VISITING TOWER BRIDGE, AN ICONIC SYMBOL OF LONDON

Today,  The Grandma has visited Tower Bridge, an iconic symbol of London. Due to the East End developing rapidly in the late Victorian period, a new bridge was needed over the river. The fact that ships needed to be able to pass through it into the Pool of London, presented a bit of design challenge. 

 

There are a lot of stories about Tower Bridge but The Grandma's favourite is that which explains how the height of the two towers on the bridge were utilised for defence in both World Wars. In World War One, a 3 inch gun was mounted on a platform above the roof of the easterly footbridge between the towers. During the biggest air raid of WW1 on the 19th May 1918 it shot down a German Gotha fighter. This was the only German machine shot down in London during WW1.

 

The Grandma has enjoyed a lot with these stories meanwhile The Morgans have continued their week of intense work with the completion of various Cambridge A2 tests. The family has studied some English vocabulary about Rooms, Places and Jobs.

Download Cambridge KET Exam Listening Model & Audio

Download Cambridge KET Exam Model

Download Rooms Vocabulary

More information: Rooms

Download Places Vocabulary

 

More information: Places

 

Download Jobs Vocabulary

 

More information: Jobs

More information: Test English

Tower Bridge is a combined bascule and suspension bridge in London built between 1886 and 1894. The bridge crosses the River Thames close to the Tower of London and has become an iconic symbol of London, resulting in it sometimes being confused with London Bridge, situated some 0.80 km upstream. 

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 directly to the Southwark bank, as its northern landfall is in Tower Hamlets.

The bridge consists of two bridge towers tied together at the upper level by two horizontal walkways, designed to withstand the horizontal tension forces exerted by the suspended sections of the bridge on the landward sides of the towers. The vertical components of the forces in the suspended sections and the vertical reactions of the two walkways are carried by the two robust towers.

The bridge deck is freely accessible to both vehicles and pedestrians, whereas the bridge's twin towers, high-level walkways and Victorian engine rooms form part of the Tower Bridge Exhibition, for which an admission charge is made. 

The 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.

The high-level open air walkways between the towers gained an unpleasant reputation as a haunt for prostitutes and pickpockets; as they were only accessible by stairs they were seldom used by regular pedestrians, and were closed in 1910.

The bascule pivots and operating machinery are housed in the base of each tower. Before its restoration in the 2010s, the bridge's colour scheme dated from 1977, when it was painted red, white and blue for Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee. Its colours were subsequently restored to blue and white.

More information: Tower Bridge & Daily Mail

 

The lowest and vilest alleys of London 

do not present a more dreadful 

record of sin than does 

the smiling and beautiful countryside. 

Arthur Conan Doyle