Spanning Centuries: London Bridge
Until 1729, London Bridge was the capital’s only crossing over the Thames and a microcosm of the city it served, lined with houses and shops on either side. Leo Hollis looks at the history of an icon.
Every city has its foundation stones, often wrapped up in myth, conjecture and odd truths: Rome was created out of the walls built by Romulus on the Palatine Hill; Paris; Paris was born of an artificial island midstream of the Seine; London emerged out of a river crossing.
In AD43 soldiers of the army of Emperor Claudius chased their routed enemy up the river following the gruesome Battle of the Medway in Kent. According to the Roman historian Cassius Dio, as the natives crossed the river, darting between the shingle islets and mud banks, the legionnaires continued their pursuit:
German units swam across, and others crossed a little higher upstream by a bridge. They attacked the British on all sides and cut off many of them; but rash pursuit led them into trackless marshes, where many were lost.
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