Until the 18^th century there was no dry crossing over the Thames between London Bridge and Kingston Bridge. Within the space of fifty years six new bridges were constructed, starting with Fulham Bridge in 1729 and Westminster in 1750. The third of those six bridges was at Kew.

For many centuries, possibly as far back as the Romans, a ferry crossed the Thames between Brentford and Kew, part of an important commercial link between London and the West Country. From 1659 it was managed by the Tunstall family. By the early 18^th century two ferries were being operated by Robert Tunstall, a Brentford citizen of some consequence, one for pedestrians and the other for carriages. Traffic increased significantly from 1731 when, shortly after arriving in England, Frederick, Prince of Wales and his wife Augusta leased a house at Kew from the Capel family as their country home. William Kent was employed to enlarge and embellish it. From 1750 the couple began extensive works in the grounds, including a great pagoda. (In later times the estate became part of the Royal Botanical Gardens).

In 1757 Tunstall obtained an Act of Parliament to replace his ferry by a toll bridge from where the carriage ferry operated. (At that time the housekeeper at Kew Palace was a Mrs. Tunstall, so a family connection may have been significant in obtaining the Act). There were objections from barge-masters regarding his initial site on a bend, on the grounds that it would be difficult to navigate under. The bridge was finally located approximately a hundred metres downstream where the pedestrian ferry operated, requiring a second Act of Parliament. Work began in April of the following year. It consisted of two brick and stone arches at either bank, with seven wooden spans in the centre. Kew Bridge was built by John Barnard, a master-carpenter who had worked on Westminster Bridge. The completed work was dedicated to the Dowager Princess of Wales and her son George, the future King George III and they passed over the bridge even before its official opening three days later in June 1759. Upon its inauguration it was crossed by 3,000 people in the first day and a banquet was held for local gentry in the Rose & Crown at Kew, with a bonfire and illuminations on Kew Green. The Princess granted Tunstall £200, plus forty guineas to share among his workmen.

The following year Prince George was riding to London when he met a messenger crossing the bridge in the opposite direction who gave him the news that his father, George II, had died. Without emotion the prince declared that his horse was lame and turned back to Kew, forbidding his groom to say the contrary.

With the opening of the bridge, travellers could turn off the main London to Oxford road at Brentford and have a dry crossing through Kew, south-west to Richmond. Then still the only bridge between Fulham and Kingston, it proved to be very popular and Tunstall was able to charge a toll of one penny for pedestrians and one shilling and sixpence for a coach and six horses.

Robert Tunstall died shortly after the completion of the bridge and it was inherited by his son Christopher. The son suffered an early demise and ownership passed to his brother, also named Robert, who was then still a child.

The original Kew Bridge proved difficult for barges to navigate through and was regularly damaged. It was therefore unprofitable, despite its popularity, due to the high cost of maintenance. Less than 25 years after its opening, Robert commissioned James Paine, the designer of Richmond Bridge, which had opened in 1776, to construct a new stone crossing about 40 metres downstream. Work began in 1783 and the old bridge remained open for a further six years during the lengthy time it took to build the replacement. This handsome new crossing gently sloped over the river, consisting of seven arches and made of Portland and Purbeck stone, with a central arch of 65 feet in width. Paine’s wish was for it to be ornately decorated. That proved impossible on the rather small budget of £16,000, which had been raised by subscription, known as a tontine. Upon the death of each shareholder their shares reverted to the surviving shareholders. Thirty years after he had opened the original structure, King George III, together with Queen Charlotte, led a procession of carriages across the bridge at the opening ceremony in September 1789. A celebration dinner was held in the Star & Garter hotel on the north side of the bridge.

In 1824 an Act was passed for a new bridge at Hammersmith with lower tolls than Kew or Richmond. Concerned about the competition, Robert Turnstall sold Kew Bridge at auction to Thomas Robinson for £23,000. In 1848 Robinson built an adjacent landing stage for steamboat passengers.

An Act of Parliament was passed in 1869 to make all London bridges toll-free under the ownership of the Metropolitan Board of Works. Negotiations began for the MBW to purchase Kew Bridge and after five years a compromise was reached for it to change hands for £57,300. In February 1873 the Lord Mayor of London, City sheriffs, local dignitaries and the Chairman of the MBW formed a carriage procession from Gunnersbury station to the bridge, which was decorated with banners and triumphal arches at each end. The Mayor unlocked the tollgates with a specially made medieval key, canons were fired, and the bridge declared open. The tollgates were carried around Kew Green on a brewer’s dray and back to the Star & Garter at Brentford where a luncheon was held. In the evening there was a firework display.

Kew Bridge was later sold to the Surrey and Middlesex County Councils. Over a hundred years after its opening, they decided to replace the second bridge with the current version with a wider carriageway, which opened in May 1903.

Sources include: Peter Matthews ‘London Bridges’; Paul Lewis – The History of Kew Bridge (webpage); Ian Pay, Sampson Lloyd, Keith Waldegrave ‘London’s Bridges – Crossing the Royal River’; Sheila O’Connell ‘London 1753’; Susanne Groom, Lee Prosser ‘Kew Palace’; John Pudney ‘Crossing London’s River’.

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Two new bridges were built over the Thames in the first half of the 18^th century upstream of the City of London, at Fulham and Westminster, yet the old London Bridge remained the only one giving access into the City from the south, and it was highly congested.

Few civic changes had been undertaken by the City of London Corporation since the rebuilding following the Great Fire of 1666. It was sure to oppose any scheme they felt was against its interest or those it protected such as Thames watermen, particularly new bridges. Besides, creating a new bridge from the City was not easy. The entire waterside on the City side of the river was lined by wharves and other buildings, some of which would need to be purchased and demolished to create an approach road. And bridges were expensive and complicated to build.

The City of London had long objected to the creation of Westminster Bridge but the Corporation felt threatened by its success and the laying out or improvement of streets in Westminster that came about following its opening. In 1754 Joseph Massie, a writer on economic issues, published a pamphlet pointing out the City’s inertia and the progress being made elsewhere. Amongst other schemes he proposed the demolition of the City wall and gates, widening of streets, and a new bridge linking the City with Southwark.

Massie’s solution as to where to situate the new bridge without purchasing and demolishing expensive waterfront buildings was to site it over the outflow of the River Fleet, known as the Fleet Ditch, at the western extreme of the City. The general area around the Fleet was anyway where low taverns were located, the haunts of criminals and the poor, so the development would provide opportunity for improvement. The City took advise from the eminent engineer John Smeaton regarding the cost and then petitioned Parliament to be able to create the new bridge. A House of Commons committee was formed to consider the matter. The result was two Acts, one to raise funds for the new bridge and the other for improvements to London Bridge.

A committee of 36 aldermen and councilors was formed to oversee the new bridge project, although none with any specialist engineering knowledge. It was then delayed by several years due to the high cost. The initial budget was set at £144,000 but the City’s Bridge House Estates, the department that managed London Bridge, could only put up a small part of it. Most came from loans from subscribers, with interest to be paid, and more from fines levied in the City. Tolls were to be charged until the loans had been repaid. By July 1759 the initial budget had been raised.

A competition was then held for a design and several eminent architects and engineers tendered entries, including George Dance the Elder and John Smeaton. The initial front-runners were Smeaton, who was then building the Eddystone lighthouse and had already been involved in the bridge project, and John Gwynn, who went on to design bridges elsewhere in England. Of the 69 entries submitted, one from an unknown young Scotsman by the name of Robert Mylne unusually consisted of elliptical arches. Unlike others such as Smeaton and Gwynn, who had probably been preparing plans over a long period, Mylne had only two months from the announcement of the competition until the closing date. The submissions were then whittled down to a short-list of fourteen.

There was a great debate regarding the various designs, with a certain amount of propaganda spread around in the form of anonymous letters to newspapers, including from Dr. Samuel Johnson, a friend of Gwynn and someone not partial to Scotsmen such as Mylne. A lengthy anonymous pamphlet went into circulation debating the issue. The detailed criticism of each of the main submissions, and its praise for that of Mylne, suggests that this was penned by the young Scot. To the surprise of almost everyone, in February 1760 the committee announced the winning entry to be that of the 25-year-old Mylne. Furthermore, he was appointed surveyor of the bridge and its surrounding areas on each bank, on a generous salary. To keep an eye on progress he rented an apartment in Arundel Street off the Strand, overlooking the river, and employed his own waterman and wherry.

Mylne came from a long line of Scottish masons and had the previous year arrived in London almost penniless from Rome, where he had excelled in classical architecture at St. Luke’s Academy. There he had studied ancient aqueducts, Grecian temples, and the dome of St. Peter’s, but probably not bridges. His success was remarkable, due to his youth, lack of connections in the City hierarchy, and without experience in building any structure, let alone a bridge over a major river.

An issue that had to be overcome was that the City bank, where the Fleet flowed into the Thames, was low-lying, yet the arches had to provide sufficient height to allow boats to pass underneath. If the roadway rose too steeply from the banks to the centre it would cause problems for horse-drawn vehicles. Mylne’s design ensured that the roadway was a gentle curve, in comparison to that at Westminster, where each side was a straight slope rising to a sharp pinnacle at the centre. His design consisted of nine semi-elliptical arches, as opposed to Westminster’s twelve, with arches that increased in size from the banks to the centre, and a central arch of 100 feet. His original design was more ornate, with statues of naval heroes. To keep costs down they were instead replaced by pairs of Ionic columns on each pier, each topped by an embrasure in the parapet where pedestrians could shelter from passing traffic or stand to admire the view. In those days the banks of the river were mostly crowded with wharves or factories and London Bridge lined with houses. Even the more recent Westminster Bridge was designed in such a way as to obstruct the view so there were few vantage points from which to admire the river. Thus, Mylne’s design for Blackfriars provided people with a welcome new leisure opportunity.

The History of The Port of London: A Vast Emporium of All Nations (book)

“Peter Stone and the publisher are to be congratulated on producing a book, which covers the history of the Port of London from the Romans to the present day, in a great amount of detail and for a very reasonable price… this book can be thoroughly recommended to anyone wanting an up to date history of the Port of London in one very accessible, indexed and readable book.” – Derek Morris, London Topographical Society Newsletter

“The History of the Port of London is an extremely comprehensive volume, complete with maps and black and white photos.” – Towpath Telegraph magazine

The River Thames has been integral to the prosperity of London since Roman times. Explorers sailed away on voyages of discovery to distant lands. Colonies were established and a great empire grew. Funding their ships and cargoes helped make the City of London into the world’s leading financial centre. In the 19^th century a vast network of docks was created for ever-larger ships, behind high, prison-like walls that kept them secret from all those who did not toil within. Sail made way for steam as goods were dispatched to every corner of the world. In the 19^th century London was the world’s greatest port city. In the Second World War the Port of London became Hitler’s prime target. It paid a heavy price but soon recovered. Yet by the end of the 20^th century the docks had been transformed into Docklands, a new financial centre.

THE HISTORY OF THE PORT OF LONDON – A VAST EMPORIUM OF ALL NATIONS is the fascinating story of the rise and fall and revival of the commercial river. The only book to tell the whole story and bring it right up to date, it charts the foundation, growth and evolution of the port and explains why for centuries it has been so important to Britain’s prosperity. This book will appeal to those interested in London’s history, maritime and industrial heritage, the Docklands and East End of London, and the River Thames.

Buy Now!

London Docks of the 1960s – Mark Lee Inman
Amberley Publishing

When the imminent publication of this new book was first brought to my attention a plan was put in place to write a review for the London Historians blog based on my interest in the Port of London. I eagerly awaited its delivery from the publisher while early ideas for the review were developed in my imagination. Within minutes of its arrival all plans had changed. The book was not as we expected! If you are presuming this book to be an in-depth tome on the Port of London as it reached the post-war trading peak prior to a relatively swift demise, you will be sadly disappointed. So, let me say from the outset, it should rightly be entitled ‘Merchant ships of the London Docks of the 1960s’. Nevertheless, if your interest is in international 20^th century merchant shipping, this is a book for you.

The author of London Docks of the 1960s, Mark Lee Inman, was a student at Queen Mary’s College in the second half of the 1960s. It was a time when the port, from Tilbury up to the Pool of London, was still thriving, prior to the introduction of containerization and roll-on/roll-off ferries. The decline of the upper port in the 1970s and ‘80s is well-known. Yet, around the time Inman arrived in London, a thousand ships were arriving and leaving every week, importing and exporting goods from every part of the world. In 1960 three quarters of a billion pounds worth of cargo passed through the docks and wharves. An all-time record in tonnage was achieved during the years between 1962 to 1964. When a gang of stevedores and ordinary dockers were required to load and unload a ship, well over twenty thousand workers still had employment in the port. Wild-strikes by militant dockers aside, it seemed inconceivable then that twenty years later miles of riverside would become a redundant wasteland.

His interest is clearly in shipping so, with Port of London Authority permit in hand, Inman spent his weekends wandering the docks, photographing the vessels he witnessed there. Now, over fifty years later, they serve as a historical record, presented in this slim volume. The book is divided according to photos taken in the Pool of London and various docks, including the West India, Surrey Commercial and Tilbury, but the majority are in the Royal Docks. Presumably any vessels in the St Katharine, London or Millwall Docks were by the ‘60s too insignificant to be photographed or to warrant inclusion.

I am no expert on the subject of merchant ships and, to be honest, the details of their design are rather lost on me. What they have in common are numerous derrick cranes for lifting cargo, as well as large holds. Some in this collection dated back as far as 1929, managing to survive through the war. A few, such as American-built Liberty ships, were constructed during the war years. Others were brand new, made bigger and faster than those of previous decades, yet quickly to become outdated.

What I did find quite fascinating was the brief history given by Inman of each vessel, including the provenance and where it ended its days, often in a scrap-yard in India or China. Most had a quite ordinary and mundane existence but several had exciting lives. There was the Glen line ship captured in the war by the Germans and used as a U-boat supply ship. Recaptured, she was used by the Ministry of War Transport and finally reverted to the Merchant Navy. It is surprising how many were later laid up or sunk following an on-board fire, notably one in which the cargo of butter caught fire during the night thirty-five miles off Montevideo and sank with the loss of the entire crew. As well as providing information on the ships, in many cases information is given about the owners, with a brief history of the major lines to be found in the London docks.

The future direction of international cargo shipping is indicated in the book’s final photograph: an early container ship moored in Tilbury Docks. It was the start of a shipping revolution that would make all the vessels on the previous pages redundant within just a few years.

One thousand seven hundred years after the Romans constructed the original London Bridge it remained the only dry crossing over the Thames between the city and the old medieval structure upriver at Kingston. Finally, in the mid-18^th century a new bridge was created to carry traffic between the city and the South-West of England.

Despite the inconvenience to travellers, the City of London, which represented members of the Company of Watermen (who operated water-taxis and ferries), as well as profiting directly from tolls charged at London Bridge, successfully fought against any plans for new crossings over the Thames. A proposal in the House of Commons in 1671 for a bridge at Fulham was successfully defeated when the extraordinary argument was put forward that it would extend the boundary of London beyond the city wall and thus “England itself shall be as nothing”.

Fulham on the north bank of the river is an old settlement, existing as a manor from at least early Saxon times. In the 9^th century it was occupied for a time by Vikings. The ancient Fulham Road joins the one from Hammersmith to become Fulham High Street that then led down to the river. Immediately west of the High Street, on the riverside, stands Fulham Palace, for centuries the manor house and country home of the Bishops of London. Almost facing each other on opposite banks are the old Fulham parish church of All Saints, noted in the early 19^th century for its peel of bells, and St. Mary the Virgin, or Putney Church. Putney was part of the Manor of Wimbledon and in Norman times was a place of little consequence other than a fishery, which became noted for its salmon, smelt, and occasional sturgeon or porpoise. In October 1647 Putney Church was the venue for the debate by the Republican New Model Army, chaired by Oliver Cromwell, on the future constitution of England. Putney’s main street led uphill from the river to Putney Heath and Wimbledon. During the 19^th century, from 1836, the quiet village came alive each year at the time of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. Events tended to centre around the riverside Star and Garter pub, and in the mid-19^th century the London Rowing Club established its own club-house there.

There was already a ferry from Fulham to Putney by Norman times. It was occasionally a dangerous crossing over the tidal river, such as the time one night in 1633 that a boat capsized when it was transporting some staff of Archbishop Laud. Robert Walpole is said to have once been kept waiting on his way from Richmond to Westminster for an important parliamentary debate. When a new proposal was put forward for a privately-funded toll bridge in 1725, during the reign of George II, it therefore gained the minister’s backing and an Act was passed the following year. A condition was that the proprietors paid compensation to the Bishop, as well as the Duchess of Marlborough (Lord of the Manor of Wimbledon on the south bank), for their loss of ferry income. Furthermore, they and their staff had the privilege of crossing the bridge for free, which led to abuse by those claiming such a right. The sum of £62 was also to be divided annually between the widows and children of the watermen of Fulham and Putney. The bridge company sold thirty shares in the venture at £1,000 each. They then purchased the ferry for the large amount of £8,000.

Five designs were considered for the new Fulham Bridge as it was then known. Although accounts vary, it would appear that the successful design was by Sir Joseph Ackworth (who also designed bridges at Windsor, Kingston, Chertsey, Staines and Dachet) and William Cheseldon (a surgeon at either or both St. Thomas’s and Chelsea hospitals). It was constructed by the royal carpenter, Thomas Phillips, and the official opening was in November 1729.

The bridge was built entirely of wood, 786 feet long and 24 feet wide. It had 26 spans of various widths, supported on piers that were v-shaped, providing triangular platforms at road level in which pedestrians could take shelter from passing carriages and wagons. The cost was slightly under £9,500. It was built in line with Fulham High Street but as that was not directly in line with Putney High Street a curve was created in the bridge on the Putney side in front of the church so it did not have to cross the river at an angle. A large toll gate-house stood across the passage-way on the Fulham side, which also acted as the bridge company’s office, with a smaller red-brick toll-house on the Putney side. Two toll-collectors were stationed at each end, dressed in dark blue gowns and hats, carrying staves with a metal head. If anyone passed on either side without paying their fee a bell was rung to warn the toll-house on the far side. It was originally illuminated by oil lamps, which were replaced by gas lamps in 1845.

After the bridge opened there was an increase in traffic passing from one bank to the other, particularly from stage coaches, successfully bringing in tolls for the company. However much of the income was required to maintain the wooden structure, which was regularly hit by barges passing underneath, as well as occasional damage from ice floating downstream in winter.

A notable event during the life of the old bridge was the attempted suicide in 1795 of Mary Wollstonecraft, the feminist writer. She was saved by two watermen but died in 1797 shortly after giving birth to her daughter, Mary, who went on to marry Percy Bysshe Shelley and to write the novel Frankenstein.

Fulham Bridge was not handsome according to contemporary accounts. In The Book of the Thames, published in 1859, the author wrote:

We resume our voyage…we come in sight of the ugly structure – ungainly piles of decaying wood – which, crossing the Thames, unites the villages of Putney and Fulham.

The bridge was taken over by the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1879 and became toll-free the following year.

The old wooden crossing was not strong enough to withstand increasing road traffic and the spans too narrow for river traffic so it was replaced by a new, stone structure. The new crossing, to be known as Putney Bridge, was slightly upstream of the old and in line with Putney High Street, allowing it to be constructed while the older was still in place. The more traditional design was by Joseph Bazalgette, engineer of the MWB, with his son Edward assisting on the project. It was 700 feet long and 44 feet wide, with five arches and a central span of 150 feet. Pipes of the Chelsea Waterworks Company were laid under its surface. The new bridge was opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales in May 1886. Overall it is quite a plain structure but is pleasantly decorated with ornate lamps.

From 1909 trams ran over the bridge and it was thereafter too congested. Twenty years later the London County Council decided to widen it by 30 feet to its current width, with work completed in 1933. To achieve the widening the churches on both banks each lost part of their graveyards.

Sources include: Peter Matthews ‘London’s Bridges’; Edward Walford ‘Old & New London’; S.C. Hall ‘The Book of the Thames’; Ian Pay etc. ‘London’s Bridges – Crossing the Royal River’; John Richardson ‘Annals of London’.

< Back to Bridges and Tunnels

The Port of London Authority has been the guardian of the tidal River Thames for over a century, although in recent decades its role has changed substantially from that for which it was originally conceived.

In the late 18th century the main issue at the Port of London had been the lack of facilities for berthing and unloading ships, leading to lengthy delays and congestion. The government set up a commission to consider the problem at that time, leading to the creation of docks owned by individual companies. A hundred years later there were too many docks of the wrong kind, a lack of coordination between the various dock owners, and no effective authority to manage the river. In 1900 the government once again set up a royal commission to consider the problems. During their investigation the eminent commissioners made visits to London’s docks and wharves, as well as other major British ports, and made enquiries of Continental ports such as Hamburg and Rotterdam.

Some of the findings during the review process were that the facilities in the port were outdated because of lack of investment; the river was too shallow to allow ships to reach the upper docks and wharves due to neglect by the Thames Conservancy; there were divisions of responsibility that obstructed improvement of the Port; the turnaround times for loading and unloading ships were too slow; railway connections were poor; and docking charges were too high. The docks were not up to modern standards but the commission believed they were capable of further development. The recommendation, published in June 1902, was that a single public authority should be created to manage both the docks and the tidal river, from Teddington down to the sea.

The government considered the problem and began the process of nationalizing London’s docks. The creation of the Port of London Authority was introduced in the King’s Speech at the Opening of Parliament in November 1903. It was then delayed for several years as discussions took place about how the Port should be organized. There were those who believed the plans were a dangerous move towards socialism. Some advocated creating new, more efficient and cheaper wharves instead of upgrading the enclosed docks. The first attempt at a Bill was abandoned by the Conservative government. In the meantime, alternative Bills were promoted by the London & India Docks, the Thames Conservancy, and London County Council, and another was for the amalgamation of the London & India and Millwall companies.

In the summer of 1906 David Lloyd George, President of the Board of Trade in the new Liberal government, visited some of the Continental ports to investigate how they were managed. He came to the conclusion that a single nationalized authority was indeed the best solution. He proceeded to strike a deal with the dock companies, and the Port of London Act was passed in December 1908 despite some opposition. The final acquisition of the London docks and their storage facilities was concluded under Lloyd George’s successor at the Board of Trade, Winston Churchill.

The management of the tidal River Thames and its docks were assigned to the Port of London Authority, which began operating in March 1909, and was accountable to the Board of Trade. It was headed by a Board consisting of between 15 and 28 members representing all the various interested parties, including the government, shipowners, wharfingers, lightermen, London’s public authorities, Trinity House, the National Ports, the Admiralty, and the workers. Up to four of the members could be nominated by the London County Council, two each by the City of London and Board of Trade, and one each by the Admiralty and Trinity House. One each of the LCC and Board of Trade members were to represent the labour force.

Following the example of the Mersey Docks & Harbour Board, the PLA was created as a non-profit, self-governing trust in which any excess revenues would be used to improve the river and port facilities or to reduce charges. The Authority took on obligations for maintenance of the river channels, provision of moorings, regulation of river traffic, the licensing of wharves, the removal of wrecks, and the prevention of pollution. It took over the duties of the Thames Conservancy on the Lower Thames, the latter thereafter having responsibility only for the upper, non-tidal river. Registration of licensing of craft, watermen and lightermen was taken from the Watermen’s Company. Responsible for 69 miles of tidal river downstream from Teddington to the Thames Estuary, the PLA had the authority and scope to solve many of the long-term problems, including dredging the river and regulating dock labour. In 1910 the PLA created its own police force and ambulance service. A Criminal Investigation Department was formed in 1913. Trinity House retained jurisdiction over pilotage on the river as well as for buoys and lighting. The City of London continued to deal with health issues regarding ships, passengers and cargoes.

The PLA inherited almost 3,000 acres of estate, including that of the London & India, Millwall, and Surrey Commercial companies, with 32 miles of quays, as well as 17 London County Council passenger piers. The numerous riverside wharves remained in private hands. Towage within the docks was the responsibility of the Authority although on the open river it remained in the hands of private tug companies. At the time of its creation it employed over 11,000 people, almost all of them men. Most were ordinary dockers for cargo-handling but there were also those with specialist skills and training such as dockmasters, stevedores, timber porters, barge-handlers, coopers, divers and inspectors. Others undertook clerical work in the offices or packed and bottled. Over 1,000 worked in the headquarters and dock offices, more than 7,000 as permanently employed dock-workers, plus an average of around 3,000 casual labourers hired each day. The number of workers increased by 1911 to over 13,000, remaining fairly constant until after the Second World War.

The first chairman of the PLA was the energetic and forceful Sir Hudson Kearley MP. As Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade he had been responsible for steering the Port of London Act through the House of Commons. Starting work at 16 for the Tetley tea company, he made his fortune as the founder of the tea importer Kearley & Tonge and the International Stores grocery retailer, which had 200 branches. He was elevated to become Lord Devonport in 1910.

Until the early 18^th century the only way to cross the River Thames downstream of Kingston was to pay to pass over London Bridge, or take a ferry or a water taxi. Any proposal to build a new bridge was immediately and vociferously opposed by the powerful forces of the City of London Corporation, which owned London Bridge, or the Company of Watermen, which upheld the monopoly of the ferrymen.

In 1664 a proposal was put to the Privy Council for a bridge to replace the horse-ferry between Westminster and Lambeth, backed by the MP for Westminster. It was opposed by the the Mayor of London, as well as the Archbishop of Canterbury who profited from the ferry. The City of London Corporation provided Charles II with a much-needed loan of £100,000 and the idea for the bridge subsequently went no further. Another proposal in 1721 had much the same fate, with petitions against it from the City of London, the Company of Watermen, the West Country Bargemen, the Borough of Southwark and the inhabitants of London Bridge. In 1726, however, Parliament was finally persuaded to pass an Act for the building of a bridge across the Thames between Fulham and Putney, for the convenience of travellers to the south-west.

As the suburbs immediately to the west of the City of London continually expanded during the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries ever greater numbers of people were inconvenienced in crossing the river. The matter was once more put before Parliament by the Earl of Pembroke and an Act finally passed in 1736 for the building of a new bridge, as well as various improvements on both sides of the river. It was agreed that the ferrymen would receive £25,000 in compensation and the Archbishop of Canterbury £21,000.

Five locations were considered, from the old Whitehall Palace in the north to the Horseferry at Millbank in the south and it was decided to build the bridge from the middle of these, at New Palace Yard on the Westminster bank. A state lottery was held to raise funds but it failed and four further lotteries held. When even those did not produce enough money the promoters of the bridge were forced to continually approach Parliament for additional funding.

London Bridge had been constructed in the early 13^th century and the crossing at Fulham was a simple wooden affair. No major bridge of a modern design had ever been built in or near London, so the Commissioners of the Act had to find an engineer with the necessary skills to undertake the work at a reasonable price. Several of London’s architects, including the elderly Nicholas Hawksmoor, John Price (then building St. George’s church at Southwark), Batty Langley, and John James all provided opinion and drafts but none had the necessary experience that was required, and were probably too expensive. The initial idea was to build the bridge of stone piers to support a wooden structure and the Commissioners turned to a Swiss-born engineer by the name of Charles Labelye, an expert on land drainage and harbour works, then working in England, who was able to produce a cost-effective plan.

The Earl of Pembroke, an amateur architect who had been closely associated with the initiation of the plans, laid the first stone at a ceremony at the beginning of 1739. After the first two piers were completed the Thames froze over for two months and the piers became an attraction, with people walking across the ice and climbing up them on ladders. (The event was recorded in a landscape painting by the artist Jan Griffer, which now belongs to the Guildhall collection).

During the pause in work caused by the freeze, those with greater ambition for the venture pushed for it to be made entirely of masonry instead of wood. Andrew Jelfe and Captain Samuel Tuffnell (the latter being the mason to Westminster Abbey) were hired as master builders to work under Labelye. Large trenches were dug into the river at low tide which were then filled with timber boxes, part-filled with masonry. The boxes were sunk into the holes, water pumped out, and further masonry added. Piling was undertaken using a horse-powered machine invented by a Swiss watchmaker named James Vauloué. The bridge was finished in brick, and Portland and Purbeck stone.

The artist Canaletto created his famous painting of the bridge while it was still under construction. He included a number of features that were planned but never implemented. Those errors were repeated in his later depictions and even copied by other artists.

There were separate contracts given for various arches, which led to unequal settlement of the piers. Just as work was being completed one of them began to subside, causing a large amount of extra work and a delay in completion of several years. The original budget was £90,000, yet the final cost was the vast sum of almost £400,000 including the approaches. After twelve years from its start the bridge was finally complete and opened in a midnight ceremony in November 1750, with celebrations at the new Bear Inn on the Westminster side. In its first few days it was such a great attraction that many people could only cross the river by ferry! The bridge was a public enterprise and therefore toll-free from the beginning.

The final structure of fifteen arches was an engineering and design masterpiece of its time. Along the parapet were alcoves in which to shelter, built over the bridge piers. The bridge authorities employed twelve watchmen to ensure nothing untoward took place within them at night or for tradesmen to set up stalls. The dirt carriageway required constant watering during summer months to prevent dust. It was originally lit at night by 32 oil lamps, later replaced by gas lamps.

There were consequences due to the need for new roadways leading to the bridge on either bank. At Westminster many of the old, squalid houses in narrow streets around Old Palace Yard were demolished and replaced. Parliament Street was laid out in 1756 and Whitehall widened. On the Lambeth side Westminster Bridge Road was laid out eastwards to connect it with Borough High Street. When Blackfriars Bridge was opened in 1769 a roadway was continued southwards from there to connect with Westminster Bridge Road at St. George’s Fields, with the junction known as St. George’s Circus.

Labelye was handsomely rewarded for his work but found himself abused by jealous Englishmen, never writing the book of the venture he had planned, and he left for France after work was completed.

The handsome structure became one of London’s internationally recognized tourist attractions, with many artists making contemporary paintings, including by Canaletto, Samuel Scott, and William Marlow. In 1802 it inspired Wordsworth to write his poem Upon Westminster Bridge.

The original bridge lasted until the 1850s by which time it was suffering from structural problems requiring it to be replaced by the present version.

Sources: Peter Matthews ‘London’s Bridges’; John Richardson ‘The Annals of London’; John Summerson ‘Georgian London’; National Views of London (1835); John Pudney ‘Crossing London’s River’.

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The major London docks of the early 19^th century were created for sailing ships. Their developers could not foresee that within a few decades steam-powered, iron-hulled vessels would be built so large they were unable to enter those docks. The result was that massive new basins were opened further downriver as the Port of London moved eastwards.

There was a period of rapid expansion of the Port in the early 19^th century in which the West India, London and East India Docks were opened on the north bank of the Thames at the Isle of Dogs, Wapping and Blackwall respectively. South of the river a large patchwork of docks, and ponds for floating timber, was created by several companies on the Rotherhithe peninsula, which was also home to a whaling fleet. That first new dock boom ended with the opening of St. Katharine’s near the Tower of London in 1828.

The growth of Britain’s economy, and an overseas empire, ensured that manufacturing in London and beyond continued to increase, and the growing wealth of individuals created greater demand for consumer goods. Raw materials were required, and exports of manufactured goods could be sold around the world. A significant cargo was coal, brought down the coast from the North East of England. The new docks of the early 19^th century,  as well as the many riverside wharves, provided the facilities that ensured that much of that traffic passed through the Port of London.

Intense competition between the individual dock companies and wharves had reduced the business at the West India Docks, which relied heavily on income from warehousing. The East India Company lost its monopoly on trade with India in 1813 and with China in 1833 and no longer traded with its own fleet of ships as they had for the previous two centuries. To ensure their survival the East and West India Dock Companies agreed to merge in 1838, authorized in one of the first Acts of Parliament approved by the new Queen Victoria.

After the 1820s it was the port’s labourers who had largely borne the brunt of the intense competition between the many docks and wharves. In a system called the ‘call-on’ thousands of men waited outside the dock gates each day in the hope of being chosen for a few hours work, for which they were paid a low hourly-rate. When work was slack they could wait for days in all weathers without employment. Even when chosen, many were so weak from malnutrition they could work for only a short time. The call-on became a way of life for generations of families and entire neighborhoods. Dock work was also dangerous, with regular injuries and death without compensation for the men or their families. It was a system that continued for the following century and a half.

Sailing ships had to travel according to seasons, when the winds were blowing in the necessary direction to propel them across the Atlantic, or around Africa on their journey from the Far East. The introduction of iron-hulled steam engines with propellers allowed ships to navigate whatever the wind, reducing the voyage from New Zealand from four months to eight weeks. They revolutionized shipping during the second half of the 19^th century and had a major impact on the Port of London. Iron hulls allowed vessels to be bigger and thus carry more cargo and be more cost-effective. Nevertheless, the introduction of steam and iron did not happen overnight. It was only in the 1880s that British-registered steam tonnage exceeded that of sail. It took time for steam-driven craft to prove their reliability. Coaling stations also had to be established and fuel supplied at points around the world before long-distance voyages were possible.

By the mid-century new ships were being built that were already too big to navigate as far along the Thames as the upper docks. Nor were they able to enter through the relatively small locks into any of the existing docks, which were anyway too shallow to receive them. Furthermore, inland transport had been revolutionized by railways but the original docks were hemmed-in and unable to easily expand for railway sidings. If London was to continue to survive and grow as a port it needed new docks or wharves for the steam age of the second half of the 19^th century.

A group of developers therefore obtained an Act of Parliament in 1850 to create a new enclosed dock to accommodate these larger vessels, with a larger entrance lock and basin than its predecessors. The new Victoria Dock was at Plaistow Marshes, east of Bow Creek, further downstream than the others. Being so remote from London had been a problem when the East and West India docks had been created fifty years earlier. The new dock was the first to be linked to the rest of the country by railway so that not an issue in its case.

The previous docks had been established by merchants and ship-owners, whereas the men behind the Victoria Dock were civil engineers with experience of building railways. Being marshland, remote from London and with little purpose until that time, the developers were able to purchase the land cheaply. Much of the time it had been below water-level and flooded but that made excavation easier for the purposes of creating a basin.

The new dock had a half a mile of quay on each side of its vast single basin. Railway tracks were laid alongside both sides so that cargo could be loaded directly from ships into goods wagons, to be taken into the dock storage sheds or out onto the national railway system. On the north quay were the company offices, with tobacco warehouses, wine vaults and coal sidings. Storage for other types of goods such as salt, jute and guano stood on the opposite quay. The dock’s huge entrance lock with hydraulic gates was 70 per cent larger than the nearby East and West India Docks. The Victoria Dock was opened by Prince Albert in 1855.

The large peninsula on the east side of London that forms a great southward loop of the Thames is the Isle of Dogs. It is today dominated by the vast gleaming towers of the financial district that is generally known as Canary Wharf. In the shadow of those skyscrapers, at the centre of the ‘island’, is the large inverted L-shape body of water that is Millwall Dock. For over a hundred years it was, along with its larger neighbour the West India Docks, a major part of the Port of London.

The first great London dock-building boom occurred during the Napoleonic Wars at the beginning of the 19^th century, when the West India, London, East India and Surrey Docks came into being. Given 21 year monopolies (or having the specialty of unloading timber in the case of the latter), their creators prospered. When the exclusive rights ended, developers and financiers saw an opportunity to create the St. Katharine Docks in the 1820s. Thereafter business became more competitive. Profits fell, eventually leading to amalgamations of the dock companies.

Despite the fragile finances of the docks there were still those who believed an opportunity existed for new entrants, particularly after the repeal of the Corn Laws that once again brought imports of grain to the port. The West India Docks had opened across the north of the Isle of Dogs at the beginning of the century yet fifty years later most of the centre of the peninsula, around the hamlet of Millwall and the medieval church of St. Mary, remained as undeveloped, windswept, agricultural land. Along the riverside were small independent wharves owned by shipwrights and maritime businesses.

In the late 1850s one of the Millwall wharf-owners, oil merchant Nathaniel Fenner, had the idea of creating a T-shaped enclosed dock behind the wharves, with the central basin leading northwards towards the West India Docks. His dock was to be connected to the river by locks to both the east and west of the peninsula. Fenner’s business model was different to earlier docks in that its quays would be let out to individual businesses to operate their own warehouses. The idea at Millwall was that surplus space would attract factories and shipbuilding yards, each paying rent to the company. He commissioned the engineer Robert Fairlie to draw up plans but, needing capital for the project, contacted the more eminent engineer William Wilson. Wilson submitted the plan to Parliament and attracted the interest of further developers and engineers. Fenner and Fairlie had in the meantime been sidelined so they raised objections to the Parliamentary Bill. In order to pacify them, Wilson and his partners paid the originators of the scheme substantial sums of money, with Fenner given a seat on the Board of the newly-formed Millwall Freehold Land & Dock Company.

Financing for the project proved more difficult than anticipated. (The long-established East & West India Dock Company were already struggling to raise more than £500,000 in order to transform their City Canal across the Isle of Dogs into a new south dock). Two hundred and four acres of land were acquired in order to create 52 acres of dock and 152 acres of wharves and warehouses. The company was forced to enter into finance arrangement fees that increased the amount to be raised but did not achieve the objective. Plans were scaled back to two basins and altered to make the project more affordable. Work to create the Millwall Dock began in 1866 and completed in a year and a half, employing 3,000 construction workers and steam-powered pumping engines to drain the marshy land.

When completed, the Millwall Dock had an unusual 36 acre inverted L-shaped basin, with an entrance to the river on the west side of the peninsula. It was the first of the docks to be created with a dry dock, of 413 feet in length. The planned entrance to the east never materialized. While ships were beginning to grow larger, the Millwall Dock was opened with an entrance lock of only 80 feet in width, which could never be enlarged, forever restricting the size of vessels that could enter.

As with the earlier Victoria Dock, Millwall had rail connection from the beginning, the first to accommodate passengers. By that time a branch of the Blackwall Railway passed through the West India Docks down to its terminus at North Greenwich station at the southern tip of the Isle of Dogs, serving the Millwall quays en-route. Steam locomotives were banned from the West India Docks as a fire precaution, however, so trains were pulled by horses on the Isle of Dogs section of the railway in the early years.

Maritime commerce and voyages of discovery required finance, and Antwerp had by the 16^th century become Europe’s major money market. It was largely through the efforts of Thomas Gresham that a new financial market was established in London that would eventually supersede its Continental rival, laying the foundation for the City to become the world’s foremost commercial centre. Gresham was also responsible for establishing London’s earliest science college, centuries before the foundation of the capital’s universities.

The growth in trade in London, particularly the funding of voyages of exploration in the 16^th century, led to an increasing number of merchants and syndicates raising finance within the City. International shipping and trading was a lucrative but risky business and merchants needed to share that risk. Initially they would do business with each other in the streets. Lombard Street, named after Italian financiers from Lombardy who had settled there, was the main centre for this. Other locations used were in and outside of St. Paul’s Cathedral or within the halls of the Livery Companies. In the 15^th century a bourse had been established in Antwerp and the London authorities considered the idea of such a venture in Leadenhall market but nothing came of the plan.

Two of London’s leading men of the mid-16^th century were the Gresham brothers, John and Richard. They were hard-working members of the Mercers’ Company who both amassed a fortune and rose to become Mayor of London. John was one of the founders of the Muscovy Company. Richard, who lent money to Henry VIII, was knighted in 1531 and John six years later. Richard proposed a new establishment in Lombard Street where merchants could meet to do business with each other but he died before the plan could be realised.

It would be left to Richard’s second son to accomplish the idea. Thomas was born in Milk Lane in around 1518. At 17 he joined his uncle John’s drapery business, working in both London and the Low Countries. Living between the two, Thomas was able to speak both English and Flemish as well as French and classical languages. He also studied law at Gray’s Inn in London. While still an apprentice, he came to the attention of Henry VIII’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, and began undertaking errands on the Continent for the King. Following his apprenticeship Thomas gained the right to membership of the Mercers’ Company in 1543. Three years later he took control of the family business in the Netherlands, exporting woollen cloth from England and importing fine cloth and armaments. When English cloth became less competitive at the Continental markets in the 1540s he diversified into metals.

During the reign of Henry VIII the English Crown was funded in part by borrowing at the Antwerp bourse and during the reign of Edward VI it was managed by the royal agent William Dansall. Interest rates on the bourse were often manipulated by the Habsburg monarchy and when Dansall was forced to pay a higher rate of interest he was displaced by the King’s council with disastrous consequences to the cost of their borrowing. Dansall was therefore replaced by Gresham who then had good fortune when the price of bullion rose dramatically, giving him an opportunity to substantially reduce the Crown’s loans.

Gresham’s moment of glory was cut short when the young Edward VI died and was succeeded by his sister Mary. He and his fellow Merchant Adventurers were suddenly out of favour due to their association with the Duke of Northumberland who had attempted to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne. Gresham returned to his commercial activities.

In 1544 Thomas married Anne Ferneley, the wealthy widow of a mercer, gaining an additional business as well as estates in Suffolk and Norfolk. The couple purchased a house in Cheapside and also had property in Antwerp. As he acquired or inherited further country estates his activities and income adjusted towards his properties and royal duties and away from mercantile commerce.

Royal borrowing did not go smoothly during Gresham’s removal and he was soon reappointed, resuming office in November 1553, although his relationship with Queen Mary’s council was not cordial. He quickly repaired damage done during his absence and when interest rates in Antwerp subsequently soared he instead borrowed at lower cost from Spanish lenders. During the following two years he again borrowed favourably in Antwerp but when rates rose again in 1556 he was removed from his post for a year and a half, during which time the lending of Queen Mary’s government reached much higher levels.

When Gresham was reinstated as royal agent following Mary’s death the Antwerp exchange was no longer under the influence of the Habsburgs and dealt primarily in commercial investment. In a much more stable environment he was able to borrow more favourably for Queen Elizabeth and greatly reduce the Crown’s loans. Now with the full support of the monarch and her chief minister, William Cecil, he became involved in several government services and initiatives. Gresham was knighted in 1559 for his services to the Crown and continued as the royal agent for the first nine years of Elizabeth’s reign.

John Evelyn was a 17^th century intellectual, writer and gardener who, like his friend and contemporary, Samuel Pepys, kept a diary that gives us much information about the momentous events in English and London history that he witnessed. He was also an enthusiastic correspondent, many of his letters having been preserved. Evelyn associated himself with just about everyone of importance in Restoration London, including the royal family, and there were few of the grand projects of the time that he was not somehow part of.

John Evelyn was born in Surrey into a family whose wealth was based on gunpowder production, and he grew up in Lewes. Attending Oxford University, he finished his education at Middle Temple in London, during which time he witnessed some of the events that led up to the Civil War, including the execution of the Earl of Stafford. He joined the Royalist army for a time but went to Italy and France to avoid the conflict and in 1647 married the daughter of the Royalist ambassador in Paris. By the time of the execution of Charles I Evelyn and his wife were back in England and he purchased a house from his father-in-law at Sayes Court at Deptford, close to the royal naval dockyard, where he began to create a garden.

During the Interregnum period Evelyn sent intelligence information in code to his wife’s father in Paris and after the Restoration he was favoured by Charles II for his loyalty and assistance, becoming an advisor to the King throughout his reign.

Like a number of his contemporaries, Evelyn had a great interest in new kinds of scientific, geographic and philosophical ideas and in 1660 was a founder member of the Royal Society. During a visit by Samuel Pepys to Deptford in November 1665 Evelyn instructed him on methods of art (which he himself had learnt from Prince Rupert) and read him some of his works about gardening as well as plays and poems he had written. In his diary Pepys concluded: “a most excellent person he is…being a man so much above others.”

In 1661 Evelyn published his pamphlet Fumifugium, or the Inconveniencie of the Aer and Smoak of London Dissipated in which he criticised the way that smoke and noxious waste from industries such as lime-burning and soap-boiling were polluting London’s air. “It is this horrid Smoake which obscures our Churches and makes our Palaces look old, which fouls our Clothes and corrupts the Waters” he wrote. Charles II was in agreement and commanded Evelyn to draw up a Bill to put before Parliament to prohibit such pollution but nothing immediately came of it. However, the point must have been in people’s minds when plans were being drawn up after the Great Fire because his ideas were included in the post-fire royal proclamation and the subsequent Parliamentary Rebuilding Acts.

When he returned from exile Charles II was appalled by the poor and dirty condition of London compared with the cities he had seen on the Continent. He created a Royal Commission ‘for reforming the buildings, ways, streets, and incumrances, and regulating the hackney coaches in the City of London’. It was headed by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Clarendon and the Royal Surveyor, Sir John Denham, and including Evelyn and the King’s financial advisor Stephen Fox. They met regularly during 1663 and 1664.

As ever more ships were being built in England the requirement for suitable wood, particularly oak, had out-stripped supply during the previous centuries. Following the Restoration, the Navy Board turned to the Royal Society for an answer to the problem, which in turn commissioned Evelyn, as a horticulturalist, to prepare a paper. The result was his Sylva or Discourse of Forest Trees and the Propagation of Timber in his Majesty’s Dominion, published in 1664. The large work contains much practical advice on the growing of trees and he implores the land-owning classes to protect woods and forests. The book was still being reprinted into the 19^th century and in the 1679 edition Evelyn claims that it had led to the planting of a million oak trees. Over one hundred years later, after the defeat of Napoleon, the historian Isaac D’Israeli (father of the future Prime Minister) wrote: “Inquire at the Admiralty how the fleets of Nelson have been constructed and they can tell you it was with the oak that the genius of Evelyn planted.”

During his self-exile in France Evelyn spent time travelling to Europe’s great cities such as Amsterdam, Rome and Sienna where he was impressed by their town planning and layout. Rome in particular had undergone a major renewal within the previous century under Pope Sixtus V in the latter 1580s and Evelyn was full of ideas of what could be done to London. In 1664 he translated a French publication regarding architecture. As fellow members of the Royal Commission considering the state of London’s streets, Evelyn made the acquaintance of Christopher Wren who shared his interest in architecture. When it was decided that Wren should travel to Paris in 1665 to inspect the city Evelyn was able to offer advice on what he should see there.