London

Tower Bridge (built 1886–1894) is a

combined bascule and sus-pension bridge in London which

crosses the River Thames. It is close to the Tower of London, from which it takes

its name, and has become an iconic symbol of London.

The bridge consists of two towers tied together at the upper level by means of two horizontal walkways, de-

signed to withstand the horizontal forces exerted by the suspended sections of the bridge on the landward sides

of the towers. The vertical component of the forces in the suspended sections and the vertical reactions of the two walkways are carried by the two robust towers. The bascule pivots and operating machinery are housed in the base of each tower. The bridge’s present colour scheme dates from 1977, when it was painted red, white and blue for Queen Elizabeth II’s silver jubilee. Originally it was paint a mid greenish-blue colour.

The nearest London Underground station is Tower Hill on the Circle and District lines, and the nearest Dock-

lands Light Railway station is Tower Gateway. he bridge was officially opened on 30 June 1894 by The Prince

of Wales (the future King Edward VII), and his wife, The Princess of Wales (Alexandra of Denmark).

[4]

The bridge connected Iron Gate, on the north bank of the river, with Horse-

lydown Lane, on the south – now known as Tower Bridge

Approach and Tow-er Bridge

R o a d , r e s p e c t i v e l y.[5] Until the bridge was opened, the Tower Subway – 400 m to the west – was the shortest way to cross the river from Tower Hill to Tooley Street in Southwark. Opened in 1870, Tower Subway was among the world’s earliest underground (‘tube’) railway, but closed after just three months and was re-opened as a pe-destrian foot tunnel. Once Tower Bridge was open, the majority of foot traffic transferred to using the bridge, there being no toll to pay to use it. Having lost most of its income, the tunnel was closed in 1898.[6]

Tower Bridge is one of five London bridges now owned and maintained by the Bridge House Estates, a charitable trust overseen by the City of London Corporation. It is the only one of the Trust’s bridges not to connect the City of London to the Southwark bank, the northern landfall being in Tower Hamlets.

The bridge is 800 feet (244 m) in length with two towers each 213 feet (65 m) high, built on piers. The central span of 200 feet (61 m) between the towers is split into two equal bascules or leaves, which can be raised to an angle of 86 degrees to allow river traffic to pass. The bascules, weighing over 1,000 tons each, are coun-terbalanced to minimise the force required and al-low raising in five minutes. The two side-spans are suspension bridges, each 270 feet (82 m) long, with the suspension rods anchored both at the abutments and through rods contained within the bridge’s upper walkways. The pedes-trian walkways are 143 feet

London Borough of Tower Hamlets, separated from the eastern edge of the square

mile of the City of London by the open

space known as Tower Hill. It was founded

towards the end of 1066 as part of the Nor-

man Conquest of England. The castle was used

as a prison from 1100 (Ranulf Flambard) until

1952 (Kray twins),[3] although that was not its pri-

mary purpose. A grand palace early in its history, it

served as a royal residence. As a whole, the Tower is a

complex of several buildings set within two concentric

rings of defensive walls and a moat. There were sever-

al phases of expansion, mainly under Kings Richard the

Lionheart, Henry III, and Edward I in the 12th and 13th

centuries. The general layout established by the late 13th

century remains despite later activity on the site.

The Tower of London has played a prominent role in Eng-

lish history. It was besieged several times and controlling

it has been important to controlling the country. The

Tower has served variously as an armoury, a treasury,

a menagerie, the home of the Royal Mint, a public re-

cords office, and the home of the Crown Jewels of the

United Kingdom. From the early 14th century until the

reign of Charles II, a procession would be led from

the Tower to Westminster Abbey on the coronation

of a monarch. In the absence of the monarch, the

Constable of the Tower is in charge of the castle.

This was a powerful and trusted position in the

medieval period. In the late 15th century the

castle was the prison of the Princes in the

Tower. Under the Tudors, the Tower

became used less as a royal resi-

dence, and despite attempts to refortify and repair

London is the capital city of England and the United King-dom. It is the most populous city in the United Kingdom with a metropolitan area of over 13 million inhabitants. Standing on the River Thames, London has been a major set-tlement for two millennia, its history going back to its founding by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Lon-don’s ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1.12-square-mile mediaeval boundaries and in 2011 had a resident population of 7,375, making it the smallest city in England. Since at least the 19th century, the term Lon-don has also referred to the metropolis developed around this core.

The bulk of this conurbation forms the Greater London administrative area (cotermi-nous with the London re-gion), governed by the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. London is a lead-ing global city, with strengths in the arts, commerce, educa-tion, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism and transport all contributing to its prominence.It is one of the

world’s leading financial centresand has the fifth-or sixth-largest metro-politan area GDP in the world de-pending on measurement. London is a world cultural capital. It is the world’s most-visited city as meas-ured by international arrivals and has the world’s largest city airport system measured by passenger traf-fic. London’s 43 universities form the largest concentration of higher education in Europe.In 2012, Lon-don became the first city to host the modern Summer Olympic Games three times. The etymology of Lon-don is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century. It is recorded c. 121 as Londinium, which points to Ro-mano-British origin. The earliest attempted explanation, now disre-garded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Bri-tanniae. This had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud.

From 1898, it was commonly ac-cepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos; this ex-planation has since been rejected.[ Richard Coates put forward an ex-planation in 1998 that it is derived from the pre-Celtic Old European *(p)lowonida, meaning ‘river too wide to ford’, and suggested that this was a name given to the part of the River Thames which flows through London; from this, the settlement gained the Celtic form of its name, this requires quite a serious amendment however. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconcil-ing the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form inion (as

opposed from earlier. The possi-bility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a ba-sis from which to reconstruct the original name.

London’s buildings are too di-verse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, partly because of their varying ages. Many grand houses and public buildings, such as the Na-tional Gallery, are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are character-ised by white stucco or white-washed buildings. Few structures in central London pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, these being a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scat-tered Tudor survivors in the City. Further out is, for example, the Tudor period Hampton Court Palace, England’s oldest surviving Tudor palace, built by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey c. 1515.

The disused, but soon to be re-juvenated, 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the south-west is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excel-lent examples of Victorian archi-tecture, most notably St. Pancras and Paddington.. The density of London varies, with high em-ployment density in the central area, high residential densities in inner London and lower densities in Outer London. In the dense areas, most of the concentration is via medium- and high-rise buildings. London’s skyscrapers such as 30 St Mary Axe, Tow-er 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square are most-ly in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. High-rise development is restricted at certain sites if it

Big Ben is the nickname for the Great Bell of the clock at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London and often extended to refer to the clock and the clock tower. The tower is officially known as the Elizabeth Tower, renamed as such to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II (The tower holds the largest four-faced chiming clock in the world and is the third-tallest free-standing clock tower. The tower was completed in 1858 and had its 150th anniversary on 31 May 2009, during which celebratory events took place. The tower has become one of the most prominent symbols of the United Kingdom and is often in the establishing shot of

films set in London.

he origin of the nickname Big Ben is the subject of some de-bate. The nickname was ap-plied first to the Great Bell; it may have been named after Sir Benjamin Hall, who oversaw the installation of the Great Bell, or after boxing’s English Heavyweight Champion Ben-jamin Caunt.Now Big Ben is often used, by extension, to refer to the clock, the tower and the bell collec-tively, although the nickname is not universally accepted as referring to the clock and tow-er.

Some authors of works about the tower, clock and bell side-step the issue by using the

words Big Ben first in the title, then going on to clarify that the subject of the book is the clock and tower as well as the bell.

The clock has become a symbol of the United Kingdom, particularly in the visual media. When a tel-evision or film-maker wishes to indicate a generic location in the country, a popular way to do so is to show an image of the tower, of-ten with a red double-decker bus or black cab in the foreground.The sound of the clock chiming has also been used this way in audio media, but as the West-minster Quarters are heard from other clocks and other devices, the unique nature of this sound

has been considerably diluted.

The main bell, officially known

as the Great Bell, is the largest

bell in the tower and part of the

Great Clock of Westminster.

The bell is better known by the

nickname Big Ben. The clock’s

movement is famous for its re-

liability. The designers were the

lawyer and amateur horologist

Edmund Beckett Denison, and

George Airy, the Astronomer

Royal.

The clock has become a symbol

of the United Kingdom, particu-

larly in the visual media.

The Palace of Westminster is the meeting place of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Commonly known as the Houses of Parliament after its tenants, the Palace lies on the Middlesex bank of the River Thames in the City of Westminster, in central London. Its name, which derives from the neighbouring Westminster Ab-bey, may refer to either of two structures: the Old Palace, a medieval building complex that was de-stroyed by fire in 1834, and its replacement New Palace that stands today. For ceremonial purposes, the palace retains its original style and status as a royal residence.

The first royal palace was built on the site in the eleventh century, and Westminster was the prima-ry London residence of the Kings of England until a fire destroyed much of the complex in 1512. Af-ter that, it served as the home of Parliament, which had been meeting there since the thirteenth centu-ry, and the seat of the Royal Courts of Justice, based in and around Westminster Hall. In 1834, an even greater fire ravaged the heavily rebuilt Houses of Parliament, and the only structures of significance to survive were Westminster Hall, the Cloisters of St Stephen’s, the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft and the Jewel Tower.

The subsequent competition for the reconstruction of the Palace was won by architect Charles Barry and his design for a building in the Perpendicular Gothic style. The remains of the Old Palace (with

the exception of the detached Jewel Tower) were incorporated in its much larger replacement, which contains over 1,100 rooms organised sym-metrically around two series of courtyards. Part of the New Palace’s area of 3.24 hectares (8 acres) was reclaimed from the Thames, which is the set-ting of its principal façade, the 266-metre (873 ft) river front. Barry was assisted by Augustus W. N. Pugin, a leading authority on Gothic architecture and style, who provided designs for the decora-tion and furnishings of the Palace.

Construction started in 1840 and lasted for thir-ty years, suffering great delays and cost overruns, as well as the death of both leading architects; works for the interior decoration continued in-termittently well into the twentieth century. Ma-jor conservation work has been carried out since, to reverse the effects of London’s air pollution, and extensive repairs took place after the Second World War, including the reconstruction of the Commons Chamber following its bombing in 1941.

The Palace is one of the centres of political life in the United Kingdom; “Westminster” has become a metonym for the UK Parliament, and the West-minster system of government has taken its name after it. The Elizabeth Tower, in particular, which is often referred to by the name of its main bell, “Big Ben”, is an iconic landmark of London and the United Kingdom in general, one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city.

The London Eye is a giant Ferris wheel on the South Bank of the River Thames in Lon-don. Also known as the Millennium Wheel, its official name was originally the British Airways London Eye, then the Merlin Entertainments London Eye, between January 2011 and August 2014, the EDF Energy London Eye and is now called the London Eye. From late January 2015, the London Eye will be sponsored by Coca-Cola.The entire structure is 135 metres (443 ft) tall and the wheel has a diameter of 120 metres (394 ft). When erected in 1999 it was the world’s tallest Ferris wheel. Its height was surpassed by the 160 m (520 ft) Star of Nanchang in 2006, the 165 m (541 ft) Singapore Flyer in 2008, and the 167.6 m (550 ft) High Roller (Las Vegas) in 2014. Supported by an A-frame on one side only, unlike the taller Nanchang and Singapore wheels, the Eye is described by its oper-ators as “the world’s tallest cantilevered observation wheel. It is currently Europe’s tallest Ferris wheel, and offered the highest public viewing point in London[citation needed] until it was superseded by the 245-metre (804 ft) observation deck on the 72nd floor of The Shard, which opened to the public on 1 February 2013. It is the most popular paid tourist attraction in the United Kingdom with over 3.5 million visitors annually, and has made many appearances in popular culture.The London Eye adjoins the western end of Jubilee Gardens (previously the site of the former Dome of Discovery), on the South Bank of the River Thames between Westminster Bridge and Hungerford Bridge, in the London Borough of Lambeth.The wheel was constructed in sections which were floated up the Thames on barges and assembled lying flat on piled plat-forms in the river. Once the wheel was complete it was lifted into an upright position by a strand jack system made by Ener-

pac.[19] It was first raised at 2 degrees per hour until it reached 65 degrees, then left in that position for a week while engineers prepared for the second phase of

the lift. The project was European with major components coming from six countries: the steel was supplied from the UK and fabricated in The Neth-

erlands by the Dutch company Hollandia, the cables came from Italy, the bearings came from Germany (FAG/Schaeffler Group), the spindle and

hub were cast in the Czech Republic, the capsules were made by Poma in France (and the glass for these came from Italy), and the electrical components from the UK.

The London Eye was designed by architects Frank Anatole, Nic Bailey, Steve Chilton, Malcolm Cook, Mark Sparrowhawk, and the

husband-and-wife team of Julia Barfield and David Marks.

Mace was responsible for construction management, with Hol-landia as the main steelwork contractor and Tilbury Douglas as the civil contractor. Consulting engineers Tony Gee & Partners

designed the foundation works while Beckett Rankine designed the marine works.