Westminster Bridge

Westminster Bridge. The horse-ferry at Westminster was perhaps one of the most frequented passages over the river of Thames, ever since the building of London bridge, and laying aside the ancient ferry there. From the multitude of coaches, carriages and horses continually passing and repassing at all hours, times, and seasons, many inconveniences and accidents unavoidably happened, and in a course of time many lives were lost. To prevent these inconveniences and dangers the Archbishop of Canterbury and several other noblemen, in the year 1736, procured an act of parliament for building a bridge across the Thames, from New Palace yard, to the opposite shore in the county of Surry: but this act was not obtained without great opposition from the people of London and Southwark, and some fainter efforts used by the bargemen and watermen of the Thames; but private interest was obliged to give way to the public advantage, and preparations were made for carrying on this great work under the sanction of the legislature.

At length the ballastmen of Trinity house were employed to open a large hole for the foundation of the first pier to the depth of five feet under the bed of the river, and this being finished and levelled at the bottom, it was kept to a level by a proper inclosure of strong piles. Mean while, a strong case of oak, secured and strengthened with large beams, was prepared of the form and dimensions of the intended pier in the clear; this was made water proof and being brought over the place, was secured within the piles.

In this wooden case the first stone was laid on the 29th of January, 1738–9, by the late Earl of Pembroke; the case of boards was above the high water mark, and it sinking gradually by the weight of the prodigious blocks of stone strongly cemented to its bottom, the men continued to work as on dry ground, though at a great depth under water. Thus the western middle pier was first formed, and in the same manner were all the other piers erected, and when finished, the planks on the sides being taken off, the stone work appeared entire. The super-structure was added in the common method, and the whole finished in the most neat and elegant manner, and with such simplicity and grandeur, that whether viewed from the water, or more closely examined by the passenger who goes over it, it fills the mind with an agreeable surprise.

This bridge is universally allowed to be one of the finest in the world. It is adorned and secured on each side by a very lofty and noble balustrade, there are recesses over every pier, which is a semioctogan. Twelve of them are covered with half domes, viz, four at each end, and four in the middle. Between these in the middle are pedestals on which was intended a group of figures; this would greatly add to the magnificence by making the centre more principal (which it ought to be) and giving it an air of magnificence and grandeur suitable to the city to which it belongs; a great number of lamps are so agreeably disposed on the top of the recesses as at once to contribute to the purposes of use and beauty. This magnificent structure is 1223 feet in length, and above three hundred feet longer than London bridge. The ascent at the top is extremely well managed, and the room allowed for passengers, consists of a commodious foot way seven feet broad on each side, paved with broad Moor stone, and raised above the road allowed for carriages. This last is thirty feet wide, and is sufficient to admit the passage of three carriages and two horses on a breast, without the least danger.

The construction and distance of the piers from each other are so managed, that the vacancies under the arches allowed for the water-way, are four times as much as at London bridge, and in consequence of this, there is no fall, nor can the least danger arrive to boats in passing through the arches. The piers, which are fourteen, have thirteen large and two small arches, all semicircular. These with two abutments constitute the bridge, whose strength is not inferior to its elegance.

The length of every pier is seventy feet, and each end is terminated with a saliant angle against either stream. The breadth of the two middle piers is seventeen feet at the springing of the arches, and contain three thousand cubic feet, or near two hundred tons of solid stone; and the others on each side, regularly decrease one foot in breadth, so that the two next to the largest are each sixteen feet, and so on to the two least next the sides, which are no more than twelve feet wide at the springing of the arches.

The centre arch is seventy-six feet wide, and the others decrease in width four feet on each side, so that the two next to the centre arch are seventy-two feet wide, and so on to the least of the large arches, which are each fifty-two feet wide, and the two small ones in the abutments close to the shore, are about twenty feet in width. The foundation of the bridge is hid on a solid and firm mass of gravel which lies at the bottom of the bed of the river; but at a much greater depth on the Surry, than the Westminster side; and this inequality of the ground, required the heights of the several piers to be very different; as some have their foundations laid at five feet, and others at fourteen feet under the bed of the river. The piers are all four feet wider at their foundation than at the top, and are founded on the bottoms of the above' mentioned wooden cases formed of the most substantial work, eighty feet in length, twenty-eight in breadth, and these timbers are two feet in thickness. The caisson or wooden case, in which the first pier was built, contained an hundred and fifty loads of timber; and forty thousand pound weight is computed to be always under water in stone and timber.

The materials are much superior to those commonly used on such occasions the inside is usually filled up with chalk, small stones, or rubbish; but here all the piers are the same on the inside as without, of solid blocks of Portland stone, many of which are four or five tons weight, and none less than a ton, except the closers, or smaller ones, intended for fastening the others, one of which has its place between every four of the large ones. These vast blocks are perfectly well wrought for uniting; they are laid in Dutch terrace, and also fastened together with iron cramps run in with lead. All this iron work is however entirely concealed, and so placed that none of them can be affected by the water. It is also worthy of remark, that the soffit of every arch is turned and built quite through with blocks of Portland stone, over which is built and bonded in with it, another arch of Purbeck stone, four or five times thicker on the reins than over the key; and by this secondary arch, together with the incumbent load of materials, all the parts of every arch are in equilibrio, and the whole weight so happily adjusted, that each arch can stand single, without affecting, or being affected by the other arches. In short, between every two arches a drain is contrived to carry off the water and filth, that might in time penetrate and accumulate in those places, to the great detriment of the arches.

Though the greatest care was taken in laying the foundation deep in the gravel, and using every probable method to prevent the sinking of the piers, yet all this was in some degree ineffectual, for one of them sunk so considerably when the work was very near compleated, as to retard the finishing it a considerable time. This gave the highest satisfaction to those who had opposed this noble work: but the commissioners for building the bridge, immediately ordered the arch supported by that pier, on the side where it had sunk, to be taken down, and then caused the base of the pier to be loaded with incredible weights, till all the settlement that could be forced was made. After this the arch was rebuilt, and has ever since been as secure as the rest.

In short the last stone was laid in November 1747, eleven years and nine months from the beginning of the construction; a very short period, considering the vastness of the undertaking, the prodigious quantity of stone made use of, hewn out of the quarry, and brought by sea; the interruptions of winter, the damage frequently done by the ice to the piles and scaffolding, and the unavoidable interruptions occasioned twice a day by the tide, which for two years together, reduced the time of labour to only five hours a day. The expence of erecting this bridge, and of procuring all the requisite conveniences was defrayed by parliament, and amounted to 389,500 l. which was raised by several lotteries.

This bridge, considered in itself, is not only a great ornament to this metropolis, and of the most singular advantage to the city of Westminster; but it has entirely changed the appearance of that city; new and beautiful street£ have been erected; those that were before narrow, crooked and ill built, have been widened rendered straight, and rebuilt with regularity and elegance. And new plans of improvement are daily formed, and continually putting in execution.

Westminster Bridge,—the uppermost of the three bridges, near the Abbey.

Westminster Bridge, crosses the Thames from Old Palace-yard to the opposite shore in Surrey. An act of parliament was passed in 1736 for building this bridge, and the first stone was laid in a caisson on the 29th of January, 1739, by the Earl of Pembroke, and the last stone was laid on the 10th of November, 1750, by Thomas Ledyard, Esq., and on the 17th of the same month by a procession of gentlemen, and much ceremony.

This bridge was designed by, and executed under the direction of M. Labelye, a Swiss architect and engineer of great celebrity. It consists of thirteen semi-circular arches, and a small land arch at each end. The whole length of the bridge is 1223 feet, the width of the centre arch 76 feet, and the rest decrease regularly 4 feet in width on each side. The bridge is now undergoing a substantial repair, and some of the peirs have been found defective.

Westminster Bridge, the second stone bridge in point of time over the Thames at London. When we read in our old writers and the allusions are common enough of Ivy Bridge, Strand Bridge, Whitehall Bridge, Westminster Bridge, and Lambeth Bridge, landing piers alone are meant.

Ralph Morice, Archbishop Cranmer's secretary, "went over" from Lambeth "unto Westminster Bridge with a sculler, where he entered into a wherry that went to London, wherein were four of the Gard, who meant to land at Paules Wharfe, and to passe by the King's highnesse, who then was in his barge, with a great number of barges and boates about him, then baiting of beares in the water over against the bank."—Fox, Mart. ed. 1597, p. 1081.

Latimer in preaching to Edward VI, April 12, 1549, on Christ's words to Peter, says, "I dar saye there is never a wherriman at Westminster Bridge but he can answere to thys;" and the Order of Crowning of James I. and Anne of Denmark opens with, "The King and Queen came from Westminster Bridge to the West door of the Minster Church." Great opposition was made by the citizens of London to a second bridge over the Thames, at or even near London; and in 1671, when a bill for building a bridge over the Thames at Putney was read, a curious debate took place, recorded by Grey (vol. i. p. 415). The Bill was rejected, fifty-four voting for it and sixty-seven against it.

The Act for constructing a bridge from Old Palace Yard, Westminster, to the opposite shore in Surrey was passed in 1736. The architect employed to construct it was Charles Labelye, a native of Switzerland, naturalised in England. The first stone was laid January 29, 1738–1739, and the bridge first opened for foot-passengers, horses, etc., November 18, 1750. It was 1223 feet long and 44 feet wide, and consisted of thirteen semicircular arches, the centre being 76 feet span, as well as a small one at each end. The piers were built on caissons or rafts of timber, which were floated to the spot destined for them. It was originally surmounted by a lofty parapet, which M. Grosley, a French traveller, has gravely asserted was placed there in order to prevent the English propensity to suicide. It was on this bridge that Wordsworth wrote his famous sonnet&mdas

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1803.

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still.

When Gibbon lost his place at the Board of Trade, and again set out for Lausanne to finish the Decline and Fall, he says, "As my post-chaise moved over Westminster Bridge, I bade a long farewell to the fumum et opes strepitumque Romæ." Crabbe, the night after he left his letter at Burke's door, "walked Westminster Bridge backwards and forwards until daylight." Burke's reply saved him from suicide.

The soil was deepened or washed away after London Bridge was removed, and in consequence ten piers settled down. In 1846, it was found necessary to close the bridge entirely, until it could be lightened of much superincumbent material and fitted to serve as a temporary structure. During six and thirty years upwards of £200,000 are said to have been spent on its maintenance and repairs. After many delays a new bridge was commenced, May 1854, from the designs of Mr. Thomas Page, C.E. As it was to be of unusual width, the engineer conceived the bold plan of constructing in the first instance one half the bridge (about 40 feet in width) from end to end, and opening it for traffic while the other was being built. Owing to obstructions and a temporary suspension of the works, the first half was not opened for traffic till March 1860. The second half was completed and formally opened at four o'clock in the morning of May 24, 1862, "that being the day and hour on which her Majesty was born" in 1819.

The present bridge is 1160 feet long and 85 feet wide, and so nearly level that the rise in the centre is little over 5 feet. It consists of seven low segmental wrought and cast iron arches—the central arch 120 feet in span, and the shore arches 95 feet—borne on granite piers. The foundations of each pier are formed by 145 bearing piles driven through the gravel to an average depth of nearly 30 feet into the London clay, and around them 44 cast-iron cylinder piles and as many sheeting plates, forming a sort of permanent coffer-dam, the intermediate spaces and area up to low water level being filled with a concrete of hydraulic lime. A base course of blocks of granite was laid on this, and then the pier carried up, the core of brick, the casing granite. The total cost of the bridge did not exceed £250,000. From Westminster Bridge is obtained the best view of the Houses of Parliament; their towers, mingling with those of Westminster Abbey, stand out grandly as the bridge is crossed from the Surrey side. The river front of the Houses on the one hand and St. Thomas's Hospital and Lambeth Palace on the other, are well seen from the south side of the bridge.

Westminster Bridge

Suggestions for a bridge across the river at Westminster were mooted soon after the Restoration but were vigorously resisted by the citizens of London, and it is significant that in granting a loan of £100,000 to King Charles II in 1664 they took the opportunity to express their thanks to him for preventing "the new bridge proposed to be built over the river of Thames betwixt Lambeth and Westminster, which, as is conceived, would have been of dangerous consequence to the state of this City."⁹³ The objections of the City were fully set out in a document of 1722, when the project was again under discussion, the main points being the loss of custom to the watermen and to the City markets and the danger of the navigation of the river being impeded.¹⁴⁷

Westminster was growing rapidly at the beginning of the 18th century and the inconvenience of having to cross the river by boat or to make the long detour to the south side of the river by London Bridge was increasingly felt by its inhabitants. In 1735, when a Bill for a bridge at Westminster was introduced into Parliament, the City could no longer uphold its objections and the Bill became law in the following year.¹⁴⁸

The Act appointed a number of influential persons as commissioners and provided for £625,000 to be raised by a lottery by the sale of £5 tickets from which £100,000 was to be paid to the commissioners. Three amending Acts were needed before the bridge was finished and three lotteries were held. £197,500 was raised by this means and the remainder of the total cost of the bridge, £380,500, was granted by Parliament so that the bridge was opened free of toll.⁹³

The bridge was designed by Charles Labelye, a naturalised Swiss engineer and architect. His employment provoked the anger of English architects, the most violent expression of which was in a pamphlet by Batty Langley entitled survey of Westminster Bridge as 'tis now sinking into ruin, published in 1748, in which he referred to Labelye as Mr. Self-Sufficient, and depicted him hanging from a gibbet under one of the arches of the bridge.^{149, n1}

Andrews Jelfe and Samuel Tufnell were employed as master masons and James King as master carpenter.¹⁵⁰

The original plan was to build a wooden superstructure on stone piers, but in 1739 the commissioners decided to have a bridge built entirely of stone. The foundations were laid in caissons, the first time this method of building had been employed on a large scale.⁹⁶ Cavities were dug in the bed of the river for the reception of the caissons, but the piers were built directly on to the soil and not on piles.¹⁵¹ It was perhaps because of this that in 1747, when the bridge was almost complete, the sixth pier from the Westminster end subsided 16 inches, causing the adjoining arches to crack, with the result that they had to be rebuilt.

Westminster Bridge was opened on 18th November, 1750. The Gentleman's Magazine described it as "a very great ornament to our metropolis, and will be looked on with pleasure or envy by all foreigners. The surprising echo in the arches, brings much company with French horns to entertain themselves under it in summer; and with the upper part, for an agreeable airing, none of the publick walks or gardens can stand in competition." Other writers took a less cheerful view, suggesting that the recesses in the form of alcoves over each pier, designed for shelter in bad weather, might be used by robbers and cut-throats who, if it were not for the special guard of 12 watchmen and the high balustrades, might set on unwary travellers and push their bodies into the river.⁹³

The bridge was built of Portland stone. A contemporary manuscript description of it runs: "This magnificent structure is 1,223 feet in length, and above 300 feet longer than London Bridge. The Footway on each side; 7 feet—Horse Road 30 feet wide. There are 13 large and two smaller arches, all semi-circular. The breadth of the two middle piers, is 17 feet at the springing of the arches, and contain 3,000 cubic feet, or near 200 tons of solid stone, and the others on each side, regularly decrease, one foot in breadth. The Center arch is 76 feet wide, and the others decrease 4 feet in width, on each side, The caisson or wooden case, in which the first pier was built, contained 150 loads of timber. The last stone was laid in November, 1747—eleven years and nine months, from the beginning of the construction."¹⁵⁰

From 1810 onwards, but more particularly after the removal of old London Bridge in 1831 increased the scour of the river, Westminster Bridge began to show signs of decay. Select Committees enquired into the matter in 1844, 1846, and 1850, and in 1851 a Commission was appointed by the Treasury to consider the most convenient site for a new bridge and the best mode of construction to be adopted.¹⁵²

The new bridge was designed by Thomas Page in consultation with Sir Charles Barry. ¹⁵³ It was begun in 1854 and opened on 24th May, 1862. To save the erection of a temporary bridge the first half of the new bridge was built upstream of the old and put into use before the second half was built on the site of the old bridge. The cost, £400,000, was defrayed partly by funds in the hands of the Westminster Bridge Commissioners and partly by parliamentary grant.¹⁵²

Description

The present bridge is of Gothic design, which accords with the Houses of Parliament. The elegance of its delicate proportions is enhanced by the gentle convexity of outline from bank to bank. The bridge is simple in detail and has seven spans of which the central is 130 feet wide. The subsidiary spans are of 125 and 115 feet with those adjacent to the abutments of 100 feet.

The downstream parapet coincides on plan with the equivalent parapet on the old bridge, though with a 58 foot roadway and 13 foot footpaths at each side, the present bridge is of almost twice the width.

The spans are semi-elliptical in shape and spring from piers which are faced by cutwaters of graceful form. Standing upon the cutwaters are short semi-octagonal pillars with moulded plinths and caps. The pillars finish flush with the parapets and, like the facing stones of the piers, are built in grey Cornish granite. The traceried spandrels above the outer ribs, as well as the other ribs supporting each span, are of cast-iron, as are the parapets, which are pierced by trefoils, and the lamp standards above each pier. The abutments at each bank are faced with Portland stone which was reworked from materials salved when the old bridge was demolished.ⁿ¹ There are coats of arms in the arch spandrels, and panels on the roadway side of the four centre piers containing the arms of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

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n1 Batty Langley had himself published design for the bridge at New Palace Yard, Westminster in 1736, and he contended that Labelye had stolen his ideas but failed to carry them out effectively.

ⁿ² The present bridge is of interest constructionally as it was one of the first in which the buckled plate invention patented by Robert Mallet in 1852 was used. Mallet's buckled plates were struck between two dies so that the centre portion was raised and formed a shallow dome. These plates were used as decking on the bridge and gave a maximum of strength for a minimum of thickness and weight.

⁹³ Turnpikes and Tollbars, by Mark Searle, 1930.
⁹⁶ D.N.B.
¹⁴⁷ Guildhall Library. Westminster Bridge, ...1722.
¹⁴⁸ A Public act for building a bridge across the River Thames, from the New Palace Yard in the City of Westminster to the opposite shore ... 9 Geo. II, cap. 29.
¹⁴⁹ A survey of Westminster Bridge as 'tis now sinking into ruin, by Batty Langley, 1748.
¹⁵⁰ L.C.C., Westminster Bridge, original manuscripts.
¹⁵¹ A short account of the methods made use of in laying the foundations of the piers of Westminster Bridge, ... by Charles Labelye, 1739.
¹⁵² Bridges, historical and descriptive notes— L.C.C., 1914.
¹⁵³ Thames Bridges, by James Dredge, 1897.