Sep 14 2009
A University of Leicester researcher is to address architects at a London event on the lessons to be learnt in building an ‘inhabited London Bridge’- based on historical evidence.
Mark Latham, from the University of Leicester’s Centre for Urban History, will be sharing his research into why London Bridge really did fall down in a lecture to the Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects, as part of the ‘Designs for an inhabited London Bridge’ event taking place at St Mary-at-Hill Church in London on Wednesday 16 September.
In the 800th anniversary year of the completion of the medieval bridge, plans have been discussed for a new ‘inhabited’ London Bridge – between Waterloo and Blackfriars – with luxury flats, shops and restaurants, backed by London Mayor Boris Johnson, who has revived plans for the £80m scheme.
Mr Latham’s lecture, entitled ‘A bridge too far? Stark warnings from history over plans for an ‘inhabited’ London Bridge’ will offer an insight into why the bridge fell down, and how corruption, mismanagement, financial crisis and a property crash all played their part.
The doctoral research, which is due to be published in the London Journal, discovered that houses built on the old London Bridge to attract the gentry didn’t have the pulling power as expected. This, combined with other factors including an economic slump, ensured the grand vision of an inhabited bridge across the Thames was not sustainable.
In an all too timely ‘credit crunch’, it appears that economic issues were also to blame in the eighteenth century for the property market decline. Mr Latham explains: “Problems were compounded by a highly risky, costly and poorly timed project, undertaken in the teeth of a credit crisis.”
A series of gentrified houses were constructed on the Bridge in the belief that such houses would prove attractive to middle class Londoners and increase the organisation’s rental income. However, the authorities had grossly miscalculated the demand for such properties and the houses attracted only a handful of tenants.
A London wide property crash ensued and soon the trust running the bridge was haemorrhaging income, the maintenance budget for the bridge itself was being squeezed and so the vacant houses on the bridge began to rapidly fall into a state of dangerous disrepair. London Bridge was indeed close to being "fallen down", said Mr Latham.
"At this point reality dawned on the members of the trust, and they faced up to the fact that it was no longer financially viable to maintain structures on the bridge, and by the early 1755 they had begun to petition Parliament in a desperate plea for the money to fund their demolition."
As part of the event there will be also be an exhibition running from Wednesday 16 to Tuesday 22 September, showcasing entry designs to the Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects’ Competition. Registered architects and students of architecture were asked to design a new version of the inhabited bridge, based on the present structure which is deemed for these purposes to be strong enough to carry buildings on its deck.
The competition attracted more than 70 entries with the top prize going to architect Laurie Chetwood who envisaged glass towers soaring above the bridge.