Ahoy! And Oho, and it’s who’s for the ferry?
(The briar’s in bud and the sun going down),
And I’ll row ye so quick, and I’ll row ye so steady,
And ’tis but a penny to Twickenham Town.
A penny can go a long way. It was reported, in the London Daily Advertiser of 23 October 1751, that “yesterday a coach and four being taken over in a boat at Twickenham Ferry, the horses took fright and leapt into the water drawing the coach after them.”
The ferry between Tilbury and the opposite shore remains still, with a history of many thousands of years; the remains of a causeway over Higham Marshes suggest that the Romans improved what was already an ancient crossing used by the prehistoric peoples of the region. The ferry from Higham to East Tilbury was instituted by the emperor Claudius, in AD 48, for the convenience of foot passengers and for cattle. This was succeeded in the sixteenth century by a ferry from Gravesend to Tilbury Fort. This was known as the “Short Ferry,” while the “Long Ferry” was essentially the journey from Gravesend to Billingsgate.
There is still a free ferry service at Woolwich, established in 1889. There is a ferry at Hampton, and another at Twickenham. The ferry at Bablock Hythe has been in existence for more than seven hundred years, and is first mentioned as “the ferry of Babbelak” in 1279.
The ferrymen were often appealing or reassuring figures. Many seem to have been old. In 1605 there is a record of Henry Dible, “an Antient fferry man” at Kew. In Fred S. Thacker’s study of the river, The Thames Highway (1914 and 1920), there are some 135 ferrymen listed with names like Linteboy and Scopeham, Pither and Tibble. Theirs was a profitable trade, and it was generally kept in the family for many generations. But their ancientness may be in part a reflection of the veneration in which they were once held. The ferryman is a figure of myth. In the legends of Mesopotamia, for example, the ferryman named Arad-Ea took the human souls across the river of death. In Egyptian myth the ferryman across the lake of lilies had to be placated if the human souls were to reach the island of life. In Greek myth Charon, the ferryman, was the son of Nyx or the night; he rowed the souls of the dead across the river Styx, and for his services the Greeks left a small coin in the mouth of the corpse. He was generally represented as an old man, with a scowl upon his face. He is the guardian of the mystery, the porter of hell, the guide who conducts us through death. It may be that the figure of Charon is indeed some metamorphosis of an ancient rite, when the bodies of the dead were lowered into the river. The ferrymen of the Thames have a powerful inheritance.
CHAPTER 19
The Bridges of Contentment and the Tunnels of Darkness
Some verses of Rudyard Kipling, in “The River’s Tale” (1911), are pertinent:
Twenty bridges from Tower to Kew
Wanted to know what the River knew,
For they were young and the Thames was old,
And this is the tale that the River told…
In the vast period that marks the existence of the Thames, stretching back for unimaginable ages, the bridges are indeed “new.” They emerged only in the later stages of the human occupation of this territory.
There are 106 pedestrian bridges on the Thames: seventy-six on the non-tidal river, ranging in height from 71/2 feet (2.2 m) to 32 feet (9.7 m), and thirty on the tidal Thames. On the tidal river there are also nine rail bridges and nineteen road bridges (most of which also accommodate pedestrians).
The oldest remaining bridge on the river is that of New Bridge, where the tributary of the Windrush joins the Thames; it was built in approximately 1250. It is pre-dated by some quarter of a century by the bridge at Radcot, but that ancient structure now spans a side stream rather than the river itself. The most recent bridge, the Millennium Bridge that crosses the Thames between St. Paul’s and the Tate Modern, was completed in 2000, but not opened to the public until 2002.
There are brick bridges and iron bridges, bridges with many arches and bridges with a single span; there are stone bridges and wooden bridges; there are suspension bridges and cantilevered bridges; there are bridges that join villages and bridges that continue ancient roads; there are bridges that mark the confluence of rivers and bridges that mark the presence of weirs; there are toll bridges and bridges that act as railway junctions.
A bridge across the Thames at Eton has been dated to the Bronze Age, 1400–1300 BC; its wooden posts were over 8 feet (2.5 m) apart, leading from both banks, and they were found in what is now a disused channel. In that previous age, however, it was part of the flowing current. At a later date, in the Iron Age, another bridge was built on the same site. A wooden structure of Bronze Age provenance, interpreted as either a bridge or a jetty, has been found on the Thames at Vauxhall. Twenty large timber posts were lined up in two rows, some of them set at an angle to each other. So the bridges of the Thames are of ancient foundation.
Before that technology had emerged, large stones formed the crossing for the ancient riverine people. It is plausible to see them hurling great rocks into the water, so that they might make a path across the Thames. They might anger the gods, in doing so, but the necessities of natural development led them forward. The construction of the wooden bridge, however, was the seminal event. It was a way of defying, or changing, the natural world. It was even a way of taming the river. That is why the god or gods of the river had to be appeased. Rituals and sacrifices were performed on the erection of new bridges. Shrines and offerings, and chapels, were placed on them. The bridges themselves became sacred. It is often claimed that the Roman name of priest, pontifex, derives from the root word pons or “bridge.” Thus the priests were so named because they performed rituals upon bridges. According to Plutarch in his Vitae Parallelae (c. AD 100), “their offering sacrifices upon the Bridge, which the Latins call Pontem, it seems, being looked upon as the most sacred, and of the highest antiquity. These Priests, too, are said to have been commissioned to keep the Bridges in repair, as one of the most indispensable parts of their sacred office.” There is another connotation, equally redolent of sacred terror. In thousands of legends the devil is associated with bridges. In the Swiss legend of the devil’s bridge, the fiend agreed to help a man construct a bridge spanning the Reuss near Andermat on condition that he was allowed to keep the soul of the first creature to cross it. It was a dog.
Catherine of Siena, in the fourteenth century, employed what had by that date become a familiar metaphor—“God made a brigge of his sone whanne the wey of goynge to hevene was broken by inobedience of Adam, by the which brigge all trewe christen men mowen overepasse…it reacheth fro the erthe upe into hevene.” The bridge can be used to cross from death into eternal life, just as the sacred river-crossings of pagan antiquity were a means of moving from life into the dark limbo of death. The turbulent waters beneath the bridge were seen by Catherine as “the fervent see of this wrecchid life,” that which passes while the bridge stands firm. The water is mutable and vain—“swift the watir is, and abideth nobody”—where the bridge rises on the stones of Christian piety and virtue. It was Catherine’s genius to create a strong metaphor out of the ancient beliefs of the people, in which the river was considered to be the home of dangerous or fickle gods.
That is why the construction of bridges was itself considered to be holy work. Their builders were celebrated because they were helping to tame the pagan gods, who had not wholly departed. The work of building was then accompanied by indulgences, and pious testimonials. Thus in Leland’s Itinerary of 1540 we have the following verses:
Another blessid besines is Brigges to make,
Where, that the pepul may not passe after greet showers.
Isabella de Ferrers, of the manor of Lechlade, established an alms-house for all those working on the construction of the bridge there. In time it became the Priory of St. John the Baptist. In general the monastic foundations of the neighbourhood were charged with the responsibility for maintaining the bridges closest to them. There was of course a system of
tolls for all of the principal bridges that helped to replenish the purses of the abbots and abbesses; there are now only two toll-bridges remaining, those at Swinford and at Whitchurch, as a remnant of what was once an ancient if unwelcome custom. At the beginning of the nineteenth century it cost every foot passenger a penny or a penny-halfpenny; 1 shilling was charged for a four-wheeled carriage, such as a brougham, and 3 pence “for a dog drawing a cart.”
There is another aspect of the Christian veneration of bridges. The more pious and wealthy citizens left bequests in their wills for their construction. In the early fifteenth century, for example, the bridge at Abingdon was built largely upon legacies. Sir Peter Bessils gave all the stone from his quarries at Sandford, while Geoffrey Barbour donated 1,000 marks. Both men then left properties in the neighbourhood to pay for the maintenance of the bridge, and the wool merchants of the Abingdon region also contributed money. The Christian panoply of dedication and reverence was then completed when a stone chapel was built on the bridge itself.
The custom of erecting religious houses upon bridges was of great antiquity. There were in fact many chapels and shrines designed both to solace the weary traveller and to pay for the new foundation. There were some places where the bridge actually passed through the chapel, so that the congregation was separated from the pulpit and reading desk by a thoroughfare. The chapel at London Bridge was built within one of its piers, and descended to the water’s edge. On the north bank of the Thames, by the site of the head of the medieval bridge, stands the church of St. Magnus the Martyr, otherwise known as St. Magnus Ad Pontem. Reading Bridge found its median point on an island, in the middle of the river, where was placed the bridge chapel of St. Anne. The Angel Inn beside the bridge at Henley was once known as the Angel-on-the-Bridge, and is said to commemorate a chapel that stood upon the bridge itself. In the sixteenth century, according to Leland, there stood at the north end of Caversham Bridge “a fair old chapel of stone, on the right hand, piled in the foundation because of the rage of the Thames.” Among the relics preserved here was a piece of the halter with which Judas hanged himself and “the blessed knife that killed St. Edward.” It is hard to explain why this one bridge chapel was so blessed with holy tokens. It was rivalled only by the possessions of the church of St. Thomas à Becket, set upon London Bridge. These are a few scattered examples. It seems likely that no bridge was without its chapel, except for the smallest and most remote of them. They were pulled down in more sceptical or revolutionary ages, and plundered for their stone. The Reformation no doubt played a large part in their downfall. And they were never rebuilt. The connection of bridges with sacredness had long since been forgotten. The river was no longer a powerful god. Putney Bridge is perhaps unique for still possessing a church at either end of its structure.
On many bridges, too, there was generally a socket over the central arch in which a stone cross had once been placed as a sign. They were large enough to dominate the bridge itself, and were immune from graffiti and vandalism. There was just such a cross upon Radcot Bridge. It has now been removed but its old socket remains; even in the early twentieth century, baptisms of children were often performed within it. Leland copied a verse inscribed upon the stone bridge at Godstow:
Qui meat hac orat,
Signumque salutis adoret.
“Pray and venerate the token of salvation.” The verse suggests that a cross was also erected here. Ritual offerings are still left on the completion of a new bridge, generally taking the form of a set of newly minted coins. It is the modern version of the votive offering.
There is something consolatory about bridges. They are reassuring. They are welcoming. They are tokens of human agency and purpose. They have borne many millions of footsteps, and have thus been rendered holy by time. People tend to take up the same position while resting upon a bridge, their bodies slightly forward, their arms leaning upon the parapet, looking over the water. Bridges reach across the void, prompting the wanderer onwards. They arch above the perilous waters, providing a refuge. That is why there emerged a tradition of “bridge hermits,” solitaries who lived in niches or sheds upon the bridge where they begged alms. On the bridge at Abingdon there lived a “hermit carpenter” who was responsible for the maintenance and safety of the structure; he lived in a “hermitage” opposite the little bridge chapel. The hermits responsible for New Bridge, close to Witney, lived at the end of the village of Standlake closest to the bridge itself; in 1462 the hermit here, Thomas Brigges (the name itself meaning “Thomas of the Bridge”), was granted a licence from Edward IV allowing him to demand from travellers “to give of their Goodwill and Favour” for the upkeep of the bridge. By Folly Bridge, in Oxford, there was a “pretty little stone building” where the hermits spent their life in prayer; their principal occupation was continually to dig their own graves, and then refill them, in the perpetual hope and expectation of death. In 1423 another resident hermit, Richard Ludlow, was granted a licence to dwell at the foot of the bridge at Maidenhead and to preserve it by leading a quiet and pious life as well as by soliciting alms. These hermits became a metaphor of pilgrimage, and of salvation. Vagrants also find comfort in bridges; they often sleep beneath them, or even upon them. In the nineteenth century the bridges of London were resting places for hundreds of night wanderers. In 1846 it was reported that Kingston Bridge was “tenanted at Night by Vagabonds and people of the worst description.” Perhaps they were claiming sanctuary.
There are more bridges across the Thames than across any other river of similar size. Of necessity they have remained in much the same form over the millennia. They are the only part of the riverscape that has not changed, with the possible exception of the river itself. They have survived, for example, where the fords have disappeared for ever. New Bridge and Radcot Bridge have emerged, intact, from the medieval ages.
The first reference to a stone bridge across the Thames occurs in a document of AD 958 when Eadwig granted to his thegn, Eadrig, the lands “first to the stone bridge and from the stone bridge eastwards along the Thames until it comes to the boundary of the people of King’s Hone.” King’s Hone is now known as Kingston Bagpuize, and the site of the stone bridge is that of the present Radcot Bridge. The requisite skills for the construction of arched bridges were not available to the masons of the tenth century, and so this early stone bridge is likely to have consisted of large flat stones placed upon broad piers of masonry. This bridge was then rebuilt in the early years of the thirteenth century, after King John had requested in 1208 “Our Brother Alwyn to take both men and materials for the reparation of the bridge at Redcote.”
The age of arched stone bridges, in fact, can be dated from the beginning of the thirteenth century. The first of them, London Bridge, was erected in 1209. The building of St. John’s Bridge, in Lechlade, was undertaken soon after. Before that time there were principally wooden structures spanning the Thames, created out of great posts and piles driven into the river-bed with baulks of timber suspended upon them. The floods of winter often disabled them, and they were in an almost constant state of disrepair. Yet there were still wooden bridges, as late as the nineteenth century, at Marlow and Cookham and Windsor, Maidenhead and Staines, Chertsey and Hampton and Kingston. Until the middle of that century the bridge at Caversham was built half of timber and half of stone.
The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were the great ages of stone. This was particularly true of the upper reaches of the Thames, where local stone was readily available. Yet only the monks, and the masons associated with the monks, had the skills necessary to build bridges. The architecture of the stone bridges is in fact remarkably similar to that of the old cathedrals, where ribs of stone emerge from the piers and span the openings between them. They resemble the Gothic arches of the churches, and the vaulting of the chapter-houses.
The most celebrated of all Thames bridges, however, must be London Bridge. It is the most frequented of all bridges, the great highway of the city; if we may speak in a
n Aboriginal sense of a songline, or dreamline, of London then it is represented by this path across the river. It is a great cord of humanity. It creates the great stream of human beings, contracted and innumerable, which in itself becomes a river echoing the Thames. For a brief passage the vehicles and the people are brought into relation with the push and flow of the sea. The wind and the dust, the noise of the traffic and the cry of the gulls, are brought together.
There are no buildings upon it, as there were in past ages of the bridge. Now the pedestrians are outlined against the sky and framed by the water beneath their feet; they are caught between immensities. They become frail and evanescent, a pilgrimage of passing souls suspended between the elements. Over the bridge cross all the varieties of human character with no complicity, or community of interest, between them. They are together but alone; they evince expressions of endurance or of merriment, of suffering or of abstraction. It is the most suggestive of all bridges. It has evoked, in many writers and artists, phantasmal or oneiric images.
There may have been a bridge here beyond the memory of man. It is a familiar and often quoted “fact” that the Romans erected the first bridge on this site, but there is no reason to suppose that such a favoured vantage was overlooked by the British tribes who had previously inhabited the area on both sides of the river. All we can say with any certainty is that there has been a bridge here ever since we know anything of London. A bridge, that is to say, has stood for more than two thousand years. It has taken many forms. Bridges have come and gone, have been erected and dismantled, have worn away and been rebuilt, above this stretch of water. The generations have passed across them, never considering what came before or what might come after. In The Waste Land (1922) T. S. Eliot contemplated the crowd flowing over London Bridge, and saw in it the passage of a death fugue.
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