Wikipedia Deep Dive

Hammersmith Bridge

12 min read

In the summer of 2022, workers wrapped the chains of Hammersmith Bridge in foil and pumped in air-conditioned coolant to keep them at thirteen degrees Celsius. A heatwave was threatening to crack the already-damaged iron. This is not how bridges are supposed to work.

Hammersmith Bridge, which crosses the River Thames in west London, has become one of the most troubled pieces of infrastructure in Britain. Closed to motor traffic since 2019, damaged by three separate Irish Republican Army bomb attacks, and caught in an endless funding dispute between local and national government, the bridge embodies a peculiar kind of modern dysfunction: everyone agrees something must be done, but no one can agree on who should pay for it.

The current bridge—a graceful suspension structure with ornate towers—is actually the second to stand on this site. And understanding its history helps explain why fixing it has become so complicated.

The First Bridge: An Engineering Milestone

Before 1827, if you wanted to cross the Thames in this part of west London, your options were limited. You could travel several miles upstream to Kew Bridge or downstream to Putney Bridge. A group of local residents decided this was absurd and petitioned Parliament for permission to build their own crossing.

Parliament agreed. The Hammersmith Bridge Act of 1824 established a private company to finance and construct the bridge, with the right to collect tolls from anyone crossing it. This was the standard arrangement of the time—infrastructure as private investment, with returns paid by users.

Construction began in 1825, and the bridge opened on October 6, 1827. It cost approximately eighty thousand pounds, which translates to nearly nine million pounds in today's money. But this expenditure bought something remarkable: the first suspension bridge ever built over the River Thames.

The designer was William Tierney Clark, a civil engineer who would later build an even more famous suspension bridge connecting Buda and Pest in Hungary. His Hammersmith design featured two stone towers, constructed as archways in the Tuscan style, rising forty-eight feet above the roadway. Eight chains of wrought-iron bars stretched between them, dipping twenty-nine feet at their lowest point, from which vertical rods descended to support the roadway below.

The roadway itself was ingeniously constructed: strong timbers covered with granite, creating a durable surface for the horse-drawn traffic of the era. At twenty feet wide for carriages with two five-foot footpaths, it was adequate for its time.

The company built toll houses at each end—octagonal lodges with ornamental lamps and stone pillars—and began collecting their investment returns penny by penny. They even added a floating steamboat pier on the downstream side, hoping to capture revenue from river traffic as well.

The Weight of Progress

By the 1870s, the original bridge was in trouble. The problem wasn't poor design or shoddy construction. The problem was that London had changed.

Victorian London was growing explosively. Traffic increased not just in volume but in weight. The horse-drawn carriages of 1827 were giving way to heavier vehicles. The bridge's owners watched nervously as ever more people and goods crossed their structure.

Then came the University Boat Race.

The annual rowing race between Oxford and Cambridge universities passes directly under Hammersmith Bridge, slightly before the halfway point of its four-and-a-quarter-mile course. It was—and remains—one of the great spectator events of the British calendar. In 1870, somewhere between eleven and twelve thousand people crowded onto the bridge to watch the crews pass beneath them.

The bridge held. But its owners were alarmed. This was not the kind of load William Tierney Clark had designed for.

The Metropolitan Board of Works, London's proto-government, purchased the bridge in 1880 under the Metropolis Toll Bridges Act. The tolls were abolished on June 26 of that year—Hammersmith Bridge became free to cross. The approach roads were transferred to local authorities.

There were no immediate plans to replace the bridge. It was aging, certainly, but still sound. Then in 1882 a boat collided with it, causing damage, and the conversation changed.

Bazalgette's Bridge

Sir Joseph Bazalgette is one of the most consequential engineers in London's history, though few people outside engineering circles know his name. He designed the city's sewer system—an achievement that did more for public health than almost any medical advance of the era. He also designed several Thames crossings, including the current Hammersmith Bridge.

Bazalgette made a practical decision that would have long-term implications: he kept William Tierney Clark's original pier foundations. Building new foundations in the Thames was expensive and time-consuming. The existing foundations were solid. Why not reuse them?

This meant the new bridge, while larger and stronger than its predecessor, was constrained by the footprint of the old one. The carriageway was now twenty-seven feet wide, narrowing to just under twenty feet between the towers. Two footways of nearly six feet each flanked the roadway.

The new bridge was constructed by Dixon, Appleby and Thorne and opened by the Prince of Wales—the future King Edward VII—on June 11, 1887. It cost eighty-two thousand pounds, roughly equivalent to eleven and a half million pounds today.

Unlike its predecessor, Bazalgette's bridge was built primarily of wrought iron rather than stone. At seven hundred feet long and forty-three feet wide, it was an impressive structure, decorated in the ornate Victorian style with elaborate towers and decorative ironwork. But wrought iron, while stronger than the materials of the earlier bridge, would present its own challenges over time.

When the Metropolitan Board of Works was abolished in 1889, ownership passed to the new London County Council. The bridge entered the twentieth century as public infrastructure, maintained by government rather than private investors.

A Hero's Sacrifice

Near midnight on December 27, 1919, Lieutenant Charles Campbell Wood was crossing Hammersmith Bridge. Wood was South African, from Bloemfontein, serving as an airman in the Royal Air Force. The Great War had ended just over a year earlier, but many servicemen remained in Britain.

Wood saw a woman drowning in the Thames below.

Without hesitation, he dived from the upstream footway into the dark winter water. The Thames at night in December is bitterly cold, its currents treacherous. Wood reached the woman and saved her life.

But his heroism came at a terrible cost. During the rescue, Wood injured himself. The wound became infected with tetanus—lockjaw, as it was commonly called. In an era before antibiotics, tetanus was often fatal. Lieutenant Wood died from his injuries.

Today, a plaque on the handrail marks the spot where he dived. It reads simply: "Lieutenant Charles Campbell Wood RAF of Bloemfontein, South Africa dived from this spot into the Thames at midnight 27 Dec. 1919 and saved a woman's life. He died from the injuries received following the rescue."

The IRA Attacks

Hammersmith Bridge has been attacked by Irish Republican organizations three times, spanning over sixty years of conflict between Irish republicans and the British state.

The first attack came on March 29, 1939, as part of what the Irish Republican Army called the S-Plan—a bombing campaign targeting infrastructure across England. At one o'clock in the morning, a women's hairdresser named Maurice Childs from nearby Chiswick was crossing the bridge when he spotted a smouldering suitcase on the walkway.

Childs realized immediately what he was looking at: a bomb. Without panicking, he grabbed the suitcase and threw it over the side into the Thames, where it exploded. Moments later, a second bomb detonated on the bridge itself, damaging the structure and breaking windows in nearby houses. For his quick thinking, Childs received an MBE—Member of the Order of the British Empire. Two men, Eddie Connell and William Browne, were sentenced to twenty and ten years in prison respectively.

The second attack, on April 26, 1996, came from the Provisional IRA during the later phase of the Northern Ireland conflict known as the Troubles. This attack was potentially catastrophic. Two large Semtex bombs—the largest Semtex devices ever found in Britain at that time—were installed on the south bank of the Thames. The detonators activated.

But the bombs failed to ignite. The bridge survived through luck rather than any failure of intent.

The third attack succeeded in causing significant damage. On June 1, 2000, the Real IRA—a splinter group opposed to the peace process—planted a bomb underneath the Barnes span. The explosion forced the bridge to close for two years of repairs. When it reopened, additional weight restrictions were in place.

The Slow Decline

Even before the 2000 bombing, Hammersmith Bridge was showing its age. Wrought iron corrodes. Traffic had increased beyond anything Bazalgette could have imagined. The Royal Commission on Cross-River Traffic in London noted as early as 1926 that the bridge's limited headroom for river navigation was unsatisfactory and that there was little room for increased traffic.

The Commission's report observed, with what now seems like understatement, that "the bridge is so constantly under repair that it is frequently available for only one line of vehicles and is the source of so much delay and congestion of traffic." It concluded: "We regard it as essential that Hammersmith Bridge should be rebuilt as soon as possible and widened to take four lines of traffic, without restriction of weight."

That was nearly a century ago. The bridge was never rebuilt.

In February 1997, the bridge was closed to all traffic except buses, bicycles, motorcycles, emergency vehicles, and pedestrians. The structural elements—cross girders, deck surfacing, masonry—were corroded and worn. Essential repairs were needed.

In 2008, the bridge received Grade II* listing, a designation that protects historically significant structures from unsympathetic development. This was both a recognition of the bridge's architectural importance and a complication for any future repairs, which would now need to preserve its historic character.

More temporary closures followed in 2014. A major program of repairs and strengthening was planned for 2016 but collapsed in a dispute over funding between Hammersmith and Fulham Council and Transport for London. The council leader stated bluntly: "There's no way that this council is going to spend anything like that money."

The Current Crisis

On April 10, 2019, Hammersmith and Fulham Council closed the bridge indefinitely to motor traffic. Cracks had been discovered in the iron pedestals that support the entire structure. This was not a routine maintenance issue. This was a fundamental structural concern.

Pedestrians and cyclists could still cross—the loads they imposed were far lighter than motor vehicles. But the days of cars and trucks on Hammersmith Bridge were over, at least for the foreseeable future.

Then came August 2020 and a heatwave. Metal expands when heated. The already-compromised bridge developed new cracks. On August 13, even pedestrians and cyclists were banned. The bridge was closed entirely. River traffic and pedestrian routes underneath were also stopped.

The repair estimates were staggering: one hundred forty-one million pounds to fully restore the bridge, or forty-six million just to stabilize it enough for pedestrians and cyclists. Neither the local council nor Transport for London had this money available.

What followed was a years-long odyssey through British bureaucracy. The Secretary of State for Transport appointed a task force. Foster and Partners, the renowned architecture firm, proposed an innovative solution: a temporary double-decked steel structure built inside the existing bridge, allowing damaged elements to be removed and repaired while the bridge remained in use. The scheme would cost around one hundred million pounds, funded by a three-pound toll.

Plans were discussed. Agreements were reached. Then new obstacles emerged.

Supply chains for steel were disrupted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, delaying the procurement of materials. A boat—the MV Emerald of London—collided with a repair gantry in December 2023, causing additional damage and further delays. The cost estimate climbed to two hundred fifty million pounds.

In January 2024, London Mayor Sadiq Khan acknowledged the obvious: "I do want that bridge fit for purpose for vehicles," but neither the council nor Transport for London had the money. Transport for London's 2024 Business Plan included no funding for the bridge.

A Bridge to Somewhere

In April 2025, the bridge finally reopened to pedestrians and cyclists. The roadway had been resurfaced—plywood boards bolted to timber supports, with worn sections replaced at a cost of nearly three million pounds. The surface is now divided into separate lanes for pedestrians and cyclists, with the two outer footways also available for walking.

But motor vehicles remain banned. The council has mentioned reviewing "e-mobility options to shuttle residents across the bridge, notably the elderly or disabled." Full restoration to vehicle traffic, if it ever happens, remains years away.

The story of Hammersmith Bridge is, in many ways, a story about how difficult it has become to maintain public infrastructure. The bridge was built twice by private enterprise, purchased by government to eliminate tolls, attacked by terrorists, gradually undermined by age and increasing traffic, and finally defeated by the inability of different levels of government to agree on who should pay for repairs.

The original Hammersmith Bridge Company knew exactly who would pay for maintenance: the people crossing the bridge, through tolls. When the government took over and abolished tolls, it assumed that responsibility. But in an era of constrained public finances and fragmented authority—local councils, Transport for London, the national Department for Transport—the question of who pays has no clear answer.

And so the bridge sits, wrapped in foil during heatwaves, closed to the vehicles that once crossed it, a monument to the complexity of governing a modern city. The twelve thousand spectators who crowded onto the original bridge in 1870 to watch the Boat Race would likely be astonished. Their bridge was inadequate for Victorian London. The current bridge, built to replace it, has proven inadequate for the twenty-first century.

Whether a third bridge will ever rise on Sir Joseph Bazalgette's foundations remains an open question. For now, pedestrians and cyclists can cross, the Boat Race still passes underneath each spring, and the ornate Victorian towers stand as a reminder of an age that built infrastructure to last—though perhaps not quite long enough.