London Bridge Tour

Kelly had arrived back from her travels in South America a week before, having visited her sister and spent some time readjusting to being home we we decided to go on the Bridge to Bridge walk – a very different walk to that which Nigel and I took every other evening around the Perth river, not as pretty admittedly, but a lot more action packed.

The plan was to see London Bridge then travel across to Tower Bridge, visit the Tower of London, go past St Pauls Cathedral and then back along Millennium Bridge. As we know, however… plans rarely come to fruition.

When we got off at London Bridge, through the hoards of people and misty rains there was a gentleman yelling out for people to speak to him regarding the ‘London Bridge’ experience. Behind him were large posters adorning the walls of blood and darkness and period dressed actors screaming for their lives. It looked brilliant! I looked at Kelly with those ‘please can we go’ puppy dog eyes, and after some discussion and a sudden surge of excitement we decided to cross the breach between living and dead and enter the London Bridge experience and related London Tombs.

Stepping into the darkness under London Bride we were met by a man dressed in 19th Century attire who swept us into a new world. The waiting area held imitation newspapers covering the decades of the life of London Bridge. A television explained briefly the history of the bridge complete with an actress performing as Queen Elizabeth II explaining the importance of the connection between South and North London,
“It may not be the most beautiful bridge in the world”, she said, “but it is one of the most historic”.
Kelly and I were not overly impressed with London Bridge, certainly not as attractive and daunting as Tower Bridge… little did we know.

We joined a group of 8 or so and were guided by the late 18th Century Butler through the dark skeleton drenched cobwebbed halls under London Bridge. After being wished goodluck upon our journey, and warned that we may not make it out alive we slowly wandered in the darkness before coming along what appeared to be some kind of Romanic wizard. Dressed in sack cloth and holding a crooked stick above a pool of blood on the cold cement floor he told us of the toils of those who existed during the original foundations of London Bridge. Warned of the darkness that was to come…

London Bridge is dated back to 55 AD and was originally a wooden construction built by the Romans during their years of English occupation. When the Romans eventually left the bridge slowly broke away and London was abandoned. Our wizard explained the turmoil of the Romanic rule, the death and destruction and what the future would hold. He sent us away with a dramatic wave of his stick, looking past the walls and into our destiny…

Suddenly a Viking woman shouted at us, “hurry! Hurry!” she said with a strong Germanic accent. Such a slight figure of a woman, and yet such a voice. We were told to stand straight against the wall of the cave that we had entered, Kelly and I looked at one another, slightly concerned and trying to hold in our nervous laughter. The Viking woman instructed us that the time had come to bring the bridge to its knees, as instructed by King Olaf in 1014. She asked to see our biceps, to hear us roar – which we all did as per her deafening request – and hop on one leg,
“stop that! You look stupid”, we all laughed before being scolded by a look that could kill. She then hurried us into an adjoining room that held three rows of two wooden benches, at the front was a wooden structure representing London Bridge with ropes attach, and to the back imagery to create the feeling you were on a Viking ship. One man was advised that he was going to be a captain of some description and given the tradition goat-horned steel Viking hat.
“PULL!” we grabbed the ropes at our feet and pulled,
“PULL!!!!” and again we pulled, being yelled at in the background by our favourite female Viking.
The London Tower before us creaked, cracked and moved. We had accomplished our mission and were told to go forth, quickly… quickly…

Moving through the dungeon-like enclosures with no light we were greeted by all sorts of horrifying ghouls. Ghosts jumped out at us, rocking chairs through windows and rats scurrying about. Heads hanging from the roof struck us in the face and water spat from the walls. Two gentlemen behind us decided it would be a good time to scream and frighten the females… they yelled right behind Kelly and I and we screamed and jumped and laughed! What a horrifying delight.

During our journey through the pits of London Bridge we encountered a specialist in the decapitation of all sorts of villains, the son, he advised, of the man who decapitated Guy Fawlks. He explained the necessary washing and tarring of the head before placing it on a peg along the bridge for all to witness. We were soon met by a gentleman wondering whether anyone was a witch, wearing a long dirt coloured cloak he pointed,
“Are you a witch?”
“Well… I used to be”, I said. Which was responded to by a look of shock, but he seemed to enjoy the possible banter,
“Why’d you give it up”,
“Oh”, I said, “Bit too dangerous these days”.
He nodded in agreement, “Oh, yes, that’s true. What with all the burnings”, he then led on to explain the old tale of how women were established as witches and why. Basically the medical profession wanted to get rid of anyone that might be taking some of their clientele, such as midwives – and anyone who questioned their processes or offered a different medical opinion regarding anything from consumption, the flu, to the plague. The women were taken to the river, if they floated they were witches and killed, if they didn’t float they weren’t witches, but were more than likely dead at any rate,
“Just as well for you then, eh?” he said with his thick London accent. I nodded in agreement,
“So, which parts’ you from then?” he asked,
“Australia”,
“Ozztraliaa?... ‘aven’t ‘eard of that. Where is it?”
“Oh you just go in that direction for a day,” I pointed behind him, “and then take a sharp right”,
“Oh”, he said and carried on his discussion of the shops that led up along London Bridge and went on to explain the first fire that occurred killing hundreds upon hundreds of people.
Kelly later asked whether she thought I’d not pronounced ‘Australia’ correctly and that he might not have realised where I was from. I suggested that because his character was based way before Australia was discovered he might have just played along. It was all thoroughly enjoyable though.

We were advised by another gentleman to bathe in our urine in order to prevent the plague, a woman warned us about walking the streets late at night for fear of Jack the Ripper who would slit a woman up and down, and all the time the walls continued to spit and howl, chained madpeople rattled at chains and ghouls lurked in dark corners to frighten us as we moved through the walkways. We were greeted by the ghost of Robert McColloch, an American entrepreneur who bought London Bridge in 1968 which was later reassembled in Arizona…

Along our 2000 year length journey we heard the stories of the people who had perished on the bridge, from Romans to Druids and Vikings, to prisoners convicted of treason for being Catholic at one time, Anglican the next and sometimes simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. We saw the dark tombs and were greeted by the essence of history along our tour. Neither of us knew that the Thames at one time had even frozen over and temporary homes, markets and stalls were set up on the thick ice around 1811. It was here that the concept of traffic ‘keeping to the left’ was invented to prevent congestion across the bridge in 1722.

So much history… and presented in such an… well lets just say intriguing and entertaining way. By the end of it Kelly and I had developed a strong bond with London Bridge. It had been built and abandoned, conquered and burnt, half burnt again in 1666. People had lived, bred and died on it, it had witnessed events and held the heads of heroes and villains. It was a slice of history and although aesthetically it didn’t out rightly present as an icon of England, it was infact the heart of London, bringing together North and South and bridging the cap of city and country. We had fallen in love with it and were exceptionally glad to have done the tour… what a marvellous start to a day.