Books: Tom Bolton London’s Lost Rivers: A Walker’s Guide
The History of London blog by Peter Stone
https://www.thehistoryoflondon.co.uk/london-bridge-during-the-tudor-period/
Elizabeth’s London: Everyday life in Elizabethan London by Liza Picard
order on Amazon here.
London The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd – order on Amazon here
ROUGH TRANSCRIPT of Episode 135: Tudor London – Rivers and London Bridge
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave a rating or review on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts 🎁 for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]
Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network. I’m your host, Heather Teysko, and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity. This is Episode 135, and it’s the second in a series of episodes on Tudor London.
Admin Notes: We had Tudorcon a couple of weeks ago, and if you missed it, you missed a LOT of fun and learning. It was a blast – way more fun than even I expected it to be. But we’re doing it again next year, and for the rest of this year you can get the early bird price, saving $50 off the regular price. So it makes a great Christmas gift. Also, if you do decide to gift someone a Tudorcon ticket, since there’s nothing really to wrap up, I’ll send you a card that you can put under the tree. And stay tuned next week because I’m going to have a really good Black Friday special on the tickets. I’ll send out a note to the newsletter list about that – if you’re not on the list, you can sign up at englandcast.com, or if you just want to check out englandcast.com/tudorcon2020 you can see all the information, and get your tickets there.
So this episode is about Tudor London, specifically what 16th century London was like for our Tudor friends. This is the second episode in what is a mini series, a feature on life in 16th century cities, with several episodes on Tudor London. And while I am talking about landmarks, I am doing it in the context of their impact on the lives of real people. Because that, of course, is what I’m most interested in here. Landmarks and buildings are interesting to me only insofar as the stories they can tell about the people who lived there, who died there, who laughed, cried, grieved, worshipped, and had fellowship with others there.
So last week we talked about St Paul’s, particularly the booksellers and orators at St Paul’s Cross and the Churchyard. Today we’re going to talk about what is perhaps the most important part of London, the piece that gave it its personality, that impacted it more than anything else. I am talking, of course, about her rivers. And notice I said Rivers with an S. When we think about London today, we think, of course, about the Thames. And we will talk about that, and particularly London Bridge. Show notes for this episode are at Englandcast.com/LondonBridge all one word.
But what you may not realize is that there are several rivers that run through London, and today they are paved over and run underground as part of the sewage system. But they would have been part of everyday life for our Tudor friends, boundaries that they would have been deeply familiar with.
Twenty one tributaries flow to the Thames within greater London, just counting main branches. Some of these will be familiar to us by their names, like Fleet Street, named after the river Fleet. Some of the rivers sound exotic, like Silk Stream, or the Ching river. Some of them are above ground in the suburban areas outside the Square Mile, like the Moselle, that runs through North London. During the Tudor period, these rivers shaped the lives of our friends living there – the valleys and hills that they created would have been part of the everyday landscape. But over time, the rivers began to get in the way – they clogged up traffic waiting for bridges to cross, and with better ways to bring in drinking water, they weren’t needed any longer.
Early on, London needed the rivers. She needed them for drinking water, for wharves, and for carrying away waste, the earliest of sewage systems. The earliest to be paved over was the Walbrook, which reached the Thames around Cannon Street train station. This river ran deep in London’s history – it was right where the earliest Roman settlements were built, and even now the artefacts that are dug up have images of the ancient gods carved into them. But by the 1460’s, the Walbrook was filthy, and became too much for medieval London to handle, and she was mostly paved over, the first of the rivers to go underground. By the Victorian period, as London was growing at supersonic speed, the rivers, and the filth they carried, put off home buyers, and soon enough the Tyburn was hidden under mews. The Fleet was the stuff of legends. Christopher Wren redesigned it as a canal after the Great Fire in 1666, but the filth was too much. Tom Bolton writes in an article: “Jonathan Swift, in 1710, wrote about the Fleet filled with “the sweepings from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts and blood.” A few years later Alexander Pope described how “Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams / Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to the Thames.” Yet before the river became more trouble than it was worth, it was a crucial route in as well as out. Everything from Welsh cheese to coals from Newcastle arrived at the Fleet wharves, and even the stones for Old St. Paul’s Cathedral were unloaded here.”
The rivers are everywhere in London – Buckingham Palace is actually above the Tyburn. In fact, there is still one very tiny tributary, which still exists in the basement of Mayfair antiques store, Grays. And some of the topography of London makes sense only when you examine the flow of the rivers. And they make certain names make sense, such as the Knight’s Bridge, which today is just Knightsbridge.
So we can start to get this sense of London as a metropolis filled with rivers and flowing water. I think that helps to give us more of a picture of the city, when you imagine all the waterways that flowed through it, and the homes that were surrounded by water. This also helps us make sense of the amount of plague that was present every year in the summer. It must have been a damp, muddy, stinking place. No wonder anyone who could afford to left!
But let’s talk now about the most famous river, the Thames, which originates in Oxfordshire, flows for 215 miles until it reaches the sea at Gravesend. The river gathers silt as it moves, making it a grayish color, and it is a tidal river with high tides twice a day, a difference in water level of up to 25 feet. After a deal with Richard I in 1197, the Lord Mayor of London had control over everything from Staines to the Medway, which gave the City the power to create traffic rules on the approach to the City.
The German visitor Thomas Platter, visiting in 1592, took the ferry and wrote that “the banks of this river are wooded and gay with pleasant hamlets and homesteads.” Along the way there were huge palaces, like Placentia at Greenwich, with stairways down to the river, and water gates that would allow the royal visitors easy access on their barges.
Notes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Platter_the_Younger
Just before London Bridge were the official quayes, where you had to unload your cargo to pay customs duties and taxes. In the last episode I mentioned the travel writer noticing the cranes, and these cranes that unloaded the cargo were big enough for a man to sit inside them. By using pulleys, the ships could be unloaded easily enough to carts.
If you wanted to continue on, you would have to get off at London Bridge, and take another boat. This is because of the current that ran under the bridge, because of the arches that went across the river. If you did try to go under the bridge, it was called “shooting the bridge” and was only possible if the conditions were perfect. When Elizabeth I was sent to the Tower in 1554 when Mary I suspected her of plotting against her in Wyatt’s Rebellion, Elizabeth experienced a frightening attempt to go under the bridge. The barge “could not shoot the arch, and lay hovering upon the water for a time, the danger was too great for the bargeman to plunge into it as they were ordered. Their unwillingness gave way to preemptory command, but in trying it again the stern of the boat struck the ground, the fall was so big and the water was so shallow; the boat paused for a while under the bridge, and at last cleared it, and she was landed at Traitor’s Gate.”
Reverend John Ray in his Book of Proverbs from 1670 said that London Bridge was for wise men to pass over, and fools to pass under.
While people who wanted to cross the river could do so using the ferry or watermen – early form of boat taxis that would take you across for a few pennies – if you had cargo you wanted to bring across from the south, you needed to cross London Bridge. London Bridge was actually the only dry crossing over the thames until the mid 18th century.
So to be clear, many people confuse London Bridge with Tower Bridge. Tower bridge is the very famous bridge most people think of when they think of a bridge in London, with the towers, and everything. London bridge is further to the west, closer to St. Paul’s, and is nondescript, and plain looking. But despite being so plain, London Bridge is the one with all the history.
The Romans had built a wooden bridge in the same spot very early on, around AD50, but that was liable to be destroyed by fire. In 1176 it was rebuilt in stone, and was one of the wonders of medieval construction. It had 20 arches of squared stone, thirty feet wide, and 20 feet apart. The piers were protected by small islands of stone and brushwood called starlings. That medieval bridge lasted until 1830, so those starlings were successful at their job. But as they accumulated debris and silt, the space between them would narrow until it produced those dangerous tides and rapids. In the 1580’s, new technology allowed the power of the rapids to be harnessed. On a very excellent blog, The History Of London (I’ll link in the show notes at englandcast.com/londonbridge) Peter Stone writes:
“A Dutch hydraulics engineer by the name of Peter Morice, employed by Sir Christopher Hatton, demonstrated to the city authorities in 1581 how water could be fed into buildings, supplying fresh water. He proved it by directing water from the Thames through lead pipes and over the steeple of St.Magnus church in Lower Thames Street. His plan was to use the flow of the river through the first arch of London Bridge on the City end to power a wheel, turning pumps that lifted water into a tank above the level of the surrounding houses. Water from the tank could then flow through pipes by gravity into the buildings. Impressed by the demonstration, the authorities granted Morice a five-hundred-year lease at ten shillings per year to construct a water wheel-powered pump in the northern arch of the bridge. The first water to flow arrived at Leadenhall on Christmas Eve 1582, followed by Old Fish Street. It was such a success that the following year he was granted a lease for the second arch of the bridge. From there Morice was able to supply water to buildings in the surrounding area as far as Leadenhall. London’s water-bearers lobbied against Morice’s system, fearing they would be put out of work. Despite that, four waterwheels were thereafter in use at the bridge for the following two centuries.” You can check out his blog to read more about London history – it’s a great site to keep up with.
The designer of the bridge was Peter, chaplain of St Mary Colechurch, and he put a huge chapel right in the middle of the bridge, which was dedicated to Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury who had been killed six years before. As Thomas received sainthood, and the cult around him grew, Henry VIII rededicated the chapel to St Thomas the Apostle, not liking Thomas Becket’s defiance of royal supremacy, but by 1553 it was mostly destroyed.
About a third of the way across there was a drawbridge that could be raised to let ships through to the markets on the other side of the bridge, as far as Richmond and beyond, but in 1500 Henry VII decided to sail his royal ships under the bridge, and broke the drawbridge. In 1576 the tower was taken down, and turned into a home.
In 1305 the head of the Scottish rebel William Wallace was displayed on the drawbridge tower as a warning to other would-be rebels, and this started a tradition that continued until 1746. But those heads moved to the gatehouse, the first gate on the Southwark side, after the drawbridge tower decayed. In 1599 the visitor Thomas Platter wrote that he saw, “stuck on tall stakes more than thirty skills of noble men who had been executed and beheaded for treason and for other reasons. And their descendents are accustomed to boast of this, themselves even pointing out one of their ancestors’ heads on this same bridge, believing that they will be esteemed the more because their antecedents were of such high descent that they could even covet the crown. Thus they make an honour for themselves of what was set up to be a disgrace and an example.”
So it’s important to remember too, that London Bridge had buildings on all sides, and all around it. In many ways, it was simply an extension of the city, and it was possible to walk along the bridge without even realizing that you were on a bridge. The bridge itself was so narrow in some places – not more than 26 feet wide – that you could only have one small lane of traffic – the road itself was about 12 feet wide, divided into 2 lanes. And the largest, and most impressive of these buildings was Nonsuch House, made of wood, gilded columns, and carved galleries. It extended over the river on both sides. Builders in Holland designed the house, and then brought it over to be put together on site – and of course they wouldn’t have been able to work much at night since there was no light, so it would have held up traffic considerably.
And traffic there was. Merchants would struggle to get home with herds of animals, carts, sightseers, and street sellers. There were a few gaps in between the houses where you could enjoy the view, but those were the only places where you might even remember that you were on a bridge. By 1358 there were already 138 shops on London bridge, in a space of about 900 feet long, and that only grew through the Tudors so that in the 1550’s there were about 200 buildings on the bridge, some of which were 7 stories high. Imagine all of that traffic, mixed with the huge mansions, and the chapel and gatehouse. Crossing the bridge could take up to an hour – if you had to go across, going by river would be much faster. But if you had goods to bring, you didn’t have a choice, so you sat and waited in traffic. Which makes traffic on the 101 in downtown LA seem like cake, to be honest.
By the time John Stow wrote his famous Survey of London, he said that the bridge was “replenished on both the sides with large, fair, and beautiful buildings, inhabitants for the most part rich merchants and other wealthy citizens, mercers, and haberdashers, who also would have had their shops on the bridge too. I imagine the air out here would have been a bit cleaner than in the City as well, which would have also made it prime real estate. In 1746 when workmen were dismantling the old buildings, they found “three pots of money, silver, and gold, of the coin of Queen Elizabeth.”
One of the advantages of living on the bridge was that you had an easy way to get rid of your waste, including sewage. You would just dump it out the window, and it would be carried away easy peasy. And that led to the building of public privvies on the bridge. Bridges were a common enough place to build latrines anyway, because they would be easy to clean up. For example, in 1554 in York, the wardens made a contract with a widow for “keeping clean” the conveniences on the bridge. London bridge had public latrines on since 1382 when the Wardens of London Bridge spent £11 on building a public latrine on the north end of the bridge. On the original medieval bridge there was At least one two-entranced, multi-seated public latrine which overhung the bridge parapets and discharged into the river below; so did an unknown number of private latrines reserved for Bridge householders or shopkeepers and bridge officials.
There were accidents. If you’ve read Edward Rutherfurd’s London: The Novel (and you really should – it’s one of my favorite books of all time), you will remember the fictionalized story like this, which John Stow wrote about. In 1536 “Sir William Hewet was a merchant, possessed of a great estate of six thousand pounds per annum, having three sons and one daughter, Anne. The maid, playing with her out of a window over the river Thames (really not a smart move), by chance dropped her in, almost beyond expectation of her being saved. A young gentleman named Osborne, then apprentice to Sir William Hewett, at this calamitous accident, leaped in and saved the child. In memory of which deliverance, and in gratitude, her father afterward bestowed her on the said Mr Osborne, with a very grand dowry.”
So there we have it – London Bridge as a community of its own, bustling, with all manner of people, tourists, merchants, and more, all inhabiting on this medieval bridge. What a sight it must have been! To get a very small taste of how it may have felt, if you’re near Bath, you can walk across Pulteney Bridge, which is one of only four bridges left in the world to have shops all the way across. It really doesn’t feel like you’re over water at all, until you look out the window and see the water underneath you!
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave a rating or review on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts 🎁 for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]
So that’s it for this week. Next time we’re going to head west, over to Westminster. We’ll also talk about the actual walls of London, and the gates, and what was going on outside the walls, on our walk over, past the bend in the river, to York Place and the Abbey. Again, remember the show notes for this episode are at Englandcast.com/LondonBridge.
You can get in touch with me through the listener support line at 801 6TEYSKO or through twitter @teysko or facebook.com/englandcast. Thanks so much for listening.
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave a rating or review on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, one of the longest running indie history podcasts, going since 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. She writes books, created the original Tudor Planner (a yearly diary filled with Tudor history) and in 2019 created the world's first Tudorcon (you can "attend" online this year!). She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.