The Tower Bridge Experience

It was a glorious sunny breezy day as I walked out of London Bridge station down to the Thames embankment near where HMS Belfast was moored. I could see the ancient Tower of London on the other side and another edifice simply demanding to be gazed at with admiration, standing astride the river with its proud gothic appearance and its high twin towers - the Tower Bridge.
As I took the steps up to the bridge and started walking over appreciating the wonderful London views around me the pedestrian walkway was suddenly closed, the middle of the bridge started to open and the two halves lift. Luckily no one was on it but apparently fifty years ago a No 78 bus was driving towards the centre when this happened and the driver, taking a chance, carried on driving and landed on the other side. Perhaps the passengers were so busy looking at the London sites they didn’t even notice. More recently when traffic was given adequate warning, the presidential motorcade carrying Bill Clinton on a tour round London was starting to cross the bridge when the first security car went over but the presidential car and the rest of the security were stopped. In a furious panic the remaining security men desperately tried to contact the Bridge Master to get him to lower the bridge but he being a retired Royal Naval man was not in the least perturbed
‘Nothing takes precedence over a vessel coming through,’ he told them among other things. ‘It had given 24 hours notice in writing and it was approaching and the rule of the road is that the Bridge Master raises the bridge’.
And there before me moored by Butlers Wharf on the Tower side I saw Daphne, the hundred year old sailing river barge for whom the bridge had been lifted, with her brown sails at rest and looking very smug. Not many old ladies have calmly held up a president of the United States and separated him from his security men in one fell swoop.
The Tower Bridge Experience Museum is situated within the central towers and high walks of the bridge and once inside a Blue Badge Guide David Savage accompanied a group of us into a large lift which took us up into the North tower - very atmospheric where you could see the huge steel inner structure and where we could watch a short video on how the bridge came to be built. From its appearance I ‘d had the idea that the bridge was very old but it was actually built in the 1890s and the solid gothic exterior is only granite stone cladding covering the steel structure designed to blend with the Tower of London and other ancient buildings. It seems that the ever increasing number of citizens in the Tower area got very annoyed that they had no bridge and either had to ferry across or walk or drive their carriages along to London Bridge. At first there was a lot of resistance. The docks were at London Bridge and so any new bridge would have to allow for tall vessels to pass through. Also the Tay Bridge disaster was only five years before and still fresh in everyone’s mind and would the structure be strong enough?. Finally they decided on a lifting bridge but with very high walkways which people could always use to walk across. Scottish steel was brought to London in sections and the stone from Portland and Cornwall. On the 30th June 1894 the then Prince of Wales officially declared it open, the Tower of London fired her guns and there were fireworks and great celebrations for London had never seen anything like this before
There were a number of people there from all over the world and I got talking to Susie Quilligan and William Rutledge, architecture students from Miami University who were in London on a field trip to visit British architectural sites. As we left the video area to go along the high glassed in walks with their fantastic views over the river they pointed out the sites they had visited already - now looking somewhat smaller - The Tower, St Paul’s Cathedral, the London Eye and they were quite bowled over by this amazing architectural and engineering feat.
‘What I’m really looking forward to seeing,’ said William. ‘Is the old engine room.’
‘Definitely the favourite place,’ nodded David.
Susie and William wandered off enthusiastically to spend time there while I began to read one of the many information panels of how the bridge opened fully only on ceremonial occasions. Everything was written in seven languages so a French lady, a Spanish man and a Japanese boy and I were all reading simultaneously and nodding in mutual understanding.
‘As a lad I saw the bridge open fully when Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral cortege passed underneath in 1965’, David told us. ‘It was very moving.’
I noticed that the bridge had also opened fully for Sir Francis Chichester after he had sailed round the world single handed on Tiger Moth and was sailing to Greenwich to receive his knighthood.
The walkways were light and sunny through the big windows and carpeted, giving a feeling of a palm court.
‘Originally the walkways were open,’ David said.’But people used to come there and throw themselves the 140 foot drop into the river and then in the evening prostitutes would ply their trade and thieves hang around and so in 1910 the high walks were closed off. Now you can only get into them through the museum. They’re hired out in the evening for special events.’
‘It would be lovely to have a reception here with this view,’ I said.
David agreed. ‘ The Bridge Master’s Victorian apartment is also hired out and I know one gentlemen hired it together with a small orchestra and caterers to propose to his girl friend. They were all stationed outside the room so no one knows if he went down on his knees or what the answer was.’
Another lift took us down and outside again and we followed a short blue line to the old engine rooms where I met up with William and Susie again . There we saw the great pile of coal and two men wheeling it and loading it to produce the steam power. Then in the actual engine room the great engine freshly painted with its brass polished and a Victorian engineer sitting carrying out some tests. Like the coalmen he looked so totally realistic I nearly asked him a question.
‘This is my favourite place,’ William from Miami said. ‘When you think that hydraulic power was used to lift the bridge until 1976, it says something for solid Victorian engineering, doesn’t it.’
‘And the bridge was lifted over 60,000 times the first year and even now about 500 times a year. That’s amazing, said Susie.
‘Now it’s lifted by electricity,’ said David. ‘I was allowed to pull the lever once. It does give you quite a thrill.’
There is always something thrilling associated with the lifting and lowering of mediaeval castle drawbridges in historic films and what more excitement could you have than pulling a lever and lifting the two sides of Tower Bridge, watching a tall vessel pass graciously through and maybe even inadvertently stopping a President.
First published in the People's Friend. May 2002