Secret stories of our best loved buildings NO 1
‘Gazing in wonder’ Tower Bridge, Tower Bridge Rd, London, SE1 2UP
Tower Bridge is the structure every visitor to London wants to get a photo of, the area packed full of tourist coaches and tour guides leading groups around Tower Hill and over the bridge.
But the bridge was originally built to ease congestion on London Bridge and service the growing trade in the Docklands of the East End, with bascule spans to allow boats access to the Pool of London.
Work started in April 1886 and took its army of construction workers eight years to finish the build. In total 432 construction workers, working each day for five major contractors, toiled on the site.
The work on site varied from divers involved in the foundation work to rivetters tying the steelwork together to bricklayers and stonemasons to clad the structure. There is also the hydrological system in place that is used to raise and lower the bridge and has its own team of specialist engineers.
Over 11,000 tonnes of steel produced the frame with Portland Stone and Cornish Granite covering it. The frame was produced in Glasgow and brought down in sections by boat, and held together with 13 million rivets.
Construction work was dangerous at the time and working to build a high bridge over the Thames probably more so. Workers didn’t have the safety equipment used today, such as harnesses and hard hats, and old photographs show riverteers climbing up the sloping suspension chains in suit trousers and waistcoats.
Though, much as today when you recognise managers and supervisors by the colour of their safety helmets, in Victorian times one report said, “you recognise the workers by their flat caps, the foremen by their bowler hats and the engineers by their top hats.”
Tower Bridge is only a few minutes walk from Unite’s Building Worker statue which remembers those killed at work, and the bridge was sadly not without its fatalities.
30 unite buildingWORKER Autumn 2024
Ten construction workers died during the building of the bridge. One, 20- year-old Richard Bacon, fell to his death on April 25, 1888.
Declan Murphy, Unite regional officer, said, “Walking from Tower Hill, after this year’s International Workers’ Memorial Day event across Tower Bridge, you saw thousands of tourists gazing in wonder at the structure spanning the Thames. But how many will think about the workers that made it possible through their toil and skills?
“Britain is full of some amazing buildings, but all have been constructed by builders – many Unite members. And it’s something we should all be proud of.”
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Getty Images: Dario Amade
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