CHAP. II. OLD LoXDOX H1MDGE. 257 



was not confirmed by the Mayor and citizens of London, 

 who deputed three of their own body to superintend the 

 finishing of the work, the chief difficulties connected 

 with which had indeed already been surmounted. 



The bridge, when finished, was a remarkable and 

 euri< nis W( >rk. That it possessed the elements of stability 

 ;md strength was sufficiently proved by the fact that 

 upon it the traffic of London was safely borne across the 

 river for more than six hundred years. But it was an 

 unsightly mass of masonry, so far as the bridge was con- 

 cerned ; although the overhanging buildings extending 

 along both sides of the roadway, the chapel on the centre 

 pier, and the adjoining drawbridge, served to give it an 

 exceedingly picturesque appearance. One of the houses 

 adjoining the drawbridge was dignified with the name 

 of Nonsuch House : it was said to have been constructed 

 in Holla ml and brought over in pieces, when it was set 

 up without mortar or iron, being held together solely by 

 wooden pegs. 



The piers of the bridge were so close, and the arches 

 so low, that at high water they resembled a long low 

 series of culverts hardly deserving the name of arches. 

 The piers were of various dimensions, in some cases 

 almost as thick as the spans of the arches which they 

 supported were wide. The structure might be compared 

 to a very strong stone embankment built across the river, 

 perforated by a number of small openings, through which 

 the water rushed with tremendous force as the tide was 

 rising or falling, the power thus produced being at a 

 later period economised and employed in some of the 

 arches to work water-engines. The bridge had not 

 less than twenty arches, including the drawbridge, 

 some of them being too narrow to admit of the passage 

 of boats of any kind. This great obstruction of the 

 stream, at a point where the river is about the narrowest, 

 had the effect of producing a series of cataracts at the 

 rise and fall of each tide, so that what was called " the 



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