Old
London Maps
Free access
to scores of rare and detailed maps, plans, articles, information and
views of medieval, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century
London for the genealogist, family historian, student and the curious.
The
Southwark Bridge
Running
from the bottom of Queen Street to Southwark, the three-span
iron bridge was built between 1813 - 1817. A contemporary
commentator remarked that the improvements which this
bridge occasioned "in those miserable streets and
avenues about Bankside" were incalculable. The bridge
was necessary (although controversial, because it was
felt it might impede shipping along the Thames) because
of the amount of traffic crossing London and Blackfriar's
Bridges each day - 62,000 pedestrians, 2,000 carts and
drays, 500 gigs, and 800 and more horses by 1813.
