LONDON BRIDGE 5 



" G^^-hups," biting repartees administered to passing 

 Jehus, and contemptuous references to the railways, 

 which were just beginning to be spoken of, was solely 

 professional. 



Some of these latter-day coaches went direct from 

 the West End, over Westminster Bridge, and so to 

 the Old Kent Road, but others had to call at various 

 inns on the way to the City, and so came over London 

 Bridge in the approved fashion. 



Ill 



And the London Bridge by which they would cross 

 in 1837 was a very different structure from that driven 

 over by their forbears of twenty years previously. 



So late as 1831, Old London Bridge remained that, 

 built in 1176, had thus for nearly seven hundred years 

 borne the traffic to and from London, and had stood 

 firmly centuries of storms and floods, and all the 

 attacks of rebels from Norman to late Tudor times. 

 Its career was closed on the 1st of August, 1831, when 

 the new bridge, that had taken seven years in the 

 building, was opened. The old bridge crossed the 

 Thames at a point about a hundred feet to the eastward 

 of the present one ; the city approach leading steeply 

 down a narrow street by Monument Yard, and passing 

 close under the projecting clock of Saint Magnus the 

 Martyr. The view was eminently picturesque, with 

 the many and irregular pointed arches of the bridge ; 

 the rush of water in foaming cascades through the 

 narrow openings ; the weathered stonework, and the 

 curious old oil-lamps ; and the soaring Monument 

 with the fantastic spire of St. Magnus, seen from 

 Southwark, in the background. This was the aspect 

 of Old London Bridge at any time between 1750, 

 when the houses that had been for centuries standing 

 on it were removed, and 1831, when the bridge itself 



