Showing posts with label Peter de Colechurch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peter de Colechurch. Show all posts

Friday, September 21, 2012

London Bridge is Falling Down!

[For earlier history, see here.]

Finding the origin of nursery rhymes can be unreliable, since one never knows how long a rhyme was circulating orally until it got recorded. See my comments on "Ring Around the Rosie" here. Also, what we think of as the nursery rhyme may be just the latest version; earlier versions may lead to entirely different interpretations. The full current version of "London Bridge Is Falling Down" can be read here. It has references that make it very unlikely to be a medieval poem.

Viking boat pulling down London Bridge
The earliest reference to something that might be related to the Bridge rhyme is found in the Norse Heimskringla, written in Iceland by Snorri Sturluson (1178-1241). In it, Sturluson collected stories of Norwegian kings. In one story, King Olaf II attacked London and the Bridge in the company of the Saxon King Æthelred the Unready. They pulled it down with chains, dividing the Danish forces who had no other easy way to cross the Thames. The 1844 English edition included a poem by another poet, Ottar Svarti ("Ottar the Black"), which begins with the line "London Bridge is broken down." It was discovered later, however, that the translator decided to prefix Ottar's poem with a made-up line. Ottar never referred to London Bridge.

In the 1890s, another theory as to the origin came from a British folklorist. Drawing on an old theme of blood sacrifice to make foundations strong, she suggested that children were buried—perhaps alive—under the Bridge. Actually, there was a burial "under" the Bridge. Peter de Colechurch, who was heavily involved in the construction of the 12th century version, was a chaplain of the church in which St. Thomas Becket was baptized. He had a chapel on the Bridge dedicated to Becket. de Colechurch died in 1205 and was buried in the crypt, at the river level of the chapel. At the dismantling of the Bridge in 1832, when his bones were found, they were unceremoniously tossed into the Thames.

Wedding of Henry III & Eleanor of Provence
Then there's the story that Eleanor of Provence (c.1223-1291), who was given the tolls and rents from the Bridge as a present from her husband, Henry III, spent them on herself rather than the upkeep of the Bridge. The Bridge fell into disrepair, and a derisive verse was formed with the telling, sarcastic phrase "my fair lady."

Control of the Bridge was returned to the City of London in 1281. Ironically, the heavy river ice that winter built up against the bridge and five of the arches collapsed.

The Bridge has become iconic. A few remaining stones of the medieval version can be seen in the churchyard of St. Magnus Martyr, which used to be at one end of the span. In the early 1960s, when he learned London wanted to replace the Bridge and offered to sell the Victorian version, American chainsaw magnate Robert McCulloch offered the winning bid of $2,460,000. McCulloch transported the stones (carefully coded) to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, USA, where he had them painstakingly re-assembled over a steel structure. "London Bridge" now exists on both sides of the Atlantic!

Thursday, September 20, 2012

London Bridge is Going Up!

London Bridge—the first of which was built in 80 CE—has, indeed, fallen down. In fact, for the first millennium of the Common Era, the wooden structure linking Southwark to the City of London was rebuilt countless times. As the only link between the banks of the river from the sea until Kingston (15 miles upriver from London), it was important for commerce and defense.

In 1014, when Æthelred the Unready's Saxons and King Olaf's Vikings joined forces and sailed up the Thames, they aimed to split the Danish forces in London by attacking the Bridge. The Danes hurled spears down on the ships, which defended themselves with thatch taken from London cottages; then the attackers went under the Bridge and pulled down the supports with cables. To some, this is the origin of the nursery rhyme.*

That wasn't the only time "London Bridge is Falling Down" would have entered the vocabulary. For the first 70 years after the Norman Conquest in 1066, there were ten incidents in which fire destroyed or significantly damaged the bridge. Several of the rebuilding efforts included aid from different counties, proving the importance of London Bridge to those outside the city.

A stone bridge was begun in 1176. Financed by a tax and overseen by Peter de Colechurch, it took 33 years to finish.

The enclosed road on the Bridge
This was an enormous undertaking. The new London Bridge was 300 yards long, with 20 arches that were 60 feet high and with 30 feet wide spaces, each with gates. The bridge supported a road 20 feet wide—wide enough to be used for houses and shops, some of which were three stories high. Upper stories would be built wider than the main floor, and joined by timbers. The Bridge became a narrow lane lined with shops, with a roof overhead. Their rents supported the upkeep. Mill wheels were set up under the arches to grind grain.

Sadly, the City's modern needs demanded that the old Bridge be demolished and a new one be built, in 1831-2. Another decade, and we might even have had photographs of the structure that stood for over six centuries.

*More on that in the future.