For the Love of London by Julian Beecroft

Author:Julian Beecroft
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Summersdale Publishers Ltd
Published: 2017-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

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ALONG THE RIVER: WESTMINSTER BRIDGE TO THE MILLENNIUM BRIDGE

We have now reached a stretch of the Thames where famous sights greet us continuously from both banks of the river. On the South Bank, beyond County Hall – the old headquarters of the Greater London Council and now home to the London Aquarium – we see the London Eye, one of London’s millennium year landmarks and a tourist favourite that was the world’s tallest Ferris wheel at the time it was built. Beyond this are the two Golden Jubilee pedestrian bridges, completed in 2002, the fiftieth anniversary year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. Sandwiched between them is Hungerford Bridge, the rail viaduct spanning the river from Charing Cross Station on the north bank to Waterloo East station on the south.

As we pass beneath these crossings, we see the Southbank Centre, whose most prominent building is the Royal Festival Hall, while on the Victoria Embankment to the north, the Ancient Egyptian obelisk known as Cleopatra’s Needle still stands where it was first erected in 1878. In fact, this monument has nothing to do with Cleopatra, dating from the reign of the pharaoh Hatshepsut some 3,500 years ago, but was brought to London from Alexandria, where Cleopatra held court a millennium and a half later.

Under Waterloo Bridge – not the structure depicted by Constable but a modern replacement completed in 1945 – we pass the National Theatre on the South Bank and Somerset House on the north, before going under the two Blackfriars Bridges – first the road bridge and then the recently renovated rail bridge whose 4,400 photovoltaic panels made it the world’s largest solar-powered bridge when it reopened in 2014.

Up ahead are two of London’s major landmarks on opposite sides of the river: St Paul’s Cathedral in the City and Tate Modern at Bankside. These are now linked by the Millennium Bridge, a steel suspension bridge for pedestrians which was forced to close on its opening day in 2000 when the number of people using it caused it to wobble alarmingly. It was back to the drawing board for the architects, Foster and Partners, and their engineers, Arup Group, who introduced a series of fluid dampers that stabilised what is now a very popular crossing of the Thames.

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