The Hungerford Bridge crosses the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

in London, and lies between

Waterloo Bridge Waterloo Bridge () is a road and foot traffic bridge crossing the River Thames in London, between Blackfriars Bridge and Hungerford Bridge and Golden Jubilee Bridges. Its name commemorates the victory of the British, Dutch and Prussians at t ...

and

Westminster Bridge Westminster Bridge is a road-and-foot-traffic bridge over the River Thames in London, linking Westminster on the west side and Lambeth on the east side. The bridge is painted predominantly green, the same colour as the leather seats in the ...

. Owned by Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd (who use its official name of Charing Cross Bridge) it is a steel

truss A truss is an assembly of ''members'' such as beams, connected by ''nodes'', that creates a rigid structure. In engineering, a truss is a structure that "consists of two-force members only, where the members are organized so that the assembl ...

railway bridge flanked by two more recent, cable-stayed, pedestrian bridges that share the railway bridge's foundation piers, and which are named the Golden Jubilee Bridges. The north end of the bridge is

Charing Cross railway station Charing Cross railway station (also known as London Charing Cross) is a central London railway terminus between the Strand and Hungerford Bridge in the City of Westminster. It is the terminus of the South Eastern Main Line to Dover via Ashfo ...

, and is near

Embankment Pier Embankment Pier is a pier on the River Thames in City of Westminster, London. It is located on the north bank of the river, immediately next to the Hungerford Bridge and directly outside the river entrance to Embankment Underground station. It ...

and the

Victoria Embankment Victoria Embankment is part of the Thames Embankment, a road and river-walk along the north bank of the River Thames in London. It runs from the Palace of Westminster to Blackfriars Bridge in the City of London, and acts as a major thoroughfare ...

. The south end is near Waterloo station, County Hall, the Royal Festival Hall, and the London Eye. Each pedestrian bridge has steps and

lift Lift or LIFT may refer to: Physical devices * Elevator, or lift, a device used for raising and lowering people or goods ** Paternoster lift, a type of lift using a continuous chain of cars which do not stop ** Patient lift, or Hoyer lift, mobil ...

access.

History

The first Hungerford Bridge, designed by

Isambard Kingdom Brunel Isambard Kingdom Brunel (; 9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859) was a British civil engineer who is considered "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history," "one of the 19th-century engineering giants," and "on ...

, opened in 1845 as a suspension footbridge. It was named after the then Hungerford Market, because it went from the South Bank, specifically a northern point of Lambeth, soon close to

London Waterloo station Waterloo station (), also known as London Waterloo, is a central London terminus on the National Rail network in the United Kingdom, in the Waterloo area of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is connected to a London Underground station of t ...

to that place on the north side of the Thames, specifically to the market (later Charing Cross Station) about 200 yards or metres east of

Trafalgar Square Trafalgar Square ( ) is a public square in the City of Westminster, Central London, laid out in the early 19th century around the area formerly known as Charing Cross. At its centre is a high column bearing a statue of Admiral Nelson comm ...

partly in the parish of Saint Martin in the Fields, Westminster, the spire of which can be seen from the bridge. In 1859 the original bridge was bought by the railway company extending the South Eastern Railway into the newly opened

. The railway company replaced the suspension bridge with a structure designed by Sir

John Hawkshaw Sir John Hawkshaw FRS FRSE FRSA MICE (9 April 1811 – 2 June 1891), was an English civil engineer. He served as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers 1862-63. His most noteworthy work is the Severn Tunnel. Early life He was born ...

, comprising nine spans made of

wrought iron Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4%). It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which give it a wood-like "grain" ...

lattice girders, which opened in 1864. The chains from the old bridge were re-used in

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

's Clifton Suspension Bridge. The original brick pile buttresses of Brunel's footbridge are still in use, though the one on the Charing Cross side is now much closer to the river bank than it was originally, due to the building of the

, completed in 1870. The buttress on the South Bank side still has the entrances and steps from the original steamer pier Brunel built on to the footbridge. Charing Cross Bridge, Monet

To compensate for the removal of the footbridge, walkways were added on each side, with the western one later being removed when the railway was widened. Another walkway was temporarily added in 1951 when an Army

Bailey bridge A Bailey bridge is a type of portable, pre-fabricated, truss bridge. It was developed in 1940–1941 by the British for military use during the Second World War and saw extensive use by British, Canadian and American military engineering units. ...

was constructed for the Festival of Britain. In 1980 a temporary walkway was erected on the western side while the eastern railway bridge and walkway were refurbished. It is one of three bridges in London to carry pedestrians and rolling stock; the others being Fulham Railway Bridge and Barnes Bridge. The footbridge gained a reputation for being narrow, dilapidated and dangerous; it was the scene of a murder in 1999. In the mid-1990s a decision was made to replace the footbridge with new structures on either side of the existing railway bridge, and a competition was held in 1996 for a new design. Further justification for new footbridge structures on the west flank and east flank was that the brittle

support pillars of Sir John Hawkshaw's railway bridge were vulnerable to impact from riverboats. It was felt, especially following the

Marchioness disaster The ''Marchioness'' disaster was a collision between two vessels on the River Thames in London in the early hours of 20 August 1989, which resulted in the deaths of 51 people. The pleasure steamer ''Marchioness'' sank after being hit twice by ...

, that these should be clad in concrete at water level; but the bridge's owners,

Railtrack Railtrack was a group of companies that owned the track, signalling, tunnels, bridges, level crossings and all but a handful of the stations of the British railway system from 1994 until 2002. It was created as part of the privatisation of ...

, could not afford the work. The Golden Jubilee Bridges achieved this protection at no cost to Railtrack.

The new footbridges

The concept design for the new footbridges was won by architects Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands and engineers

WSP Group WSP Global Inc. is a Canadian company with American and British roots, providing management and consultancy services to the built and natural environment. It is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. After the purchase of New York-headquartered ...

. Detailed design of the two bridges was carried out by consulting engineers Gifford, now Ramboll UK. The steelwork for the new footbridges was fabricated by Butterley Engineering Ltd. of Ripley, Derbyshire. Their construction was complicated by the need to keep the railway bridge operating without interruptions, the Bakerloo line tunnels passing only a few feet under the river bed, and the potential danger of unexploded

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

bombs in the Thames mud. Despite extensive surveys of the riverbed,

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The ...

was unwilling to accept these risks and preliminary works were stopped in 2000. The design was modified so that the support structure on the north side, which would have been within of the tube lines, was moved out of the river bed and onto Victoria Embankment. Excavation near the tube lines was carried out when the tube was closed, and foundations were hand-dug for additional security. The two new wide footbridges were completed in 2002. They were named the Golden Jubilee Bridges, in honour of the fiftieth anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's accession, although in practice they are often still referred to as the "Hungerford Footbridges". Hungerford Bridge from London Eye

The long decks were raised using an innovative method called ''incremental launching'', in which each long section was pulled across the river using a long steel truss weighing 300

tonne The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...

s. This process was repeated five times until each deck spanned the river, supported by six temporary piers made of steel and concrete. The seven 25-tonne pylons were then raised over the subsequent two weeks. Once the pylons had been installed, the decks were jacked up to enable their connection with the cable stays suspended from the pylons. The concrete deck was then lowered into its final position and the temporary piers and supports were dismantled. The design of the bridges is complex. Each of the two decks is supported by inclined outward-leaning pylons. The decks are suspended from fans of slender steel rods called deck stays—there are 180 on each deck, made up of over of cable—and are held in position by other rods called backstays. Because the pylons lean the back stays are under tension. The deck is secured in place by steel collars fitted around (although not supported by) the pillars of the railway bridge; the collars are themselves attached to the bridge's foundations by tie-down rods. The entire structure is thus held in place by exploiting the tensions between the pylons and the various stay rods and struts. Hungerford Bridge 2

The new bridges won the Specialist category in the

Royal Fine Art Commission The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) was an executive non-departmental public body of the UK government, established in 1999. It was funded by both the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for ...

Building of the Year Award in 2003. It gained a Structural Achievement Award commendation in the 2004

Institution of Structural Engineers The Institution of Structural Engineers is a professional body for structural engineering based in the United Kingdom. The Institution has over 30,000 members operating in over 100 countries. The Institution provides professional accreditation ...

awards, and has won awards from the Civic Trust and for its lighting design. In 2014, the planning application for the now cancelled Garden Bridge, revealed in its assessment of pedestrian movement across the Thames that the footbridges are the busiest in London, with an estimated footfall of 8.5 million each year.

In fiction

* "Hungerford Bridge" by Elizabeth Hand, Conjunctions 52, 2009. * "The Woman Who Fell In Love With The Hungerford Bridge" by

Lavie Tidhar Lavie Tidhar ( he, לביא תדהר; born 16 November 1976) is an Israeli-born writer, working across multiple genres. He has lived in the United Kingdom and South Africa for long periods of time, as well as Laos and Vanuatu. As of 2013, Ti ...

, Ambit 2014.

References

External links

Survey of London entryGolden Jubilee Footbridges
* Hungerford Bridge (1845) had a span of
Bridgemeister
* *
Hungerford Bridge Graveyard

Imágenes y descripción del puente de Hungerford en PUENTEMANÍA
(Español) {{DEFAULTSORT:Hungerford Bridge And Golden Jubilee Bridges Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II Railway bridges in London Cable-stayed bridges in England Transport in the City of Westminster Transport in the London Borough of Lambeth Bridges completed in 1845 Bridges completed in 1864 Bridges completed in 2002 Rebuilt buildings and structures in the United Kingdom Buildings and structures in the City of Westminster Buildings and structures in the London Borough of Lambeth Pedestrian bridges across the River Thames Bridges by Isambard Kingdom Brunel Southbank Centre 2002 establishments in England 1845 establishments in England 1864 establishments in England Pedestrian bridges in London Bridge light displays

History

The new footbridges

In fiction

See also

References

External links