What are those columns in the Thames at Blackfriars?

[trashpony]

Anyone know? They're big ionic fat red columns in a double row between the train track and the bridge. Were they going to make another set of tracks into the station, make the bridge wider or did they just build them in the wrong place?

 

[MysteryGuest]

When the train goes past I always imagine what it would be like if you had to try jumping from one column to the other without missing and falling into the Thames below. It gives me a delicious little shudder.

 

[editor]

All explained here!
www.urban75.org/photos/london/lon143.html
www.urban75.org/photos/london/lon260.html
www.urban75.org/photos/london/lon381.html

The old bridge wasn't strong enough to take modern trains...

 

[marty21]

All explained here!
www.urban75.org/photos/london/lon143.html
www.urban75.org/photos/london/lon260.html
www.urban75.org/photos/london/lon381.html

The old bridge wasn't strong enough to take modern trains...

i thought it was something like that...cheers

 

[trashpony]

All explained here!
www.urban75.org/photos/london/lon143.html
www.urban75.org/photos/london/lon260.html
www.urban75.org/photos/london/lon381.html

The old bridge wasn't strong enough to take modern trains...

A-ha! Thanks

I'm glad they left the columns - I like them. I'm a bit embarrased there's actually three rows of them rather than two. I've always thought I'd make a shit criminal witness and this has just confirmed it.

 

[BadlyDrawnGirl]

Same story with the old pier at Swanage - extensive sequences of wooden stakes protruding eerily and ghostily from the briny depths.

 

[trashpony]

Same story with the old pier at Swanage - extensive sequences of wooden stakes protruding eerily and ghostily from the briny depths.

Blimey - has that gone? I did my first ever open water dive off the end of Swanage pier. I'd like to say it's a fond memory but I can think of better places to dive tbh!

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

I used to get off at blackfriars all the time and I reckon from the platform you could possibly climb over onto the ledge and make the jump to one of the pillars if you were lucky.

On a low tide one maybe twice a month at exactly the right time you can walk up to and touch the poll closest to the south bank.

Did you know the birds carved on blackfriars bridge on the upstream side are all fresh water fish eating birds and on the down stream side sea water birds.

 

[BadlyDrawnGirl]

Blimey - has that gone? I did my first ever open water dive off the end of Swanage pier.

Yeah...although I'm not sure how new the one that's there now is. I think they must have built it directly parallel to the course of the old one at some stage, possible due to decay.

 

[trashpony]

Did you know the birds carved on blackfriars bridge on the upstream side are all fresh water fish eating birds and on the down stream side sea water birds.

No I didn't but I shall go and have a look now

 

[lang rabbie]

All explained here!
The old bridge wasn't strong enough to take modern trains...

Wasn't the trussed girder structure (to most people's eyes phenomenally ugly, but to industrial archaeologists a thing of beauty) still there until the winter of 1984/1985 rather than having disappeared in 1969 (as claimed in one of those captions?)

Edited to add - I didn't think I was imagining it! 1979 picture

 

[Maggot]

Anyone interested in the London Bridges would do well to read Cross River Traffic by chris Roberts. Full of interesting bridge info.

 

[lang rabbie]

Anyone interested in the London Bridges would do well to read Cross River Traffic by Chris Roberts. Full of interesting bridge info.

What commission are you on?

 

[maldwyn]

My favourite bridge, best viewed from the north side. I read somewhere they couldn’t dynamite the pillars for fear of damaging the other bridges and the possibility of unexploded WWII bombs in the thames.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

No I didn't but I shall go and have a look now

This is becuase blackfriars was considered to be the point when the thames stopped being the sea. However the thames is still tidal right up until teddington (tide-end-town) and is not a river, the city really should be called 'London-on-sea'.

 

[lang rabbie]

This is becuase blackfriars was considered to be the point when the thames stopped being the sea.

What is the source for this claim ... Surely the "Pool of London" is the area east of London Bridge, not Blackfriars Bridge

 

[Cadmus]

Am i missing the explanation why do the columns still remain there?

There has to be a reason.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Wha is the source for this claim ... Surely the "Pool of London" is the area east of London Bridge, not Blackfriars Bridge

Er yes, but for a start london bridge was already there, anyway I was talking about the tidal thames and where it technicaly stops being the sea and not what area was or was not known as the 'pool of london' (upper and lower). The pool of London was essentualy the london docks definded origonaly simply becuase you could not get any ships though old london bridge, this had nothing to do with sea and river definitions. After the pool of london and further a bit further into the city the thames wasn't thought of as the sea anymore by the watermen etc. When building the new blackfriars it was thought a fun folly to mark this with the river and sea birds. Like I said, this is of course not actualy the true point as the Thames remains tidal up until Teddington.

 

[lang rabbie]

Am i missing the explanation why do the columns still remain there?

There has to be a reason.

I think maldwyn's provided it a few posts ago

 

[editor]

Wasn't the trussed girder structure (to most people's eyes phenomenally ugly, but to industrial archaeologists a thing of beauty) still there until the winter of 1984/1985 rather than having disappeared in 1969 (as claimed in one of those captions?)

Edited to add - I didn't think I was imagining it! 1979 picture

I can see where I got that from:

In 1969 the old London Chatham and Dover Railway bridge, built in 1864, still spanned the Thames at Blackfriars.

The bridge was then demolished and the railway tracks taken up to provide land for offices such as the Daily Express building to the south, which is somewhat thin as a result.
http://www.brymor.dircon.co.uk/london25/blackf.htm

Anyone got the correct date?

Here's a nice quote:

Blackfriars Bridge is one of the handsomest in London, and would have a still better effect were not its appearance so seriously marred by the proximity of its neighbour, the Alexandra (London Chatham and Dover Railway) bridge.

It was built in 1864-9 by Mr. William Cubitt from the designs of Mr. Page, architect also of Westminster-bridge, and though showing a tendency towards the same defects in design which occur in that structure, is beyond all question an immense advance upon it.

It crosses the river in five spans, the centre span being 185 ft. The piers are of granite, surmounted by recesses resting on short pillars of polished red Aberdeen granite, and with ornamental stone parapets.

The parapet of the bridge itself is very low, which, with the extreme shortness of the ornamental pillars at the pier ends, gives the whole structure rather a dwarfed and stunted look; but the general outline is bold and the ensemble rich, if perhaps a trifle gaudy, especially when the gilding, of which there is an unusual proportion, has been freshly renewed.
http://www.victorianlondon.org/thames/blackfriarsbridge.htm

 

[lang rabbie]

See also http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/speel/london/blackfri.htm

'With Blackfriars Bridge, we find the public thoroughly well pleased, though the design is really a wonder of depravity. Polished granite columns of amazing thickness, with carved capitals of stupendous weight, all made to give shop-room for an apple-woman, or a convenient platform for a suicide. The parapet is a fiddle-faddle of pretty cast-iron arcading, out of scale with the columns, incongruous with the capitals, and quite unsuited for a work that should be simply grand in its usefulness; and at each corner of the bridge is a huge block of masonry, apropos of nothing, a well-known evidence of desperate imbecility.'

 

[lang rabbie]

Like I said, this is of course not actualy the true point as the Thames remains tidal up until Teddington.

Interesting debating point. IIRC Current archaeological opinion is that, before human intervention to start embanking the river and draining Lambeth and the other Marshes, the tidal turning point was actually somewhere around Vauxhall Bridge. The tide only reaches so far upstream because the river now has a so much narrower channel.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Interesting debating point. IIRC Current archaeological opinion is that, before human intervention to start embanking the river and draining Lambeth and the other Marshes, the tidal turning point was actually somewhere around Vauxhall Bridge. The tide only reaches so far upstream because the river now has a so much narrower channel.

Where of course the very first (woodern bronse age) london bridge was built half way accross to a raised marsh patch.

This is all very that the tidal nature of the thames has been changed though human intervention and old london bridge itself would have acted as partial a dam in it's day (the reason the few frost fairs there were were possible) caliming the thames beyond that point.

However this is not true now and of course would not have been when the new Blackfriars was built.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Interesting debating point. IIRC Current archaeological opinion is that, before human intervention to start embanking the river and draining Lambeth and the other Marshes, the tidal turning point was actually somewhere around Vauxhall Bridge. The tide only reaches so far upstream because the river now has a so much narrower channel.

And from the foundation of the original London Bridge until it was demolished and replaced in the 19th century the tidal reach stopped there (due to the narrow span between the arches, narrowed even further by the brick piers the arches sat on).

 

[ViolentPanda]

Anyone interested in the London Bridges would do well to read Cross River Traffic by chris Roberts. Full of interesting bridge info.

"London's Thames" by Gavin Weightman is an informative read too.

 

[davesgcr]

The Waterloo and City line route is somewhere underneath the Blackfiars area - which would also be a bit of a disincentive to muck around with the river bed ..... can never be too carefull

 

[BadlyDrawnGirl]

The Waterloo and City line route is somewhere underneath the Blackfiars area - which would also be a bit of a disincentive to muck around with the river bed ..... can never be too carefull

The W&C line is considerably deeper than the river bed though. It's actually the deepest line on the entire underground - approximately 165m down IIRC? I don't think there'd be much to worry about there.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

"London's Thames" by Gavin Weightman is an informative read too.

I know Gavin Weightman quite well. He will be pleased he has come up on a discussion of anything thames. He will proabaly have a drink to celibrate.