Old Elizabethan London Bridge

The London Bridge in Elizabethan times was very different. It was an important bridge – the only way to get from London to the other side of the river. Being the only bridge its traffic was enormous – vital for the movement of both goods and people. Just about every Londoner and visitor to London had to cross it it had developed into a little city, with hundreds of shops in several buildings of all kinds, which had sprung up over the centuries. Because so many merchants wanted to enjoy the advantages of so many people using the bridge the buildings grew higher and higher, some reaching six stories, and many projected up to sixty-five feet over the river. The struts and buttresses that supported them groaned, and swayed dangerously.