Talk:London Bridge

message: This article has been heavily vandalised in the past, I would ask that anyone reverting edits look back a little further to make sure you're not reverting to a less obviously vandalised revision - the final section on the current London Bridge was missing from the main article for a month because it had been stripped out completely! Chris 13:47, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism 

message: Question/thought. Old London bridge was demolished after the 1831 completion of the "new" replacement bridge. By the 1830s photography was in its infancy, but undeniably in existance. Were there any photos taken of the two bridges side by side before its demolition, or of the old bridge itself? Graldensblud 17:02, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Photography of old london bridge 

message: While looking through this article, noticed the sold price of the Old London Bridge to Lake Havasu City, Arizona was listed as $12,460,000. This is Incorrect as it was only $2,460,000. This was corrected
--Xemoka 18:14, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Price of Old London Brdige 

message: Under the Old Bridge section, if proposals to build a stone structure weren't made until after 1136, how come William Rufus, who'd died in 1100, started raising funds? 21:14, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  William Rufus 

message: The article says that the current london bridge is over the colorado river.  This is NOT true!  The current london bridge is over the THAMES and the OLD London bridge was REBUILT over the colorado.
:The old london bridge is not over the colorado river but over a canal that leads to Thompson Bay from the colorado.
Actually that's not the old old London Bridge anyway, it's the old new London Bridge. The really old London Bridge, familiar from many prints, only exists now in the form of two pedestrian arches that have been sitting in Victoria Park in Hackney, since 1860. Have taken pix of them, which I will be putting on that page. Can put them up here too, actually...
And Actually the pedestrian arches (one of which is in the Counting House Courtyard of nearby Guy's Hospital) only date drom the 1758 improvements of the mediaeval bridge, when the houses and shops were removed. 79.75.2.246 (talk) 16:48, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  london bridge 

message: What does "shoot the bridge" mean? Perhaps this expression should be replaced if it is not common knowledge what it means (if it is, please excuse my ignorance). Kvaks
:I've now clarified this point. -- ChrisO 23:46, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: "Shoot the bridge"

message: sorry to split hairs but to say that London Bridge was the only bridge in London until Westminster Bridge was built depends how you define "London". I understand that London and Westminster were two separate cities - they still have separate cathedrals - and I think it's only a result of London's suburban expansion that they have sort-of merged, and now come to be considered as one city.
I'm not sure when this happened - I'll look it up - but going back to the 16th century, and the site of where Westminster Bridge is today can't really be said to be in London at all.
So do we say that London means the Greater London area? If so, then Kingston Bridge was built in medieval times, long before Westminster Bridge. Or do we want to use some definition of "London" that includes Westminster but excludes Kingston? If so, then shouldn't we be more specific?
I think it's possible to make this clearer, though I need to check my facts before I could do it myself. Squashy 09:22, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  only bridge in London until Westminster Bridge 

message: "was completed by Rennie's son (of the same name, confusingly) over a seven-year period" I'm confused as to why this was marked "confusingly." I believe it's fairly common for children to be named after their parents, so does it really warrent the comment? Maybe it could read "Rennie's son, of the same name" but the confusingly, I think, really needs to go. I'll just remove it in about a week if no one can present a viable reason as to why it needs to be left in. --Ecurran 03:15, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name confusion? 

message: How was London bridge destroyed? by sinking and fires, yes, but then, how did the fires start? Lightning? Suicide? A prank gone wrong? etc.
Sazuma 12:03, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  How? 

message: If one was built while the other was being destroyed, this suggests that they were the same dimensions. Is this true? The current bridge is a very wide bridge (6 lanes, plus wide pavements). Perhaps someone could clarify 198.240.130.75 10:45, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Old New London Bridge && New New London Bridge 

message: The article currently claims that the bridge blocked 80% of the flow.  What does this mean?  Where did the 80% go?  See Conservation of mass.  Since there were arches for the entire length of the bridge, the bridge spanned the entire river, and I'm assuming special diversion channels were not built to divert away 80% of the flow of the Thames, this doesn't make sense.  Please reword if you understand the original meaning? Thanks. Ufwuct 23:23, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Disputed statistic

message: The claim that Robert P McCulloch bought London Bridge believing that he was buying Tower Bridge is hard to pin down as it is an urban legend that is repeated from time to time, as on this web page .  I have come across this claim in the UK media on several occasions, but it is untrue because McCulloch was photographed standing on old London Bridge by the press and was well aware of what he was buying.--Ianmacm 19:53, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: All of the Ivan Luckin material comes from the citation at How London Bridge Was Sold To The States (from This Is Local London) which is offline at the moment due to a rejig at the website.  In this interview, Luckin specifically denies the claim that McCulloch believed that he was buying Tower Bridge. Whether this is an urban legend is harder to say, although it does get repeated with depressing frequency, eg at . Luckin is also quoted as denying this at . --♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 12:16, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The citation for the Ivan Luckin material was a broken link when I tried it. I found the article at How London Bridge Was Sold To The States (from This Is Local London). Perhaps someone would like to update the citation here and on the article at London Bridge (Lake Havasu City)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.130.170.90 (talk) 05:42, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for pointing this out, I've added a version of the page from WebCite which should be more stable.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 06:04, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: London Bridge and McCulloch

message: The article states: "Not all of the bridge was transported to America" and "so a large part of Rennie's bridge never left the UK". So just how much of the bridge are we talking about? This article says the one in Arizona is 58 feet shorter, and hollow, somewhat different than the Wiki article which states that it has stone cladding over a concrete frame. We need details! --Blainster 00:25, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: How much of the old bridge came to Arizona?

message: The article says their were buildings on each side of the bridge, how is this possible if it was only 26 feet wide. I've never heard of 7 feet deep buildings, let alone seven stories high. Maybe this needs to be looked at.
The article only says Contemporary pictures show it crowded with buildings of up to seven stories in height.
If you look at the picture which is just next to it in the article you can see this is true.  I don't know however if the picture is a misrepresentation.--Jackaranga 11:39, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The article is quite correct. The bridge had houses on it from when it was first built - the income from the rents was part of the way the bridge was funded. At street level, buildings were seven to ten feet wide - but some of this overhung the sides of the bridges, supported on wooden props, so in some cases as little as four feet of the building actually sat directly over the bridge. At higher levels, buildings were built out both above the roadway and the Thames. Source - Patricia Pierce's Old London Bridge, page 51-52. There's a nice diagram in Peter Jackson's book London Bridge - A Visual History which shows a cross-section. -- Kvetner 12:43, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Buildings?

message: The article says :
'This produced ferocious rapids between the piers or "starlings" of the bridge, as the difference between the water levels on each side could be as much as six feet (two metres).'
A height difference of 6 feet over a horizontal distance of 26 feet sounds ridiculous - that's not a bridge, it's a dam. Can anyone cite a source for this ? -- unsigned comment by 82.26.75.241
:I've got 2 books on the bridge at home and will take a look later, but yes, the bridge was to some extent a dam as the pier bases were extremely wide. The massive restraint to flow was one of the things that allowed the Thames to freeze over regularly. -- Kvetner 15:26, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Six feet is quoted in Patricia Pierce's book, page 45, which states that the piers blocked almost half the 405 feet width of the river, so it's actually fairly plausible under rapid tidal flow. Six feet is also quoted in Peter Jackson's book, page 76, which states that the starlings around the pier bases blocked up to 5/6 of the width at low tide. He reprints several old illustrations which certainly make this believable. I'll have a look at the article and see if a citation will help. -- Kvetner 22:22, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Six feet ? 

message: Districts of England article states, unsourced, "The only district boundary that is not vertical is that between the City of London and the London Borough of Southwark. This is because the City today controls the full spans of London Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge, but only half of the river underneath them." If this is true it maybe should be included here, I skip read the article and couldn't find a mention of it. Carlwev (talk) 05:58, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Is this true?

message: I guess this is trying to say that "The bridge's lights were made from Napoleonic cannons". Even if that's the right interpretation, though, there's no citation offered. Piers Fletcher (talk) 15:55, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: "The bridges lights were made from Napolian's canons."

message: So is that the old bridge on the left, the one being replaced? This is the bridge that was 600 years old and had had buildings on it (until they eventually burned), right? --Ragemanchoo (talk) 09:22, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Photo question

message: London Bridge was widened in 1902–04 from 52 to 65 feet (16 to 20 m), in an attempt to combat London's chronic traffic congestion. A dozen of the granite "pillars" quarried and dressed for this widening, but unused, still lie near Swelltor Quarry on the disused railway track a couple of miles south of Princetown on Dartmoor.
Anybody know where this is at? I'm curious. I've looked around the area and can't find it, nor can I find evidence of an abandoned rail line. --Ragemanchoo (talk) 09:22, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Take a look at this item from the BBC Devon website. --♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 21:43, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Unused pillars?

message: The article is suffering from an image logjam at the moment.  There is a poor balance between images and the text, particularly at the bottom of the article.  Images need to be chosen for relevance and balance with the surrounding text.  If no-one objects, I will do some pruning.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 17:39, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: A better presentation of the images would be in a left-right alternating pattern. Generally aiming for a balance of image and text in context (as you say). Kbthompson (talk) 10:13, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Images

message: Question: I've read about nobility travelling via the Thames from Greenwich and Westminster, etc to the Tower (and Queens under arrest coming that way too). Presumably they'd have had to pass the bridge...but the bit about the rapids makes it sound like that was next to impossible. Can someone clarify? Bkhaip (talk) 08:19, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  For anyone wondering at this late date: a barge coming from Greenwich would not have to pass the bridge, as both the Tower and Greenwich are east of the bridge. A barge carrying a prisoner that was coming from Richmond, Westminster, etc. would have to pass under the bridge, and that could only be safely done at high tide. Elizabeth Tudor famously delayed her arrival at the Tower by a full day by writing a letter to Queen Mary that took so much time to complete that the tide had dropped too low to safely shoot the bridge that day. Anyone coming to the Tower who was not under arrest could be trusted to alight from their barge upstream of the bridge, walk past the bridge, and hire a waterman to take them the rest of the way. --NellieBlyMobile (talk) 02:30, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Question

message: I've heard someone called john reemie, and in the article it says Michael Leeming desinged it.
who to believe?
Noghiri (talk) 19:27, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Michael Leeming designed the current London Bridge, opened in 1973; John Rennie designed the one before that, opened in 1831. There have (probably) been seven bridges here in total. – iridescent 13:37, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who desinged the second London Bridge? 

message: Is this fact true that there is a law left over from medieval times that no one has bothered to change that entitles farmers to drive sheep over the bridge? The C of E.           God Save The Queen! (talk)
Well, you have to be a freeman of the city to do it. It is currently done once a year as a charity event, see the web passim. Just a few sheep backwards and forwards on a blocked off pavement actually.
Davidnugget (talk) 14:45, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sheep 

message: The medieval London Bridge strikes me as being quite ripe for its own article, given that it was slightly more interesting (and completely different) to the current bridge. Would there be support for splitting it off (in a manner similar to Old St Paul's Cathedral? Bob talk 08:55, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Separate article for the medieval bridge? 

message: Any references to evidence of a pre-Roman bridge on the site, apparently discovered a few years ago? 86.176.178.94 (talk) 23:05, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pre-Roman bridge? 

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*Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/archive/2002/03/27/Hertfordshire%2BArchive/5754223.How_London_Bridge_was_sold_to_the_States/
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: It might be better left off the main page until consistent reports can be established  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.202.104.73 (talk) 22:59, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The main page is well catered for; only admins can change it. An article dedicated to the incident (whatever its nature) is in development, but I'm inclined to request limited semi-protection of this page for a day or two. It's not a news article. Haploidavey (talk) 23:07, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Re this edit: It is clunky and isn't really adding anything to say "This is the first time such an attack has happened on this bridge." Likewise, it isn't necessary per WP:NOTNEWS to say "but their details have not been released"; no doubt their identities will be released shortly. This article is about the bridge itself, and it has WP:TOPIC issues to mention the June 2017 attack in any detail when there is already a separate article about it.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 07:00, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Potential Terrorist Event 3/6/2017 

message: I've added subsection anchors for the various incarnations of the bridge. (I noticed there was already one for Old London Bridge- thank you!)
These are used by redirects (e.g. London Bridge (1209)) and in preference to title links, since the latter are prone to breaking whenever someone changes the subsection title. (Indeed, it was this having happened *already* which prompted me to do this in the first place).
It's also intended that people link through the subsection redirects (as recommended) so that any changes, maintenance or updates only require altering the redirect rather than everything that links to it. 
Ubcule (talk) 12:35, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anchors 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on London Bridge. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/archive/2002/03/27/Hertfordshire+Archive/5754223.How_London_Bridge_was_sold_to_the_States/
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080506144638/http://www.contractjournal.com/Articles/1995/12/21/27226/london-bridge-is-still-here.html to http://www.contractjournal.com/Articles/1995/12/21/27226/london-bridge-is-still-here.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120803005416/http://www.thelondonbridgeexperience.com/history-of-london-bridge.asp to http://www.thelondonbridgeexperience.com/history-of-london-bridge.asp
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Nursery Rhyme built in truth?137.118.99.79 (talk) 18:04, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  London Bridge is falling down 

message: This article is about the bridge, not about everything that's happened on it, nor about things that happened nearby, no matter how notable, newsworthy or downright horrific they were at the time. The two paragraphs that cover the two terrorist attacks in great circumstantial detail are not needed. Please note the talk page commentary above, regarding this. The barriers erected after the 2017 incident, and memorial plaques, are the only permanent traces of both attacks at the bridge itself. The bridge itself was not attacked. We have a photo of the barriers erected in response to the first attack, and can add commentary on this in a separate para. Yes or no? Haploidavey (talk) 06:48, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added an appropriate hat for readers' navigation, which I feel is needed as the bridge fabric has been altered as a result. Thanks for drawing attention to your concerns.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 21:41, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terrorist attacks 

message: I'm not an editor, but I'd love to see a reference to Mark Twain's vivid description of the old bridge with its houses in The Prince and the Pauper. He claims there were people who lived and died without leaving the bridge: is there any other source for that idea? 2601:1C2:1B7F:FC30:B457:E02E:6345:2775 (talk) 22:40, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  mentioned by Mark Twain