Amazing & Extraordinary Facts: London (5 page)

Boudicca

After World War II much of the population of London was rehoused in the New Towns such as Harlow, Hemel Hempstead and Stevenage which were designed to provide better living conditions than their residents had known in the slums and tenements of London, many of which had in any case been destroyed by bombing. By this time a limit to the expansion of the metropolis had been set by the creation of the Green Belt. The population of Greater London is now about 7.5 million of which about one quarter were born outside the United Kingdom.

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n November 2010 Alderman Michael Bear, a property developer from Finchley, was sworn in as the 683rd Lord Mayor of London. But his authority extends only over the ‘Square Mile’ of the City of London. There have been only two mayors of the whole Metropolitan area: Ken Livingstone, who was elected twice and held the office from 2000 to 2008; and Boris Johnson who ousted him in 2008. Yet some would argue that the first Mayor of London, in fact if not in name, was Herbert Morrison (1888-1965).

Boris Johnson

Prior to 1856 London, outside the City, had no Metropolitan government. It was run by vestries, glorified parish councils, whose main aims were to keep down the rates and pass on any problems, such as sewage, to the neighbouring parish. In 1856 London acquired its first effective city-wide administration in the form of the Metropolitan Board of Works which built London’s first effective sewerage system, major roads, bridges and parks. It was replaced by the London County Council (LCC), which with greater powers governed London from 1889 to 1965, its lifetime almost exactly corresponding with that of Herbert Morrison.

Born in Brixton, the son of a policeman, Morrison became a dynamic force in the London Labour Party which he virtually created in the years before and after World War I, organising such activities and fund-raising events as choirs and leagues for football, darts and cricket, explaining ‘We must not only work our way to Socialism, we must sing in the course of our journey.’ Elected to the LCC in 1922 he was its leader from 1934-40 by which time he was also a Member of Parliament.

He was instrumental in the creation of the Green Belt and also of London Transport which before 1933 was in the hands of a network of private companies. During World War II he was Home Secretary in Churchill’s coalition government, opened the underground stations as air raid shelters and equipped them with bunks, lavatories, entertainments and refreshment trains. He enjoyed the distinction of being on the ‘hit list’ of Communists and Nazis because of his relentless opposition to both. He occasionally despaired of London, declaring in 1924 that ‘London is an absolute disgrace to civilisation. It should never have been allowed to exist and if it could conveniently be blown up it would be better for civilisation,’ but by 1958 he was admitting ‘I love London Town.’ When he died in 1965 his ashes were scattered on the Thames at County Hall, headquarters of the LCC until its replacement by the Greater London Council (GLC) in that year.

Yet like many dynamic individuals he made enemies. The trade union leader and later Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin (1881-1951), upon hearing someone observe that Morrison was his own worst enemy, commented, ‘Not while I’m alive he isn’t’! Morrison’s energy and commitment were sometimes combined with ruthless ambition and conspiratorial methods. His grandson is Peter Mandelson.

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he first London Bridge was built by the Romans, close to the site of the present bridge and rebuilt following its destruction by Boudicca in 60 AD. A later Saxon bridge was destroyed in 1014 in an attempt by King Aethelred (‘The Unready’) to frustrate the forces of the Danes who were threatening London and Southwark. It is this destruction which is reputedly celebrated in the rhyme ‘London Bridge is falling down’. Another bridge is recorded in 1016 when King Canute’s ships sailed up the Thames to take the city and the kingdom. In 1091 the bridge was destroyed by a tornado and in 1176 a more substantial stone bridge was built in the reign of Henry II. This bridge remained in use until the 1820s. It was soon lined by houses, with a gate and drawbridge at the Southwark end for defensive purposes while the City end was decorated with the heads of traitors and other criminals.

London Bridge

The medieval bridge had 19 arches; from 1584 one of them was occupied by a waterwheel installed by a Dutch engineer called Peter Morice and used to pump water to conduits in the city. For this he was paid ten shillings a year, later installing wheels in two further arches. The combined effect of all this masonry and machinery was to slow down the flow of the river. In 1823-31 a new stone bridge of five arches was built by Sir John Rennie, a short distance upstream from the medieval bridge, its wider arches enabling the river to flow faster which helped to prevent it freezing. In 1967-72 the present bridge of three spans was built, Rennie’s bridge being dismantled and reassembled at Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Both the 19th-century bridge and its 20th-century replacement were funded by revenue from the Bridge House Estates. These arose from properties given or bequeathed to the Corporation of London in the 12th and 13th centuries for the upkeep of the medieval bridge. The revenues are still used to maintain the four bridges which are the Corporation’s responsibility: Blackfriars, Southwark, London Bridge and Tower Bridge.

In 1879 the Metropolitan Board of Works proposed the construction of a bridge near the Tower of London to give an additional crossing point since London Bridge, at that time the lowest crossing on the Thames, was overcrowded. It was opposed by the City on the grounds that it would impede access to the wharves which were then in the Pool of London, just downstream from London Bridge; and by the inhabitants of Southwark because it would make it too easy for Eastenders to cross the river and would therefore ‘have a prejudicial effect upon the value of a large amount of property’! Despite these objections the famous ‘Bascule’ bridge, which could open to admit ships to the Pool of London, was designed by the architect Horace Jones (who also designed Smithfield meat market) and the engineer John Wolfe-Barry who was assisted by Henry Brunel, son of Isambard Kingdom.

The engineering is ingenious. Each bascule is a giant see-saw which requires comparatively little energy to raise it. The structure of Tower Bridge is a steel frame and the stone that we see is, in effect, cladding which was used to give the bridge its ‘Gothic’ appearance. It was opened in 1894, amidst much ceremony, by the Prince of Wales.

The present Hammersmith Bridge replaced the original bridge (London’s first suspension bridge) in 1887. The authorities were alarmed when, in 1870, twelve thousand people crowded on to the old bridge to watch the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. Designed to carry horses and cabs it survived two attempts by the IRA to blow it up and uncomplainingly accommodated heavy goods vehicles and double-decker buses until 1997 when it was briefly closed to vehicular traffic for repair. At the same time the nearby Hammersmith flyover, built in the 1960s, was closed for the same reason. Victorian engineers built things to last! The Millennium Bridge, which opened on 10th June 2000, lasted three whole days before it was closed because of a persistent wobble which caused some pedestrians to feel sick as well as unsafe. Its structure was modified and it reopened after two years, linking Bankside with the north bank of the Thames near St Paul’s.

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he Thames is first recorded as having frozen in AD 250 during the Roman occupation of Britain, a phenomenon recorded at regular intervals until 1814. In 1410 wheeled traffic was able to cross the river for fourteen weeks and in the winter of 1683-4 an ox was roasted on the ice as part of a Frost Fair while market stalls covered the river from Temple to Southwark. The last and greatest Frost Fair occurred in 1813-14 with a grand mall called City Road running upstream from Blackfriars. The Thames watermen, alarmed at the loss of trade, carved a channel in the ice alongside the north bank and charged twopence to ferry visitors to the merriment occurring in mid-river.