Chronicles of London Bridge. Richard Thompson
narrower limits, and the water which comes from the sea into the mouth of the Thames during the flood, not being received by the marshes, must come up into the country, and so swell the tide higher at London than it usually did. The celebrated Sir Christopher Wren was of opinion, that when the foundation of London Bridge was laid, the course of the River was not turned, but that every pier was set upon piles of wood, which were drove as far as might be under low-water mark, on which were laid planks of timber, and upon them the foundation of the stone piers: the heads of the said piles have been seen at a very low ebb, and may be so still when some of the chalk or stone is removed to mend the Sterlings.’
“Maitland, and his Editor Entick, are also both opposed to the idea that the River was turned during the erection of London Bridge, as they evince on page 46 of their ‘History;’ where they ground their objections to it on the following arguments. Firstly, it is supposed that the vestiges of Knute’s Canal—which, as we have seen, took the same course as Stow supposes the River to have taken—might have deceived him; a reason also adopted by Hawksmoor, in the place I last cited. Secondly, the charge of such an immense work is next objected to; as the cost of the ground intended for the trench, the embankment of it, and the damming off the River itself, must have amounted to at least treble the sum which would otherwise have been required to erect the Bridge. The total silence of those Historians who mention the construction of London Bridge, upon the subject of so great a work as the turning of the River, is next insisted upon: and, finally, the length of time which the building occupied—thirty-three years—is adduced as alone sufficient to overthrow the whole hypothesis. ‘For,’ adds the author, ‘had the people concerned in erecting it, had dry ground to have built upon, it might have been finished in a tenth part of the time, and in a much more durable manner.’ Maitland then proceeds to state, that, in 1730, he surveyed the Bridge, in company with Mr. Bartholomew Sparruck, the Water-Carpenter of the same; and that he observed in many places—where the stones were washed from the sterlings—the mighty frames of piles whereon the stone piers or pillars were founded; the exterior parts of which, consisted of huge piles driven as closely together as art could effect. ‘On the tops of these,’ he continues, ‘are laid long planks, or beams of timber, of the thickness of ten inches, strongly bolted; whereon is placed the base of the stone pier, nine feet above the bed of the River, and three below the sterlings; and on the outside of this wooden foundation—and for its preservation—are drove the piles called the sterlings.’ He then goes on to observe, that Mr. Sparruck informed him, that he and the Bridge-Mason had frequently taken out of the lowermost layers of stones in the piers, several of the original stones, which were laid in pitch instead of mortar; and that from this circumstance they imagined, that all the outside stones of the piers, as high as the sterlings, were originally bedded in the same material, to prevent the water from damaging the work. This labour was, he thinks, continued at every ebb tide, until the piers were raised above high-water mark; and hence he argues, that if the Thames had been turned, there would not have been any occasion for the use of pitch, and that Plaster of Paris was not then in use in this country. These are the principal heads of the dispute concerning the turning of the River: to which I only add my own settled conviction, that the course of the Thames was not altered.”
“But pray, my worthy friend,” said I, as he concluded, “what other buildings stood upon the Bridge built by Peter of Colechurch, besides the Chapel of St. Thomas?”
“That is a point,” replied he, “upon which Antiquaries are very far from being decided: for whilst some assert, with Sir Joseph Ayloffe in his account of the Bridge attached to Vertue’s prints, that, at first, there were no houses upon it, and that it was only plainly coped with stone until 1395—late in the reign of Richard II.—others argue that it was built upon to some extent two centuries before, and, indeed, there is proof of this being the case in the reign of King Edward I., as I shall shew you anon. Stow, in his ‘Survey,’ volume i. page 22, says that the Bridge Gate, which was erected at the Southwark end, was one of the four first and principal gates of the City, and stood there long before the Conquest, when there was only a Bridge of timber, being the seventh and last mentioned by Fitz-Stephen. Maitland, at page 30 of his first volume, when he comes to speak of the same erection, denies not only the truth, but even the probability of Stow’s assertions; and, indeed, Stephanides himself says only at page 24, ‘On the West,’—that is of London—‘are two Castles well fortified; and the City wall is both high and thick with seven double gates, and many towers on the North side, placed at proper distances. London once had its walls and towers in like manner on the South, but that vast River, the Thames, which abounds with fish, enjoys the benefit of tides, and washes the City on this side, hath, in a long tract of time, totally subverted and carried away the walls in this part.’ The Latin of this passage commences at ‘Ab Occidente duo Castella munitissima,’ &c. Maitland then goes on to argue, that Fitz-Stephen could have no regard to a gate on the South, there being no wall remaining; ‘whereas,’ says he, ‘on the contrary, it is manifest that his seven gates were in the continued wall on the land side.’
“It is probable, however, that, at a very early period after its erection, towers were reared upon London Bridge, for there was one standing at each end; but of these I shall speak more largely under future years: remarking only, that it is by no means impossible for a Watch-tower and gate to have stood upon the Bridge, even from its very first erection, seeing that it was, as it were, a new key to the City. A sort of Barbican, Mr. Geoffrey, such as you derive your name from; for you remember the essential importance which such buildings were of, and how Bagford speaks of them in his Letter to Hearne, which I have already quoted, page lxii. ‘Here,’ says he, ‘they kept Cohorts of Souldiers in continual service’—for your Barbican Tower was of Roman invention—‘to watch in the night; that if any sudden fire should happen, they might be in a readiness to extinguish it, as also to give notice if an enemy were gathering or marching towards the City to surprise them. In short, it was a Watch-tower by day; and at night, they lighted some combustible material on the top thereof, to give directions to the weary traveller repairing to the City, either with provision or on some other occasion.’
“But to pass from probabilities to certainties, let us now, having got the Bridge fairly built of stone, consider the many events and changes which it hath experienced, from its infancy in the thirteenth Century, to its old age in the nineteenth: and so, my excellent auditor, Here begin the Books of the Chronicles of London Bridge.
“That sorrowful exclamation, ‘No sooner born than dead!’ may well, at the period at which we are now arrived, be uttered over this scarcely completed edifice; for in the night of the 10th of July, 1212, within four years after its being finished, a dreadful conflagration took place upon it. Stow, at page 60 of his ‘Survey,’ cites the Book of Dunmow, William de Packington, and William of Coventry, as his authorities for that excellent account of it which I shall presently repeat to you. Let me, however, first observe, that Packington was Secretary and Treasurer to Edward the Black Prince, in Gascoigne, about 1380. For William of Coventry, I conceive that we should read Walter of Coventry; because the former, who wrote about 1360, is celebrated in page 148 of Bishop Nicolson’s ‘Historical Libraries,’ already cited, as the Author of a work ‘concerning the coming of the Carmelites into England.’ Walter, on the contrary, at page 61, is mentioned as having compiled three books of Chronicles, about the year 1217, which yet remain in Manuscript in Bennet College, Cambridge. The ‘Chronicle of Dunmow,’ which is the other authority quoted by Stow, is now to be found only in a small quarto volume in the Harleian Library of Manuscripts, No. 530, article ii. page 2 a. It consists of a miscellaneous collection of notes, in the hand writings of Stow, Camden, and perhaps Sir Henry Savile; transcribed upon old, stained, and worn-out, paper. The notice of this great fire is very brief, and, with the heading of the extracts, runs thus: ‘Collectanea ex Chronico de Dunmowe.’—’1213. London was burned and the Brydge also, and many peryshed by violence of the fyre.’ Stow’s own account, however, is the most interesting extant, and is as follows. ‘The Borough of Southwark,’ says he, ‘upon the South side of the River of Thames, as also the Church of our Lady of the Canons there,’—that is to say the Church of St. Mary Overies, which changed its name upon being re-founded, in 1106, for Canons Regular, by William de Pont de l’Arche, and William D’Auncy, Norman knights—these ‘being on fire, and an exceeding great multitude