Tower Bridge

A combined bascule and suspension bridge over the Thames, with twin Victorian Gothic towers.

The bridge mixes two designs: the middle is a bascule (lifting) bridge, and the two side sections are suspension bridges, held up from above. It was designed by the architect Horace Jones and the engineer John Wolfe Barry, and opened on 30 June 1894. Today around 40,000 people cross it every day, and it is one of the best-known symbols of London. It is often mixed up with London Bridge, the next bridge upstream.

Why it opens

In Victorian times the stretch of river beside the Tower, called the Pool of London, was one of the busiest ports in the world, full of ships carrying goods such as tea, sugar and cotton. East London needed a new crossing, but a normal low bridge would have blocked tall ships from reaching the wharves. More than 50 designs were sent in, and the winning idea was a bridge whose road could lift. By law, ships still have priority over cars, and a lift is free for any vessel more than about 9 metres tall that books ahead.

How it was built

Building took eight years. Workers sank two huge piers into the riverbed and raised a frame of more than 11,000 tonnes of steel. The steel was then covered in granite and Portland stone so the bridge would match the medieval Tower of London beside it. Horace Jones died in 1887, early in the work, and Barry gave the towers their decorated Victorian Gothic look. The bascules were first raised by steam-powered water pressure; since the 1970s they have been worked by an electric-powered hydraulic system.

Visiting today

The towers, the high walkways and the old Victorian engine rooms now form the Tower Bridge Exhibition. The walkways, about 44 metres above the river, were closed in 1910 because few people used the stairs, and reopened to visitors in 1982. The original steam engines are still on show. Watching a bridge lift is a favourite London sight: in its first year the bascules rose 6,194 times, and today they open several hundred times a year.

On the globe

The model shows the two Victorian Gothic towers standing over the Thames with the road and walkways between them. Zoom in to see the bascules in the middle, the part that lifts for ships.