Stand Where London Began
Stand at the northern end of London Bridge and you are standing on the spot where the city itself started. The Thames and its estuary were a major trade route from at least the 9th century BC, and the embankments on either side offered stable beachheads for boat traffic. Until a bridge was built here, London did not exist. The Romans built the first crossing around AD 50 as part of their road-building programme, and on the high, dry ground at its northern end a trading and shipping settlement took root and grew into Londinium. A smaller settlement developed at the southern end, in what is now Southwark. Every crossing since — timber, stone, concrete — has repeated that original act of connection.
The bridge you walk across today opened to traffic in 1973: a box girder structure of concrete and steel, owned and maintained by Bridge House Estates, an independent charity of medieval origin overseen by the City of London Corporation. It stands at the western end of the Pool of London, positioned 30 metres upstream from the medieval alignment. It is the latest in a line that includes a 600-year-old stone-built medieval bridge and the 19th-century stone-arched bridge that replaced it — the one sold in 1971 and re-erected in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
Read Six Centuries of City Life in a Crossing
What makes London Bridge worth your time is not the deck under your feet but the layers beneath it. For much of its history the broad medieval bridge carried an extensive built-up area of homes and businesses — part of the City's Bridge ward — and its southern end in Southwark was guarded by a large stone City gateway. Construction of that stone bridge began in 1176 under Peter of Colechurch, a chaplain and warden of the bridge and its brethren, and was not finished until 1209. It had nineteen piers and nineteen arches with a wooden drawbridge, and the houses on it were supported by the piers, which extended well beyond the bridge itself, or by hammer beams laid from pier to pier. The piers were enclosed and protected by starlings, supported by deeper piles, and it was the length of the piers that made quite large houses possible.
The bridge was also a place of pilgrimage and of disaster. Henry II commissioned the stone bridge with a chapel at its centre dedicated to Thomas Becket, the archbishop murdered after falling out with the king; the Chapel of St Thomas on the Bridge became the official start of pilgrimage to his Canterbury shrine, grander than some town parish churches, with an additional river-level entrance for fishermen and ferrymen. Neglect of maintenance was blamed for two known collapses, in 1281 and 1437, and in 1212 a great fire of London spread as far as the chapel and trapped many people.
Walk the crossing today and you trace the approaches of that older bridge: the church of St Magnus-the-Martyr marks the northern bank, Southwark Cathedral the southern shore. The bridge has been depicted in its several forms in art, literature and songs, from the nursery rhyme "London Bridge Is Falling Down" to T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Until Putney Bridge opened in 1729, this was the only road crossing of the Thames downstream of Kingston upon Thames — for centuries, everyone and everything heading south over the river came this way.
Crossing Well: Timing, Pace and the View That Matters
Give the bridge itself a unhurried half-hour, then let it anchor a longer walk along both banks. The pleasure is in the crossing and the two ends: start on the City side by St Magnus-the-Martyr, cross slowly, and finish at Southwark Cathedral. Because the modern bridge sits slightly upstream of the medieval alignment, you can look back and picture where the old houses and the stone gate once stood.
The bridge is a working crossing carrying the A3, so treat it as a place to walk rather than linger mid-road; the pavements give you the river on both sides. Come early in the day or towards evening for quieter footways, and pick a clear day so the sweep of the Pool of London reads properly. The highlight not to miss is the view back towards the City from the southern half — the water, the embankments and the line of the old approach — with Southwark Cathedral ahead of you as you step off. Pair the crossing with the church at one end and the cathedral at the other, and you have a compact walk through the whole story of the bridge in an afternoon.
What Else Is Within Reach
The bridge puts you in easy reach of much of central London. On the South Bank, the London Eye offers magnificent views over the city, and Tower Bridge — with its high towers and drawbridge, and public access to its interior via the Tower Bridge Exhibition — lies downstream near the Tower of London, London's original royal fortress by the Thames, more than 900 years old and home to the Crown Jewels. Tate Modern, at Southwark and Blackfriars, is close at hand. Further afield, you can build a longer day around Buckingham Palace, the King's London residence in Westminster, open for tours during the summer months; Kensington Palace; Madame Tussauds; or Emirates Stadium.
Start with the crossing itself: pick your day, begin at St Magnus-the-Martyr, and walk south with the river on both sides. The bridge has carried Londoners for two thousand years — all that remains is for you to add your own crossing to the count.