queen Victoria)
by Benjamin Dixon Esq J P
for the use of the public and was
placed here by order of
the Right Honourable W. Cowper
First Commissioner of
Her Majesty's Works
and Public Buildings.
1860
I have wondered where these alcoves were stored in the intervening years between the old bridge being demolished in 1823 and 1860 when they arrived in the newly opened Victoria Park. Apparently other alcoves from the same bridge were given a new lease of life somewhere else. Maybe people sit in those alcoves too gazing across green grass and admiring the skyline in the distance pretending to be listening to the sound of the Thames flowing in and out according to the tides just the same way I do.
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| The sketch I made while sitting in one of the alcoves |
