It bet it wasn't. It probably stank, was dingy and would have been horribly congested from the number of carts and pedestrians passing over it or living there in dilapidated buildings.
It's really cool that you have a small community (really a village) of people living on a BRIDGE! A bridge! Mark Twain mentioned in The Prince and the Pauper that that same community spoke bridgy speech, thought bridgy thoughts, and considered the banks of the river and great city of London as merely suburbs. I think that's amazing. it was a unique community that lasted for over 500 years, constantly living on the edge of disaster.
Little Car It’s a shame that many of these old marvels and constructions didn’t last long enough to see the invention of photography. Even the ones that still exist as ruins are still very impressive.
I can just imagine the estate agents of the day, "Nice little flat to let, great views of the Thames, and there hasn't been a collapse for a year now, so you're probably good for a while."
If they were ever to build another bridge across the Thames, they should build a full size replica of Old London Bridge ! With todays technology they could lessen the spans( starlings) to three and still erect an exact copy of the old gabled buildings (including the drawbridge) With shops & hotels incorporated & pedestrians only, could you imagine how beautiful this would look …especially with the windows illuminated at night ! Any investors in such a project would secure one of the top tourist attractions of the capital.
This would almost literally impossible sadly, the river is the only flight path for commercial/not authorities helicopters because they wont fly over buildings so they will never allow any kind of buildings across it.
@@BrianMoore-uk6js I googled to see pictures of it. It sure is fully covered with buildings. But when you cross the bridge it looks like you're just on a narrow street with buildings on both sides of you, and you cant see the water, so I imagine some people might not even realize they are on a bridge.
“London Bridge is falling down, Falling down, falling down, London Bridge is falling down, My fair lady.” Yet another classic nursery rhyme, ranking alongside others like the one that references smallpox.
Fyi, the bridge built in 1830 is the one that is now in Lake Havasu Arizona. (Actually its only the granite facade of the London bridge placed over a modern concrete bridge)
@@tedsowards No reason it should be mentioned, except in the context Ryan has, as it was never an iconic version of London Bridge, and is really just the façade, not the whole 1830 iteration transplanted to Arizona.
If you spark up a cigarette in London then expect to loose most of your hair, your eyebrows and a lot of the skin on your face because the explosion which shall surely follow. Gas from too many people farting , you see.
Before the bridge was shipped over to the USA, it was in Tilbury docks, as a big pile of stones, my uncle was working nearby. We somehow ended up with a lump of it! We kept it for years but sadly left it in a garage when we moved house in the 1980,s
Great story.. The bridge in lake havasu is only 30 mins from me here in Arizona and is a great tourist destination, although I think we have plenty of rocks here in the desert to replace the one you nicked 😁
I recently found out there's one of the alcoves in a garden about half a mile from me. Put there in the 1830s and still there when the estate was turned into apartments.
There are beautifully made flying buttresses still lying on the ground carved for this bridge at King Tor quarry On Dartmoor . They strange to find still at the quarry.
To give credit where it's due, the vast majority of the video is word-for-word from the Wiki article on London Bridge, with the research having already been done (and referenced in said article). The video is really just a visual retelling of the wiki article.
Very enjoyable and interesting. I'm a big fan of anything London related - so much to see and so much to discover but obviously not able to visit right now so this was good to watch.
Stunning! Throughout this video I was hoping that the demolishing of the bridge would be as late as possible so that we might see some photos. It's a surprise that the London Bridge Act wasn't enacted earlier. Imagine living on the bridge!!
That was good! I like a nice history lesson. Suggestion : the oft overlooked free cities and republics of Renaissance Europe, and the modern misconception that "democracy" is a product of the American and French revolutions.
I enjoyed the video very much, so I went to read more at Wikipedia. I was rather distressed to see how much of the narration was taken word-for-word from the Wikipedia article. Maybe this is common practice for UA-cam videos?
With my "Big Car" videos it takes me about 7 days to make a video. Little Car is an attempt to get videos out faster, so I use Wikipedia articles as the script. I'm not sure if it's common practice. I do link to the articles in the description. Maybe I should make it more obvious that I'm using the article as a script.
Little Car Thanks for the reply and your explanation. Perhaps a quick nod to Wikipedia at the end of your video to set viewers’ expectations regarding the source. I enjoy and appreciate Big Car and now Little Car - keep up the good work!
I love learning about things like this! I grew up knowing that London Bridge had retired and moved to Lake Havasu City out in Arizona, and a friend of mine went out there and saw it. It's good to know that it was NOT the Tower Bridge that was thought to have been bought, as an English friend has ribbed me from time to time on this. It's kind of a shame that a modern bridge can't be built with shops and homes, but it would probably constitute a major fire hazard, or at least annoy certain elements of American and British society. Fun episode!
FANTASTIC--I've always been fascinated by images of this Bridge, and it has always puzzled me, why it had never been given more than an odd , breif mention, in 'History of London'' TV documentaries. Thank's very much for the historic info, and marvelous illustrations, I'll watch it often.
Love this first my 22nd great grandfather King John ii. Then my fore grandfathers from 1700 till 1900 were watermen by Tower of London so this is special to my heart.
People were living on this bridge for 500years??? That's an insane amout of time. 500 years ago from today, the Europeans were barely in the New World.
The time has surely come to rebuild this bridge , in all its glory . With modern building methods . As regards the 1831 bridge , i have crossed it many times , before its demolition . Happy days .
Thanks Jan! The ones based on Wikipedia articles are quicker, as normally it takes a long time to research them. The person who wrote the London Bridge article did a great job.
Amazing it stood for so many centuries and kept evolving to meet the demands of time. Definitely it would have been a wonder to people of those times..
St Magnus lies on the original alignment of London Bridge between the City and Southwark It can give you some flavour of the medieval bridge - thankfully without the stench.
with a tag like yours---you have to be joking. But, in case you aren't , it was a replacement bridge , built in the 1830's. that was sold 45 yrs ago today.8/7/ 20. and is in Arizona.
He didn't have to be a billionaire. I think it was up for about only £500,000 including storage & shipping. (My 1-bed flat in North London sold for more that that !) . I believe, in the end, it sold for about £2.5 million & it cost him a further £5 million to reconstruct it.
I've had a strut across the bridge in Havasu. They're all rich and impressed by the English there, even had our dinner bill paid for in the pub beside it! They actually didn't have a wide enough channel cut when they reconstructed it and ended up shortening the original span, so there's a bit left over in the back of someone's shed there somewhere!
Driving on the left goes back to the use of horses. Riders cOmmonly carried weapons (swords, lances, guns) and most people are right handed. Thus weapons were commonly worn on the left and riders kept left to facilitate, where necessary, fighting right-handed. I have always been told this is why we drive on the left. Incidentally you may not be aware that originally the USA also drove on the left.
Can people please stop spreading that stupid myth? People had other things in their heads than fighting. It is actually much more simpler: On a coach you want to sit in the middle of the road, just like with a modern car. Driving on the left means, that your right hand is on the outside, where the brakes are, meaning you could use them with your strong hand.
@@TheWampam "Fighting" while sitting on opposite facing wagons looks ridiculous too. As if somebody seriously believed mere commoners all believed they were jousting like Medieval knights. People who wanted to rob any wagon or carts either laid in ambushes or attacked from both sides of the road simultaneously so it didn't make any difference what hand you were holding your weapon in as a driver of any wagon - or a rider of any horse for that matter. And if they were outlaws making sure no witnesses were left their arrows pierced the body of any driver/rider before he could reach for any weapon. Nobody with ill intent just approached head on and in plain view. As for the "use of horses". Only the nobility used horses until the dawn of the 1800's. Everybody else used oxen both as beasts of burden and to pull carts. In other worse you wouldn't see that many horse riders back in those days. Horse breeding became necessary with the advent of the industrial revolution (and possible) which made horses common enough and "affordable" enough for common people and not just a tiny fraction of the nobility. And since Medieval landlords during the age of feudalism had the right to do almost as they pleased with people on *their* land they rode wherever they pleased and on whatever side (or the middle) of the road they felt like. Generally a few abreast too. All commoners simply gave way to them or risked "feudal justice". What people also fail to realize that until general conscription began in the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800's most commoners never ever fought in a war and weren't trained to fight. Prior to that many armies relied on paid mercenaries (often foreign) to fight their wars. So with that in mind it's certainly strange to think that regular people just rode around on horses (or drove around in horse carts much in the same way as cars today), all wore swords and rode on the left to fight other armed horse riders(!).
You can hear the narrator almost chuckle at 4:17 just due to the obscurity, rediculusness and the fact that dangers like this kept understandably occuring. I could'nt believe when he said 1/3 of the Houses were destroyed by fire because the wooden wáter wheels caught fire preventing the pumping system working... Credit to the Roman empire for building the first recorded bridge in Londinium using what would have been tens of thousands of trees
Arguably the worst major medieval bridge in Europe. The wide piers and small arches doomed it from the moment it was built, it is a miracle it survived this long.
I know this is an older video, but the reason why they drive on the left side is because most people are right handed and in medieval times you would draw your sword with the right hand that was placed on your left hip. The reason for right hand driving is because Napoleon was left handed lol.
One suspects the original bridge is a structure they aquired from the previous society... who were building arched viaducts & similar all around Europe, Mid-East, south-Americas. There are no indications the folk in 1176 had the building technology/machinery to tackle such a task. Further the recurrance of '33' is no surprise 🙂
Makes sense, more so on a congested bridge, for a population, 9 out of 10 right handed, to keep oncoming carts, people, horses or whatever, passing on their right side should some attention, avoidance, or interaction become necessary. Anyway, driving a buggy, carriage or wagon, with a whip in your right hand, hence your passenger/co-driver at your left, you keep the oncoming traffic on your side.
I'm pretty sure one of the original arches people walked under to enter the bridge is still in London. Just imagine the thousands of people who walked under it! I would loved to have walked the bridge in the tudor era, see what the shops were like, the kind of people who rented housing there, imagine living on a bridge?!
So there was an old old bridge that was replaced with the old bridge that had houses and shops, this had constant repairs and while it was being demolished there was the old old wooden bridge and that burned so they used the old bridge and while they made an old wooden bridge. They eventually made the old new London Bridge and demolished the old London Bridge but that was sold and the tower bridge was made
Fascinating! I think it would interesting to live in a home on a bridge today. Modern construction standards and techniques would allow residents to feel safe while enjoying the luxury of living on the water. Isn't there a bridge on Lake Las Vegas with homes or hotel rooms?
Do we know were the homes on the bridge expensive? I mean were they considered as a place for upper class to live or were they just ramshackle types of homes? I would think the view, the cool air coming off of moving water etc would make them desirable but I’ll defer to those better read on the subject
Lake Havasu Arizona . The only place in the USA that I would really like to visit. Have been to Londonistan twice, each time expecting something special. Each time glad to get the hell outta there.
Given that is the only place in the murica you'd like to visit and your oh so clever right wing rubbish (that means 'trash' in your speak) I'm not surprised you can't think of a better place to visit.
i bet it was something magnificent to walk through those buildings on a bridge back in the day
Yes!
A similar bridge which you can still experience today is the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, which retains its medieval buildings. It’s a cool experience!
It bet it wasn't. It probably stank, was dingy and would have been horribly congested from the number of carts and pedestrians passing over it or living there in dilapidated buildings.
I bet it smelled like shit.
@@spaguettoltd.7933 It is!
It's really cool that you have a small community (really a village) of people living on a BRIDGE! A bridge! Mark Twain mentioned in The Prince and the Pauper that that same community spoke bridgy speech, thought bridgy thoughts, and considered the banks of the river and great city of London as merely suburbs. I think that's amazing. it was a unique community that lasted for over 500 years, constantly living on the edge of disaster.
So the old bridge was clearly terrible but also at the same time magnificent. I wish I could see it in person.
That pretty much sums up my opinion!
Little Car It’s a shame that many of these old marvels and constructions didn’t last long enough to see the invention of photography. Even the ones that still exist as ruins are still very impressive.
you can get a feel for it if you visit Erfurt in Germany. it still got a Bridge with houses on.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kr%C3%A4merbr%C3%BCcke
@@catriona_drummond that's so cool. I had no idea this existed.
@@Matticitt Well it's not as glamorous as the Ponte Vecchio. :)
I can just imagine the estate agents of the day, "Nice little flat to let, great views of the Thames, and there hasn't been a collapse for a year now, so you're probably good for a while."
I would have liked to visit the London Bridge when it had all those buildings.
the stench must have been unbearable.
Ponte Vecchio is similar and still around today.
Or check out Erfurt in Germany
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kr%C3%A4merbr%C3%BCcke
I see thats why "London bridge is falling down"
It’s burning down by my understanding
No, it’s always been “falling”.
Truly fascinating.
I was born in England and have lived here for over 50 years and i didn't know any of this.
Thank you for this wonderful video.
You're welcome. I made the video because it fascinated me and I wanted to know more.
If they were ever to build another bridge across the Thames, they should build a full size replica of Old London Bridge !
With todays technology they could lessen the spans( starlings) to three and still erect an exact copy of the old gabled buildings (including the drawbridge) With shops & hotels incorporated & pedestrians only, could you imagine how beautiful this would look …especially with the windows illuminated at night ! Any investors in such a project would secure one of the top tourist attractions of the capital.
This would almost literally impossible sadly, the river is the only flight path for commercial/not authorities helicopters because they wont fly over buildings so they will never allow any kind of buildings across it.
Only if we included the heads of traitors on spikes.
There is a bridge exactly like that in Florence Italy called the "Ponte Vecchio."
I think we should build something like that here in the USA. I’d definitely take a trip to see it! 👍😎
@@BrianMoore-uk6js I googled to see pictures of it. It sure is fully covered with buildings. But when you cross the bridge it looks like you're just on a narrow street with buildings on both sides of you, and you cant see the water, so I imagine some people might not even realize they are on a bridge.
“London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down,
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady.”
Yet another classic nursery rhyme, ranking alongside others like the one that references smallpox.
Ring a ring a roses
A pocket full of posies
A tissue! A tissue!
We all fall down
(Or is that referencing bubonic plague?)
Bingo
Fyi, the bridge built in 1830 is the one that is now in Lake Havasu Arizona. (Actually its only the granite facade of the London bridge placed over a modern concrete bridge)
Thanks. I was so confused why Arizona wasn’t mentioned.
@@tedsowards No reason it should be mentioned, except in the context Ryan has, as it was never an iconic version of London Bridge, and is really just the façade, not the whole 1830 iteration transplanted to Arizona.
So London is highly flammable. That’s good to know.
Was* ;-)
What old cities (all made of wood) *weren't* flammable??
If you spark up a cigarette in London then expect to loose most of your hair, your eyebrows and a lot of the skin on your face because the explosion which shall surely follow. Gas from too many people farting , you see.
planning to start some fires ?
@@paulallen8109 well it is kinda surprising since modern cities also made of wood don't normally explode into flames
Before the bridge was shipped over to the USA, it was in Tilbury docks, as a big pile of stones, my uncle was working nearby. We somehow ended up with a lump of it! We kept it for years but sadly left it in a garage when we moved house in the 1980,s
And that's why the bridge in the States has a big hole in it! 😁
Little Car I always felt a little pang of guilt about that😀
Great story.. The bridge in lake havasu is only 30 mins from me here in Arizona and is a great tourist destination, although I think we have plenty of rocks here in the desert to replace the one you nicked 😁
At least one bit of her is still in Blighty then, somewhere :-) .
@@densealloy You must be from Parker. Half of my family is from Parker, Az.
Thank you for this I’m American and had no idea, how fascinating
I'm really glad you cleared that up. I was always told he thought he was buying the tower bridge.
an example of fake news from the 1960s. Why have real news when fake news is more interesting
This is in large part a verbatim reading of the wikipedia article.
Plagiarism?
I recently found out there's one of the alcoves in a garden about half a mile from me. Put there in the 1830s and still there when the estate was turned into apartments.
Perfect amount of information and timing. Very well produced video, well done.
Been across the bridge in Arizona, a very different climate there to London
I'm sure it is!
I hear from some Arizonans that said state is best summed up as "oh god everything is on fire!".
If so our Bridge shouldn't feel too out of place.
Different London bridge
There are beautifully made flying buttresses still lying on the ground carved for this bridge at King Tor quarry
On Dartmoor . They strange to find still at the quarry.
Not the dame bridge, a later version with no real claim to cultural fame.
And this ladies and gentlemen, is why we have building regulations.
Yes, indeed!
Yea,...... Never any problems if you follow the "regulations.....much.
The modern buildings are steel boxes with no grace what so ever building regulations 🙄
Ya think?
I really enjoyed this video - excellent work and research - very engaging : more please!
To give credit where it's due, the vast majority of the video is word-for-word from the Wiki article on London Bridge, with the research having already been done (and referenced in said article). The video is really just a visual retelling of the wiki article.
Just how do "accidental" fires emerge on both sides of the city?
usually this happens after a planing application is turned down by the Council.
@@davidsirett5560 good one
People accidentally turning traitors!
The league of shadows done it
Loving the variety of this channel.
I'd love to walk across that old bridge, the chaos of all those houses and shops hanging over it, I wonder what sort of characters hung around there?
Probably entirely African immigrants that built it?
London bridge was the Kenny of bridges.
I would love to live on a bridge like that in medieval times. Not too happy about the sanitary situation, though.
In other words, living on the bridge would've been shit but at least it looked good.
@@paistinlasta1805 and probably it is somehow explained why Thames has this awful colour... 😋
What a fantastic video! Really enjoyed that!
Very enjoyable and interesting. I'm a big fan of anything London related - so much to see and so much to discover but obviously not able to visit right now so this was good to watch.
Glad you enjoyed it!
I concur, these videos are very interesting and You shure know how to pick interesting stuff to make them about
Thanks! It's just stuff I find interesting and want to know more about.
oh wow..never knew..just as beautiful as the Firenze bridge.
Starting fires is clearly England's solution for everything since the dawn of times . #Pyromania
If it works, it works. No need to go and reinvent the wheel if we can burn it
oliver punter ... You guys should try it to stop corona... Just burn the sick lol
@@brainey001
"BRING OUT YER DEAD! *clang* BRING OUT YER DEAD!"
"UGH I'm not dead"
"he says he's not dead"
"Well, he will be very soon, he is very ill"
Really interesting video. excellent pictures. Well done!
Wish I had that DeLorean so I could go back and see it myself..... Great video......
Fascinating... Isn't History just amazing. Thanks so much for this, so informative.
Glad you enjoyed it Linda!
What is more flammable?
A.) London
B.) A matchstick
Stunning! Throughout this video I was hoping that the demolishing of the bridge would be as late as possible so that we might see some photos. It's a surprise that the London Bridge Act wasn't enacted earlier. Imagine living on the bridge!!
There is a fascinating book available " Old London Bridge" by Patricia Pierce. A must buy.
Thanks for this history.
First like!, great video, really interesting, keep up the good work!
Thanks Robert!
How is this the first time im hearing about this, very interesting
I know right same
Buildings, bridges were so beautiful make then... unlike today
That was good! I like a nice history lesson. Suggestion : the oft overlooked free cities and republics of Renaissance Europe, and the modern misconception that "democracy" is a product of the American and French revolutions.
I enjoyed the video very much, so I went to read more at Wikipedia. I was rather distressed to see how much of the narration was taken word-for-word from the Wikipedia article. Maybe this is common practice for UA-cam videos?
With my "Big Car" videos it takes me about 7 days to make a video. Little Car is an attempt to get videos out faster, so I use Wikipedia articles as the script. I'm not sure if it's common practice. I do link to the articles in the description. Maybe I should make it more obvious that I'm using the article as a script.
Little Car Thanks for the reply and your explanation. Perhaps a quick nod to Wikipedia at the end of your video to set viewers’ expectations regarding the source. I enjoy and appreciate Big Car and now Little Car - keep up the good work!
@@LittleCar Oh, so we're not to believe a single word you say in these videos :( ;)
I had no idea that awful mess actually lasted so long, in fact I'm astonished it could even survive the great fire, it was only around the corner.
EXCELLENT. THANK YOU.
I love learning about things like this! I grew up knowing that London Bridge had retired and moved to Lake Havasu City out in Arizona, and a friend of mine went out there and saw it. It's good to know that it was NOT the Tower Bridge that was thought to have been bought, as an English friend has ribbed me from time to time on this. It's kind of a shame that a modern bridge can't be built with shops and homes, but it would probably constitute a major fire hazard, or at least annoy certain elements of American and British society. Fun episode!
In Florence, Italy they still have a bridge with buildings on. But it's not a major thoroughfare now.
@@LittleCar Just jewellery shops, it seemed
Shouldn't be too bad as long as you can find a water source for putting out any fires. Any ideas on that?
How did the fire start at both ends of the bridge simultaneously?
Just that lucky.
FANTASTIC--I've always been fascinated by images of this Bridge, and it has always puzzled me, why it had never been given more than an odd , breif mention, in 'History of London'' TV documentaries. Thank's very much for the historic info, and marvelous illustrations, I'll watch it often.
Love this first my 22nd great grandfather King John ii. Then my fore grandfathers from 1700 till 1900 were watermen by Tower of London so this is special to my heart.
People were living on this bridge for 500years??? That's an insane amout of time. 500 years ago from today, the Europeans were barely in the New World.
Can’t believe how interesting that was
You can thank the person who made the Wikipedia article. It was very good.
Pultney Bridge in Bath is well worth a look for anyone interested in this sort of thing
Fascinating thanks
Boss: Why are you over an hour late to work?
Me: Uhh the Big Car guy has a new channel and I had to watch all of the videos duhh.
A very informative video...📚🔝🙂👍
The time has surely come to rebuild this bridge , in all its glory . With modern building methods . As regards the 1831 bridge , i have crossed it many times , before its demolition . Happy days .
Fascinating! Amazed how you manage to create all these videos.
Thanks Jan! The ones based on Wikipedia articles are quicker, as normally it takes a long time to research them. The person who wrote the London Bridge article did a great job.
@@LittleCar I must check for books on London bridge. It certainly had an amazing design history inspiring some great paintings.
Amazing it stood for so many centuries and kept evolving to meet the demands of time. Definitely it would have been a wonder to people of those times..
shame they wouldnt keep it , it would have been an icon for the city
I wonder how many died making those structures. Nice research and story telling as well.
St Magnus lies on the original alignment of London Bridge between the City and Southwark It can give you some flavour of the medieval bridge - thankfully without the stench.
We have been dumbed down somehow in building materials and architecture
Couldn't agree more.
@@Gambit771 it is a shame we have the technology to build like that and the wealth but still we fund some modern art shitty bland paper. A true shame.
Very informative. Thank you.
Sounds like it would have looked amazing, amazing engineering for the day but unstable.
Brilliant!
Wish I could travel back in time and see what is was like.
Ah, and then some billionaire decided to buy this historical monument and had is shipped to Arizona.
with a tag like yours---you have to be joking. But, in case you aren't , it was a replacement bridge , built in the 1830's. that was sold 45 yrs ago today.8/7/ 20. and is in Arizona.
At least it is preserved instead of it being demolished
The stone is a bit bleached from the sun, but in the Arizona desert is is well-preserved. Lake Havasu City
He didn't have to be a billionaire. I think it was up for about only £500,000 including storage & shipping. (My 1-bed flat in North London sold for more that that !) . I believe, in the end, it sold for about £2.5 million & it cost him a further £5 million to reconstruct it.
I've had a strut across the bridge in Havasu. They're all rich and impressed by the English there, even had our dinner bill paid for in the pub beside it! They actually didn't have a wide enough channel cut when they reconstructed it and ended up shortening the original span, so there's a bit left over in the back of someone's shed there somewhere!
Great topic - more please !
3:40 The fire made a good strategic play there.
I really wish to see both this structure and Old S Paul's cathedral in their heyday. VR is a beautiful thing.
Driving on the left goes back to the use of horses. Riders cOmmonly carried weapons (swords, lances, guns) and most people are right handed. Thus weapons were commonly worn on the left and riders kept left to facilitate, where necessary, fighting right-handed. I have always been told this is why we drive on the left. Incidentally you may not be aware that originally the USA also drove on the left.
Initially, "they" were driving all over the place, because there wasn't a law!
Can people please stop spreading that stupid myth? People had other things in their heads than fighting. It is actually much more simpler: On a coach you want to sit in the middle of the road, just like with a modern car. Driving on the left means, that your right hand is on the outside, where the brakes are, meaning you could use them with your strong hand.
@@TheWampam "Fighting" while sitting on opposite facing wagons looks ridiculous too. As if somebody seriously believed mere commoners all believed they were jousting like Medieval knights. People who wanted to rob any wagon or carts either laid in ambushes or attacked from both sides of the road simultaneously so it didn't make any difference what hand you were holding your weapon in as a driver of any wagon - or a rider of any horse for that matter. And if they were outlaws making sure no witnesses were left their arrows pierced the body of any driver/rider before he could reach for any weapon. Nobody with ill intent just approached head on and in plain view.
As for the "use of horses". Only the nobility used horses until the dawn of the 1800's. Everybody else used oxen both as beasts of burden and to pull carts. In other worse you wouldn't see that many horse riders back in those days. Horse breeding became necessary with the advent of the industrial revolution (and possible) which made horses common enough and "affordable" enough for common people and not just a tiny fraction of the nobility. And since Medieval landlords during the age of feudalism had the right to do almost as they pleased with people on *their* land they rode wherever they pleased and on whatever side (or the middle) of the road they felt like. Generally a few abreast too. All commoners simply gave way to them or risked "feudal justice".
What people also fail to realize that until general conscription began in the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800's most commoners never ever fought in a war and weren't trained to fight. Prior to that many armies relied on paid mercenaries (often foreign) to fight their wars. So with that in mind it's certainly strange to think that regular people just rode around on horses (or drove around in horse carts much in the same way as cars today), all wore swords and rode on the left to fight other armed horse riders(!).
very interesting
You can hear the narrator almost chuckle at 4:17 just due to the obscurity, rediculusness and the fact that dangers like this kept understandably occuring. I could'nt believe when he said 1/3 of the Houses were destroyed by fire because the wooden wáter wheels caught fire preventing the pumping system working...
Credit to the Roman empire for building the first recorded bridge in Londinium using what would have been tens of thousands of trees
Arguably the worst major medieval bridge in Europe. The wide piers and small arches doomed it from the moment it was built, it is a miracle it survived this long.
I know this is an older video, but the reason why they drive on the left side is because most people are right handed and in medieval times you would draw your sword with the right hand that was placed on your left hip. The reason for right hand driving is because Napoleon was left handed lol.
The origin of driving on the left in Britain goes back to being able to defend yourself with your sword hand when passing eachother on horseback.
Sooo amusing, you're a great story teller!
Glad you enjoyed it! But the script for this video is all Wikipedia.
amazing video
Church of Saint Magnus-the-Martyr nearby has a detailed model of the bridge about 1400
My great x alot grandfather was Hugh de Morville. One of Thomas Beckett's.. accidental assassins.
If I remember correctly, he fled to Knaresborough Castle after the murder.
That's my favourite town in the UK.
You drive on the left in England because you welded a lance or sword in your right hand. :O
One suspects the original bridge is a structure they aquired from the previous society... who were building arched viaducts & similar all around Europe, Mid-East, south-Americas. There are no indications the folk in 1176 had the building technology/machinery to tackle such a task. Further the recurrance of '33' is no surprise 🙂
Oops... '1176' equates to 1113 => 3+3 => 33. Certain conquerors historians pick their numbers wisely
Given what I know from the history of the period, it would make sense that it would be a Roman bridge that they improved.
Makes sense, more so on a congested bridge, for a population, 9 out of 10 right handed, to keep oncoming carts, people, horses or whatever, passing on their right side should some attention, avoidance, or interaction become necessary.
Anyway, driving a buggy, carriage or wagon, with a whip in your right hand, hence your passenger/co-driver at your left, you keep the oncoming traffic on your side.
I'm pretty sure one of the original arches people walked under to enter the bridge is still in London. Just imagine the thousands of people who walked under it! I would loved to have walked the bridge in the tudor era, see what the shops were like, the kind of people who rented housing there, imagine living on a bridge?!
I wonder if there is anything else like it somewhere in the world. A bridge with houses build on top of it like that, it just looks awesome
Pultney bridge in Bath has shops both sides.
So there was an old old bridge that was replaced with the old bridge that had houses and shops, this had constant repairs and while it was being demolished there was the old old wooden bridge and that burned so they used the old bridge and while they made an old wooden bridge. They eventually made the old new London Bridge and demolished the old London Bridge but that was sold and the tower bridge was made
The only two ways to experience this type of bridge is by playing Dishonored or watching an episode of game of thrones that had this.
Watching this video made me want to play Dishonored again. Getting Sokolov is one of the better levels in the game.
How don’t you have more subscribers ? This is lit
Fascinating! I think it would interesting to live in a home on a bridge today. Modern construction standards and techniques would allow residents to feel safe while enjoying the luxury of living on the water.
Isn't there a bridge on Lake Las Vegas with homes or hotel rooms?
to live over a river - this would be my choice: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_de_Chenonceau
Oh so that's where inspiration for Novigrad in Witcher 3 was from.
What a fantastic video
Thank you very much!
What is the name of the image at 5:03? I like it. :) Almost looks like a flaming angel rising up from the bridge.
Wow awesome video!
Thanks James!
33 years to do, amazing, most leaders now couldn't see that far ahead, or even bother about that far ahead, cos there all about themselves.
They should do that today and build appartments on a wide bridge to help with housing shortages.
Come on folks start subscribing to this channel!
The bridge was obviously terrible, but it is so magnificent in the way it is terrible. It even had heads on pikes!
That was great
Do we know were the homes on the bridge expensive? I mean were they considered as a place for upper class to live or were they just ramshackle types of homes? I would think the view, the cool air coming off of moving water etc would make them desirable but I’ll defer to those better read on the subject
Reminds me of Kaldwin's bridge from Dishonored
Lake Havasu Arizona . The only place in the USA that I would really like to visit. Have been to Londonistan twice, each time expecting something special. Each time glad to get the hell outta there.
Given that is the only place in the murica you'd like to visit and your oh so clever right wing rubbish (that means 'trash' in your speak) I'm not surprised you can't think of a better place to visit.