The Sun.
London, England, 1831-11-29 00:00:00

CIVIL ENGINEERS.

" Stit,—A copy of Mr. Peter Jeffery', petition to the
Honourable House of Commons, relative to the state of
New London Bridge, has been transmitted to us through
you, by the direction of the Committee of the Corporation
of London, appointed to carry into execution the Acts of
Parliament fur the rebuilding of London Bridge, accompa-
nied by a request that we would examine the bridge, and
report our opinion on so much of the petition as relates to
the state of the bridge, and that we should also report
whether, from the construction of the bridge, and materials
and workmanship thereof, there is any danger of its sta-
bility to he apprehended, either in its present state, or on
the removal of the old bridge.
" Mr. Jeffery met us on the 21st September, ad the
greater part of the day was occupied in hearing his state-
ments, and, in his presence, taking the first measurements
of all the supposed defects which he pointed out to us. On
the 22d, Sir John Rennie, and Sir Edward Banks, the
contractors, attended us at the bridge, and we have since,
during several weeks, taken their statements and those of
the resident engineers, and such superintendents, agents,
and workmen, as they (the engineer and contractor)
thought proper to be examined.
" The contract specification for building the bridge has
also been laid before us, and plans, showing the mariner
in which the works were executed, have been furnished
for our examination. We ourselves accurately ascertained
both at high and low water, and also by means of the spiral
level, the levels and perpendiculars, and have minutely ex-
amined the various parts of the bridge, with a view to its
quality, and to discover if any fracture had taken place.
Accurate soundings of the river near the new bridge, and
also below the old bridge, have been taken, to enable us to
form our judgment as to the present and future stability of
the work, and we have fixed permanent standing marks
with which the levels of any part of the bridge may in
future be compared.
" Before proceeding to any detail, it may be proper to
observe, generally, that although there is an irregularity
in the levels, and in the face of the work, which we shall
afterwards have to describe, the only pier in which we
could discover the smallest appearance of fracture, was in
a few stones of the third pier, and even that has no ap-
pearance of being recent, and is so small, that we were
doubtful if it did not arise from natural defects, or joints
in the stones themselves. So far as we can discover, no
pains have been spared in regard to the materials and work-
manship. We observed only a few cracked arch-stones
in the whole bridge, and even these may have been caused
by imperfections in the particular stones, which are some-
times not discoverable until a pressure comes upon them.
The parapet of the bridge is as perfect a specimen of gra
nite work as we have ever seen."
After minutely detailing the irregularities of the piers,
the report proceeds :
" Our next endeavour was to ascertain the cause of
these irregularities ; and, in the first place, we would ob-
serve that, in a great work of this kind, some deviation
from perfect accuracy is to be calculated upon, both in
comparing the levels of different parts with each other,
and with a fixed standard ; the former arising from the
difference in the courses of stone and the unavoidable in-