London Bridge
road bridge across River Thames in London, opened in 1973
The name "London Bridge" refers to several historical crossings that have spanned the River Thames between the City of London and Southwark in central London since Roman times. The current crossing, which opened to traffic in 1973, is a box girder bridge built from concrete and steel. It replaced a 19th-century stone-arched bridge, which in turn superseded a 600-year-old stone-built medieval structure. In addition to the roadway, for much of its history, the broad medieval bridge supported 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. The medieval bridge was preceded by a succession of timber bridges, the first of which was built by the Roman founders of London (Londinium) around AD 50.
The current bridge stands at the western end of the Pool of London and is positioned 30 metres (98 ft) upstream from previous alignments. The approaches to the medieval bridge were marked by the church of St Magnus-the-Martyr on the northern bank and by Southwark Cathedral on the southern shore. Until Putney Bridge opened in 1729, London Bridge was the only road crossing of the Thames downstream of Kingston upon Thames. London Bridge has been depicted in its several forms, in art, literature, and songs, including the nursery rhyme "London Bridge Is Falling Down", and the epic poem The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot.
The modern bridge is owned and maintained by Bridge House Estates, an independent charity of medieval origin overseen by the City of London Corporation.
“London Bridge” enters the record as road bridge across River Thames in London, opened in 1973. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what London, Bridge and road can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“London Bridge” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, London, Bridge and road provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q130206. VIAF identifies the subject as 315145763. The Library of Congress control number is sh87000184. Authority coordinates are 51.508, -0.088. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973 and 1729.
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This entry incorporates text from “London Bridge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.