THE SPORT OF ROWING Model of the downstream aspect of Old London Bridge c. 1600, showing Nonsuch House Old London Bridge Before 1750, the only bridge between Kingston, more than twenty miles upstream of London, and the English Channel, more than twenty miles downstream, was Old London Bridge, of nursery rhyme fame, connecting the City of London on the north bank with Southwark36 on the opposite side of the river. Built beginning in 1176, it was in con- stant use until it was replaced in 1831, six and a half centuries later. More than 900 feet or 275 meters long, the old bridge was more than three times as long as the Ponte Vecchio (274 feet or 84m in length) in Flor- ence, the only similar medieval structure of note to survive into modern times. With a central passageway only 12 feet or 3.6m wide, Old London Bridge rested on stone piers that created nineteen openings to the river, each known by name37 to watermen, and it had a drawbridge for larger vessels. Its entire length was crowded on both sides with substantial timber and stone buildings, including a chapel and crypt in the center dedicated to Thomas à Becket, the sainted martyr slain in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. 36 For Americans, pronounced “Suthuck.” 37 such as Nonsuch Lock, St. Mary’s Lock and Roger Lock. Crouch, pp. 36, 225. Bryson: “London Bridge was a little city in itself with more than a hundred shops in scores of buildings of all shapes and sizes. The bridge was the noisiest place in the me- tropolis, but also the cleanest (or at least the best aired), and so became an outpost of wealthy merchants. Because space was so valuable, some of the buildings were six stories high and projected as much as sixty- five feet over the river, supported by mighty struts and groaning buttresses. It even had its own precarious palace, Nonsuch House, built in the late 1570s, teetering [near] its southern end.”38 Old London Bridge formed a line of separation between the Pool of London, with its wharves full of ocean-going merchant and Royal Navy ships, along with such downstream towns as Greenwich and Woolwich from the river above, which stretched from the city proper past Westmin- ster, Chelsea, Putney, Richmond and Mort- lake all the way up to Windsor Castle and beyond into the heart of England. Beginning in 1305, the bridge had a ghoulish aspect. London, Past and Present: “The heads of traitors and heretics were set upon poles, 38 Bill Bryson, op.cit, p. 50 24
