This was the view as we approached the footbridge that was
to finally take us right up to St Paul’s Cathedral.
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The Faraday Building (green roof), Baynard House (grey),
City of London School (red)
http://gherkinscall.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/gabriels-wharf-and-blackfriars-bridges.html |
Undoubtedly Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece, St Paul’s
Cathedral is MASSIVE. In fact, it looks closer than it actually is, due to its
size. Therefore, expect more photos in a separate post…
From this part of the south bank of The Thames, several examples
of Sir Christopher Wren’s architectural work can be glimpsed, since he famously
helped in the reconstruction of 52 churches after The Great Fire of 1666 in
London.
St Nicholas Cole Abbey (1681) is the white spire with a
small balcony near the top.
St Mary-le-Bow (1683) is the thinner and higher (68
metres) white steeple with columns. Famous for its bells which can still be
heard on BBC World Service as an interval, it is considered the most important
church in the City of London district (after St Paul’s Cathedral) and the first
one to be rebuilt after 1666 (it was started in 1670). [Milestones to Lewes in
Sussex used to be positioned from measuring the distance from this church’s
door and are marked with a bow and bells.]
Those three were badly damaged during WWII.
St Mary Somerset (1695) is the square tower with the six
thin turrets on top, under the red and white crane and behind the grey Millennium
Bridge House, past the bridge.
St Mary Aldermary (1682) is the gothic square tower
further to the right, whereas (not pictured) St Martin, Ludgate (1687) nearby
too, is to the west of the cathedral (both damaged but not so severely during
WWII).
St James Garlickhithe (1676) is located near the place
where garlic was sold in the middle ages! Its stone spire shows here below the
Leadenhall Building and though the top is not Wren’s work, it is similar to St
Paul’s Cathedral’s west towers with several levels of columns and urns.
In contrast, the skyline also offers a good view of the 7
tallest skyscrapers in the City of London financial district.
The building with curved bars just below its roof is
CityPoint, a 1967 skyscraper; it was first called Britannic House/Tower and
was BP’s HQ. At 122 metres high, it was the first building in the district to
be higher than St Paul’s Cathedral.
The skyscraper with what looks like two towers stuck
together (one with criss-cross beams in front of the windows) is the 2009
Broadgate Tower (165 metres) and is over the Liverpool Street Station. It was
used in the James Bond movie Skyfall, set in… Shanghai!
Much taller (and in the pic above the orangey flats of Broken
Wharf House) is Tower 42 (183 metres) which was first the NatWest Tower in 1980
– from above the design looks like three leaves around a stem, which apparently
had nothing to do with the NatWest logo. It remained the tallest building in
the UK until 1991. In this picture, it hides the 2010 “Heron Tower” / 110
Bishopsgate, except for its spike (total
height 230 metres).
“The Gherkin” (my favourite condiment) is here hidden –
it is only 180 metres high, after all, and its name is actually 30 St Mary Axe
(even stranger…) – by “The Cheesegrater” / Leadenhall Building / 122 Leadenhall
Street (225 metres) completed in 2014 and quite a sight seen from its base (to
be shared in a future post)
So out-of-place looking and over-sized, it nearly looks
photoshopped in the pic, the 2014 “Walkie-Talkie” / 20 Fenchurch Street (130
metres).
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Tower 42 - 122 Leadenhall Street - 20 Fenchurch Street
(More photos of the skyscrapers in the City, later in this blog.)
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| Tower 42 design |
Known as The Millennium Bridge, the London Millennium
footbridge is a suspension bridge made of steel with an aluminium deck. There
are only two impressive grey piers in the river; they made me think of gulls in
flight, even more so, since the rest of the bridge seems to disappear from view
when observed from a distance in the bright sunshine.
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The white building with columns is called Vintners Place.
The green and yellow bridge is Southwark Bridge.
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Because the cables are stretched on the sides, and held
nearly at the same horizontal level as the deck, aerial pictures make the
structure looks like a strange spider web – safety net – net bag – hammock
thing.
Vintners Place (offices since 1990 and replaces Vintry
House of 1927, demolished - though some statues remain, but cannot be seen from
here). It all belonged to “The Worshipful Company of Vintners” or The Vintners'
Company – dating from 1363 – “one of the 12 Great City of London Liveries
Company” (import, regulation and sale of wine and also charity and education
work) which has occupied this site since the 15th c. Their original hall had to
be rebuilt in the 1670s after it was totally destroyed by the Great Fire of
1666. They are still located in Vintners Hall (behind the corner). The coat of arms
that can be seen on the 20th c. façade here features some swans, as the company
is one of the three owners of all the Upper Thames swans (with Dyers and The
Queen of England); it organises an historic annual census called “swan upping.”
Even from a short distance, The Millennium Bridge can hardly be seen.
It was an installation called Floating Dreams, part of a cultural program called Take Me To The River.
The artist was Ik-Joong Kang, from South Korea and the
3-storey high object was lit from within at night. The sides of this lantern
were covered with 500 drawings, made by participants from Korea - each a dream.
The themes being the displacement of people during the Korean War and the
reunification of North and South Korea.
Some banners gave a few examples of the dreams: people in
their eighties, still waiting to return to their home town in the north or be
reunited with their family after 63 years…
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| From underneath London Millennium Footbridge. |
The shadow of the bridge on the water does look like a
suspension bridge.
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The crowd outside Tate Modern (on right).
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So far on our walk, the Millennium Footbridge offered us
the best view of The Shard, which is south of London Bridge (not the next
bridge in the pictures).
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| Union Jack parasol – can be used as an umbrella, you never know… |
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| Just outside Shakespeare’s Globe: Bankside Pier for cruising The Thames. |
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| The skyscrapers of the financial district known as The City of London. |
The closest road bridge downriver is in fact Southwark Bridge and, hidden behind it,
are the railway lines going across The Thames on Cannon Street Railway Bridge (Doric-style columns for piers), which
was designed by Sir John Hawkshaw and
Sir John Wolfe Barry (construction 1863-1866) and later modernised. The bridge
brings the trains in Cannon Street
Station, here in buff colour, with arches and two towers. This railway
station opened in 1866 and was also designed by J Hawkshaw and JW Barry. A year later, a five-storey
hotel was added, it was designed by the architect Edward Middleton Barry (who
also designed The Royal Opera House in London and The Royal Opera House in
Valletta, Malta). Both JW Barry and EM Barry were sons of architect Sir Charles
Barry, famous for the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster.
Only the towers are from the original building, they used
to support an arched roof made of iron and glass. Before WWII the glass had
been removed to save it from neglect; during the war, the station’s roof was
hit by fire bombs but so was the factory where the glass parts were stored…
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The rows of Doric piers and the green side of Cannon
Street Railway Bridge can be seen in this pic.
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London Bridge
is behind Southwark Bridge and Cannon
Street Railway Bridge and is not visible from here. Yet, further away
in the distance we can see the two towers of Tower Bridge (which is beside the Tower of London, just over a mile
from here and where we went for a walk the next day.)
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Tower Bridge
(1894) seen from the Millennium Footbridge, with Southwark Bridge in the
foreground
and Cannon Street Railway Bridge right behind (Doric piers, green side). |
We cannot see The Tower of London from here, but the
skyscrapers of Canary Wharf loom in the far distance (4 miles from the
footbridge).
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Pigeons and a shard of glass sitting on the suspension
cables.
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Southwark Bridge has cast-iron arches held on granite piers,
it is a listed structure. Opened in 1921, it replaced Queen Street Bridge
(1819), a toll-bridge that had the longest cast-iron spans ever made. Due to Probably
due to the “Ring of Steel” security checkpoints at the north of the bridge,
entrance to the financial district, Southwark Bridge has the lowest traffic of
all the bridges in central London – and to prove it, we did not use it, nor
went nearer… Though I think, it looks nice and has some triple street-lamps on
it.
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1819 Queen Street
Bridge, Southwark
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Extremely long train on the railway bridge outside Cannon Street Station.
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Southwark Bridge
and a train on Cannon Street Railway Bridge (green).
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A 1616 engraving by Claes Visscher showing the old
medieval London Bridge (construction 1176-1209)
with houses and shops and heads
of beheaded criminals or traitors on pikes
above Southwark Gatehouse (south of bridge) 😱
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Confusing by its name, the first London Bridge was the
first bridge in London and thus, on old 17th c. maps, is marked simply The
Bridge (more about London Bridge in a future post.)
The location of the Millennium Footbridge allows to get
to St Paul’s Cathedral directly from Tate Modern, but also offers a great photo
opportunity : St Paul’s Cathedral seeming to rest on the bridge – if you don’t
mind lots of pedestrian in your shots…
Considering that the bridge had to be closed, on opening
day, because it was swaying too much… we were actually lucky, on a sunny Sunday
afternoon, to be able to get a fairly clear view ahead of us, as there was a
good crowd.
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The River Thames can be seen underfoot
while starting to
cross the London Millennium Footbridge.
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| Perfect alignment 💙 |
The total length is 325 metres and the walkway is 4 metres wide.
On arrival on the north bank, the bridge seems to stretch into the street called Peter’s Hill. From here, it is a straight line to the southern side of St Paul’s Cathedral.
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| Looking towards the south bank of The Thames and the chimney of Tate Modern, from the northern end of the footbridge. |
>
“This plaque commemorates the dedication of The Millennium Bridge
by Her Majesty The Queen on 9 May 2000.”
So it would have been okay if I had called it The Millennium
Bridge…
Next post: St Paul's Cathedral
