Famous Old London Bridge

1910

Men Whose Names Will Live in History Dwelt and Worked on the Structure

For centuries Old London bridge, with its double row of houses, was the home of generations who lived and traded over the Thames waters.

Holbein lived and painted there; Osborne, the 'prentice lad leaped through a window in the house of his master, Sir William Hewett, to the rescue of Sir William's daughter, who had fallen into the swollen flood of the river below, and by winning her for his wife laid the foundation of the ducal house of Leeds. Crispin Tucker had his shop on the bridge, to which Pope and Swift and many another author of fame made pilgrimages to purchase books and gossip with the waggish shopkeeper. Crocker's dictionary was printed "at the Looking Glass on London Bridge," and gigantic corn mills dominated the south end of the structure, not many yards from the wonderful Nonsuch House, a high wooden pile with turrets and cupolas brought from Holland.

Such in brief outline was the London bridge which linked the twelfth with the eighteenth century, and which, when it was on its last tottering legs, was removed to give place to its fine successor of our day, the stone in which is said to be nearly double that employed in building St. Paul's Cathedral.