a comfort and defence had been lost when The Bridge had gone. Such a moment we know of in 1014-half a century before William the Norman. Olaf of Norway, in support of Ethelred, was fighting the Danes, whom London at the moment favoured. It is narrated in the Heimskringla Saga :—

Now first they made for London and went up the Thames with the host of the ships, but the Danes held the City. On the other side of the river there is a great cheaping-town called Sudervirke (Southwark); there the Danes had great arrayal. They had dug great dykes, on the inner side whereof they had built a wall of turf and stones. A bridge was there across the river betwixt the City and Southwark, so broad that waggons might be driven past each other thereover. On the bridge were made strongholds, both castles and bulwarks, looking down stream, so high that they reached a man above the waist; but under the bridge were poles stuck into the bottom of the river. And when an onset was made, the host stood on the bridge all along it and warded it. King Ethelred was mickle mind-sick how he was to win the bridge. King Olaf made wooden shelters over his boats, and the hosts of the Northmen rowed right up under the bridge and lashed cables round the poles which upheld the bridge, and they fell to their oars and rowed down stream as hard as they might . . . and after this they made an onset on Southwark and won it. And when the townsfolk (of London) saw that the River Thames was won, so that they might not hinder ships from faring up into the land, they were afeard, and gave up the town and took Ethelred in.

Doubtless the piles were partly hewn with axes, and partly pulled apart by the weight of men and ships in their hundreds using the force of the tide. Little, of a truth, shall we ever learn of the true appearance of that bridge, which Romans had founded and broadened, which Alfred had fortified, till (in the words of the Knythynga Saga) it became " the large castle hindering hosts from passing up the river." But we know its breadth and we can perhaps imagine the untaught simplicity of its main lines. There are still standing in this country timber-framed barns, of which a well-known instance is at Harmondsworth. In these buildings, post and tie and brace fit together in natural unaffected charm of strength. There is no adornment and there is nothing unnecessary. And the result is pure refreshment to the eye. With the necessary modifications, of posts half-submerged and crown of roof levelled flat, might the pre-Norman bridge have shown such beauty to Norsemen who hacked and pulled it down. New built before the Conqueror's day, it served later its purpose—

with the Tower and Baynard's Castle as an extra defence for the only city in the kingdom which had refused the inquisition of Domesday. And we know that it had the right, from Ethelred's reign, of demanding toll for its upkeep.

Norman ecclesiastics insisted on ferrying their own material across from Caen and Bayeux, for the rebuilding of cathedral and castle. Stone had come to its own again, and Peter Colechurch in 1176 could avail himself of all the new architectural science in building the bridge, which was to last from Henry II to William IV. Thirty years were needed for the task, in days when material was waterborne, and master-builders took pride in perfect craftsmanship. The city, the church and the great feudal lords would be able to lighten the burden by supply of unskilled labour. Foundation-piles were driven deep into the mud, before ever the stone piers were massively heaped between them. These, again, must be protected against the tide, by wide projecting sterlings or platforms which showed very plainly. They helped in the probably undesigned effect of holding up the flow, through the twenty arches, so that Lambeth Marshes were regularly flooded. For, as the years passed and more forests were cleared, as marshes were reclaimed and more draining was done, a larger volume of water had to seek the sea through the bottle-neck between Southwark and Swan Pier. The span was a short 1000 feet from bank to bank, and of this only 200 feet was left as waterway, the locks varying from eight to twenty feet in width.

Small effort is needed to picture results from this damming, when a heavy incoming tide swept back a storm-swollen river. All low-lying land was submerged. But when the tide turned, and when above the centre lock there was 10-foot depth of water, and very few feet below," the fall " (as it was called) would be perilous. Only for two hours of each tide could large vessels pass with any safety. Thames watermen, expert by generations of inherited experience, knew well enough how to "shoot the bridge "in their wherries. But most frequently they landed their passengers at "The Three Cranes " in Upper Thames Street, and re-embarked them again at Sabbi's Wharf or Billingsgate. A drawbridge between two of the arches allowed sailing-boats to pass through, much in the same way as we may now see Tower Bridge raise its bascules, to allow high-masted steamers to pass to the upper basin.

Remembering for how long the river was the principal street of the Capital; how Royalty proceeded in barge from Greenwich to Whitehall, and how Lord Mayors were summoned to await them there coming by boat; how much the broad water was preferred to narrow mud-clogged lanes, for journeying and for transport of goods; we can judge what was the importance and inconvenience of the bridge with its narrow archways. There was then widespread reason for knowing the phases of the moon and the state of the tide. The City Company of Thames Watermen-with their apprentices and customs and hall-was a real power. Possibly it was only the stage coachmen of a later time who ever approached them in plenitude of monopoly. Oldest almost of prescriptive rights were theirs, so that even when Tower Bridge was opened, within the memory of very many, their vested interests of porterage were redeemed at no inconsiderable sum.

And imposing no less by position than by structure and dignity of finish-was the Plantagenet bridge when it left the hands of Peter Colechurch and his masons; it was further beautified in later reigns, as additions were made for devotion or strength, or civic magnificence. On the central pier was the chapel, raised to Thomas à Becket. The bridge, an architectural feat of the century, was proudly associated with him. His altar should attract rich gifts for its upkeep. The chapel had an upper floor, level with the street, and a crypt reached by a spiral staircase from above, or from the water below. The upper chapel, with its light clustered columns and pointed arch windows, was reckoned beautiful even in that church-building age. The smaller crypt far excelled it in Early English charm. Both were in all probability destroyed before 1600. The architect himself, with an interesting anticipation of Wren's epitaph, chose to be buried beneath his own crypt. His coffin was discovered in 1832, and his bones coldly thrown into the river! Little account did early Victorians make of their master-builders. And yet, and yetwho knows anything of the men whose brains were responsible for the original design of Lincoln Cathedral or the Sainte Chapelle ?

A ferry had plied from time immemorial between Dowgate and the south bank. Legend has it that a miser ferryman left his hoards to an only daughter who, losing her lover, founded a

convent and retired to end her life there. This became the great Priory of St. Saviour, whose mere chapel is now Southwark Cathedral. The Bishop of Winchester's London house alongside was divided from the refectory and Priory Gate by St. Saviour's dock. It was here in St. Mary Overy that the bridge started.

The south approach was guarded by a massive Norman tower with heavily portcullised gateway, and battlements above. These were manned at need by archers and arquebus men, but more usually in Tudor days by the heads and limbs of dismembered misdemeanants. For this was Traitors' Gate, on the south, to match that at St. Botolph, Aldgate, at the eastern gate of the city. Adjoining it was raised the Bridge House, a commanding three-storied building, for management of bridge accounts and revenues. In Tudor days the Corporation added Nonsuch House, as a mansion for the Lord Mayor, importing the timber specially from the Low Countries. It was lordly and wondrously painted, rising on wooden struts from the piers, on the model of what may still be seen in Lindau or Hildersheim. The drawbridge separated Bridge House from Nonsuch House, the Chapel of St. Thomas, and a succession of shops and dwelling houses. The Ponte Vecchio at Florence gives the clearest idea of how a bridge could thus become a mart, for there were 130 such houses and shops on the City end at the time of Henry V.

The City end terminated, as the south had begun, in the enceinte of a church, for the footway passed under the tower of St. Magnus the Martyr, and remains to this day part of the Corporation demesne. The steep incline up Fish Street Hill, rough and narrow, led to Gracechurch Street and Watling Street. The 1832 bridge is 100 feet further up-stream than the one Colechurch began in 1176. During the rebuilding of Adelaide House, in 1921, there was laid bare a part of the second arch and some of the original piles. The shaped stone was sound as ever it had been, and ought to have been permanently preserved as a sample of honest work. Other foundations of later date, but of almost equal interest, concerned the Water Tower and Water Wheel which Peter Morris, a Dutchman, built in 1582. His wheel raised the water to the top of St. Magnus' Tower, whence it was distributed over much of the City.

Quite tragically, in less than a century, the Great Fire, starting VOL 246. No. 501.

H

in Pudding Lane, seventy yards northwards from the church, ran first towards the Bridge and water tower. Had it but spared them with St. Magnus for a space, much of the catastrophe of 1666 might have been stayed. But the fire ran on, and the main lineaments of the Bridge were destroyed for ever. Gone were the overhanging black and white timbered dwellings, shops and palaces, prideful in their beauty and heavily charged for all Londoners with memorable history. Restoration England had grateful memories of Tudor days, when the Bridge was garlanded at midsummer with flowers and leafy birch boughs. Shakespeare himself, passing to the theatre in Southwark, had often trodden the very way on which Faulconbridge had fought. Though much that spoke of a mighty past had perished in the fire, more was buried when William IV and Queen Adelaide laid the foundation stone of Rennie's bridge. The City Fathers attended, "attired in blue coats with buttons impressed with His Majesty's portrait, white waistcoats and trousers." Not even were kneebreeches allowed to maintain touch with Elizabeth's London.

It is only by reading their records that we can begin to realise the veneration that our fathers had during near ten centuries for this parent of all London bridges. We have mentioned the special house which was built for management of bridge estates and revenue. That revenue was manifold and various. It came from tolls, which had been paid for passage, possibly from Alfred's, certainly from Ethelred's days. It came from thankofferings laid on the altar of St. Thomas by pilgrims and merchants when the Canterbury Pilgrimage was the most efficacious penance in Christendom. It came from fines-as when a "Cornhulle " baker, in 1298, made himself liable for 20 shillings towards "the works" of the bridge, if he broke the peace; or, when disputing masons were allowed by the Court of Aldermen to be bound over under pain of 100 shillings against abusive language for the same object-much in the same way as public men to-day fine themselves for a hospital, if they can be proved wrong. London Bridge was then the standard beneficiary. But most of all did revenues for reparation and adornment swell from royal donations, legacies and other benefactions. In 1239, Sir Ralph de Raleg, Knt., grants the release of houses in the parish of St. Dunstan in the East. In 1243, Robert de Southwerke, cobbler, gives a messuage on the Bridge. " Anno 53, Henry III" Rd. Cocus.