NEW WATERLOO BRIDGE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 October 1942, Page 6

NEW WATERLOO BRIDGE

OPENED WITHOUT CEREMONY. CONSTRUCTION TAKES FIVE YEARS. New Waterloo Bridge was, without ceremony, thrown open to two lines of vehicular traffic at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, August 11, 1942. Thus ended fourteen years of public controversy and live years of constructive effort following the failure of the first Waterloo Bridge, designed by Rennie, and completed in 1812. In 1934 Lord Ritchie of Dundee on behalf of the Port of London Authority (of which he was then Chairman), with the sunnort of riverside interests, expressed grave doubts whether the proposals for reconditioning the old bridge were adequate for safe navigation during the work and added the ideal solution would be a suspension bridge or, if, that were not feasible, any other form of bridge with not more than five arches. The L.C.C., under the leadership of Mr Herbert Morrison, determined to build a new bridge for six lines of traffic. Work commenced in 1937, a novel item being the provision of steel centering under the arches during demolition of the old bridge to prevent debris falling on passing vessels. The new bridge has five spans of approximately 238 feet with a flat soffit 33 feet wide between them, compared with nine spans of 120 feet in the old bridge. The full scheme includes the eventual provision of a road circus approach at the Wellington Street-Strand junction, and two sairways from the bridge to the Embankment level at the north end and similarly two to the foreshore at the south end. New Waterloo Bridge, which is faced on the outer sides with Portland stone —although not yet fully revealed —is handsome and graceful; it is convenient for traffic above, provides free navigation on the Thames below, and opens up a pleasing vista of King’s Reach.--“ Port of London Authority.”