All language subtitles for puorGVM.CAA.462x.VTDH.p0801.egdirB.rewoT.6fo3.1.seireS.segdirB.tsetaerG.sniatirB

Britain's iconic bridges,

spanning our most dramatic
landscapes,

have not only linked our island,
but made it great.

These are the bridges that are known
around the world,

built by visionaries
like Stephenson and Brunel,

who are famous even today.

Look at this!

From the banks of the Tyne
to the mighty Thames,

from the Firth of Forth
to the Menai Strait,

I'm on a journey to discover
how those great bridges were built...

Here we go.

And the sweat and sacrifice
that went into their construction.

Stopping traffic.

I'll uncover the huge egos,
flawed geniuses and jealous rivalries

behind their creation.

It's as if he'd been airbrushed
from the whole story.

These are Britain's greatest bridges.

In the heart of London, there is
a unique monument - Tower Bridge.

The most famous bridge in the world
and a true British icon.

Completed in 1894,
almost 65 metres high,

and spanning 268 metres
across the River Thames,

London's only opening bridge

has become an international symbol
of Britain and its capital.

But the Tower Bridge that everybody
knows so well is not what it seems.

This familiar structure
hides a world of secrets

and amazing stories
from the tops of its towers,

to the depths of its foundations.

I'm going to explore it all and,
really,

there's only one way
to start my journey.

I'm heading to the very heart
of the city to Tower Bridge,

but I'm not going by tube,
I'm not going by bus,

I'm arriving on a ship.

100 years ago, arriving in London
this way was nothing special.

6,000 ships passed
under Tower Bridge every year.

But today, sailing a full-sized
cruise ship

into the very core of the city
is an extremely rare event.

Even the captain's excited.

There is some ports in the world

where you have to arrive
with a vessel

and London is definitely
one of those.

How many times have you sailed up
the Thames and through Tower Bridge?

It will be my first time today.
So, I'm the lucky one.

I know what means this
bridge for the British people

and this is a bridge
that is famous in the world, so...

It's our Eiffel Tower, if you like.

But you just can't sail
under the Eiffel Tower.

That's true, that's true.

Fantastic.

London is a huge metropolis.

People are busy,
they've got stuff to do.

But when Tower Bridge opens,
they stop and stare.

What a huge, huge privilege.

Welcome to London.

This is the story of an object
that Victorian Londoners

called the Wonder Bridge.

It's hard to imagine London
without Tower Bridge,

but getting this bridge built
was a monumental struggle.

In fact, it almost never happened.

It's a tale worthy of Dickens -

a clash between a wealthy few
and the poor masses of the East End.

The conflict was only resolved

when a group of city leaders
engineered a happy ending.

Everything about Tower Bridge,
its shape, the materials used,

even the fact that it opens
in the middle,

is the result of a tangled
set of compromises.

Often with an approach like that,
you end up with a bland,

forgettable structure.

So how come this one
is so extraordinary?

To understand that, we have to go
back to a time when it didn't exist,

a time when London had just one
bridge - London Bridge.

London Bridge has existed since
at least Roman times,

but it's been through a number
of different incarnations.

The London Bridge that we see today
was completed in 1973.

It replaced a 19th-century version
completed in 1831.

Before the 19th century
London Bridge,

there was Old London Bridge,

and it started right here
in the church yard

of St Magnus-the-Martyr.

For more than 600 years,
it stretched out from this point

across to Southwark
on the South Bank.

And it was an incredible sight.

Inside the church,

there's something
that will give me an idea

of what Old London Bridge was like.

And this is it.

One of the parishioners here built
this model of Old London Bridge.

And it's absolutely incredible!

The detail is phenomenal.

And all the people and animals
and carts

gives you a real sense of the
hustle and bustle

and how busy this bridge
would've been

in amongst all the shops
and the houses.

This wasn't just a bridge,
it was a small village.

It was lined with dozens
of buildings

that had shops on the ground floor
with houses above.

At the bridge's southern end
was a defensive gateway,

topped with the severed heads
of traitors on spikes.

For more than 1,500 years,

anyone wanting to cross the Thames
had three choices -

you could fight your way through
the chaos on Old London Bridge,

take an expensive riverboat

or make the round trip of more than
20 miles along to the next bridge

at Kingston upon Thames,

at that time a small village
and far beyond the city.

It took centuries for London
to get a second bridge,

Westminster Bridge,
which opened in 1750.

In the decades that followed,

dozens of new bridges sprung up

across the river,

but every one of them was west,

upstream of London Bridge.

To the east downstream,

there was nothing except miles

of open river all the way to the sea.

The frenzy of bridge building

was great for Londoners

living down this way in Lambeth,
Chelsea, Putney or Hammersmith,

but for people over here, in Wapping,
Bermondsey, Limehouse or Greenwich,

it was no help at all.

By 1875, more than one million people
were living east of London Bridge

and they had no river crossing
of their own.

There was one reason nobody
wanted to build a bridge east,

in the East End - ships.

London was the busiest port
in the world

and many of the ships
were sailing ships with tall masts.

A huge number of them were headed
to the innermost part of the harbour.

The stretch of river downstream
of London Bridge

called the Pool of London.

Often, they'd need to unload right
here at Custom House,

so building a new bridge could help
relieve the road traffic problems -

but only at the cost of blocking
river traffic.

The port was London's
biggest industry

and closing the river with a bridge
would kill it dead.

But, ironically,
the success of that industry

meant that more and more people
were living and working

around the docks of the East End

and they needed a bridge.

How could there be a river crossing
for the East End

without blocking access for ships?

It was a simple question.

But one that would take decades
to answer.

It was a problem even the greatest
engineers of the day couldn't solve.

Until one obscure architect found
a solution

in something as simple
as a children's game.

Tower Bridge has been the centrepiece
of countless national celebrations.

The London Marathon,

royal jubilees,

and even the Olympics.

The bridge has become such a familiar
part of the London cityscape,

it is easy to forget
that it's not all that old.

It was a creation
of the late Victorian era,

built to solve a particular
late Victorian problem -

how to build a bridge in the heart
of the world's largest city

without closing
the world's busiest port.

In 1886, construction started here

on London's newest and easternmost
bridge - Tower Bridge.

After decades of struggle,

the people of the East End would
finally have a bridge of their own.

And what a bridge it was!

At the time of its construction,

Tower Bridge was one of the most
complex bridges ever designed.

For one thing, Tower Bridge wasn't
really just a bridge, but three.

On the sides here leading
from each bank to the towers,

it's a suspension bridge.

Then, there's a second style
of bridge up above the first -

these high-level walkways.

They're a kind of box girder bridge.

Finally, right in the middle,
and right beneath me here,

you've got the third type of bridge
that opens to let ships through,

the bascule bridge.

As a general rule, engineers like to
keep things as simple as possible.

Tower Bridge is anything but.

That's all the more surprising

considering
that many important people

never wanted it built
in the first place.

For centuries,
powerful interest groups

who oversaw shipping on the Thames

strongly opposed any kind of bridge
in the East End.

There was simply too much money
at stake.

This wealthy coalition of
ship-owners, merchants,

and the port authorities insisted
that the river must be kept clear.

Nothing could interrupt
the operation of the port.

But the people who really needed
the bridge were mostly poor,

the working class communities
of the East End.

If they wanted to cross the river,

they were still stuck using
London Bridge - and I do mean stuck.

Tens of thousands of carts, horses,

and people all had to travel
for miles

and then possibly wait for hours

just to get from one side
of the Thames to the other.

Despite a new London Bridge
replacing the medieval one in 1831,

it was still
in almost permanent gridlock.

Eventually, the traffic problems
became so bad,

the people in power started to search
for a solution.

And in 1843, father and son engineers

Marc and Isambard Kingdom Brunel
offered one.

If a bridge couldn't be built
over the Thames,

what about a tunnel under it?

It seemed like the ideal solution,

except tunnelling through the soft clay
of the Thames riverbed was a nightmare.

The Brunel's masterpiece, the
Thames Tunnel, took nearly 20 years,

cost six lives and nearly killed
Isambard, too,

in a catastrophic tunnel collapse.

Despite that, it was a popular
and financial success.

So, in 1869, another tunnel was dug,

almost exactly where Tower Bridge
stands today - the Tower Subway.

This was once its northern entrance
and in the 1890s,

it carried more than a million
people across the river every year.

Sadly, it's been closed to
the public for more than a century.

Today, it carries just water mains
and fibre optic cables.

Despite their success in giving
people a new way to cross the river,

the Tower Subway
and the Thames Tunnel

both had a massive drawback -

horses and carts couldn't use them,

so they were both absolutely useless

in relieving the city's
growing traffic jams.

In 1876, the Corporation of London
was finally forced to act.

It set up a Special Bridge
or Subway Committee

and opened a public competition
to find a solution.

I have here some of the more unusual
designs submitted to the committee.

There was this duplex bridge.

It's got a hexagonal roadway here
in the middle

which would open on one side to allow
a ship into the middle

before then opening up
the other side.

All the while on top,
road traffic would keep flowing.

In fact, that's exactly
what it says here.

"Facilitating the passage
of large ships"

"without stopping vehicular
and general traffic."

Now, I quite like this design.
It's quite fun.

But the committee decided
it was just too complicated.

And here,
this is the sub riverine arcade.

A huge tunnel, effectively,
and it really is huge and ornate.

You can see the number of lanes that
they've allowed through this tunnel.

More than 50 different ideas
were submitted to the committee,

some from the nation's
leading engineers,

like Sir Joseph Bazalgette.

He sent in three.

But Sir Joseph's plans,
along with all the others,

were rejected as unworkable,
too expensive, or both.

For seven years, the committee
sat on its hands until in 1884,

the architect of the City of London
submitted this design.

And it is very familiar.

The two medieval castle-like towers,

the suspension bridge
approaches on each side,

and the drawbridge here
in the middle.

The only real difference that jumps
out from this, for me, is the arch.

This design, by the architect
of the City of London,

Sir Horace Jones,
is called a bascule bridge.

Basically, it's a variation
on the classic drawbridge

first developed to protect castles,
towns and rivers in the Middle Ages.

Only bascule bridges
add a clever twist to the tale.

A 'bascule' is French for 'seesaw',
which is exactly how it works.

The problem with drawbridges,
generally,

is that the huge weight
of the bridge decks

makes them extremely cumbersome.

It takes a huge amount of energy
to lift them.

And it can come crashing down
really quickly,

potentially causing a lot of damage.

You alright? Yeah. OK.

But just like any playground seesaw,

the secret to making
a bascule bridge work...

is a counterweight. You alright?

Even by adding a small amount
of weight

to the back of the drawbridge,

as soon as it starts to lift,

gravity gives me a helping hand.

Making the bridge lift much easier

and giving my tired arms
a bit of a rest too.

The genius of a bascule bridge
is that the seesawing action

of the counterweight helps it open
and close quickly and efficiently.

That helps traffic on the river
move smoothly,

while keeping delays on the road
to a minimum.

Bascule bridges weren't a new idea.

The thing that was different

about Sir Horace Jones' design
was the scale of it.

Tower Bridge would be the biggest
bascule bridge ever built.

But there was a flaw
in Sir Horace's plan.

The curved arch meant the bridge
could only ever open about 45 degrees

so the tallest ships

had to stay dead centre
of the channel to clear it.

Not always possible
with a sailing ship in high winds.

Once again, the port authority
stepped in with objections

and Sir Horace's design was rejected.

A rethink was needed.

And Sir Horace knew just the man
to do it.

To help make his ideas a reality,

Sir Horace brought in a brilliant
engineer, John Wolfe Barry,

the son of the man who designed
the Houses of Parliament.

He took Jones' ideas and turned
them into a working bridge.

Barry scrapped Sir Horace's arch

and replaced it
with the high-level walkways.

They meant the bridge
could open fully,

giving ships more room to manoeuvre

while also making sure pedestrians

would never have to wait
while the bridge was open.

In October 1884,

London's Special Bridge
or Subway Committee

chose this revised plan
as the winning design.

Their cause was no doubt helped

by the fact that Sir Horace
was a member of the committee.

He voted for himself, naturally.

Jones and Barry had a plan at last
that, on paper at least, would work.

But it was complicated.

All the many changes and additions
meant one thing above all else -

Tower Bridge was going
to cost a fortune.

The budget was £1,187,000.

And would cost well over
100 times that today.

Fortunately, for the City of London,
who had to pay for this new bridge,

money was no object.

But even more fortunately
for the British taxpayers,

it wouldn't cost them a single penny.

That's because the entire cost
of building Tower Bridge

came from medieval Londoners.

In the year 1282,
700 years before Tower Bridge,

the city of London started
to collect revenue from Londoners

using Old London Bridge.

The whole operation was run
from a building in Southwark

called the Bridge House.

The city used some of the money
raised at Bridge House

to buy land called
the Bridge House Estates.

The income from that land

was then used to pay
for the upkeep of the bridge.

It was the start of a trust fund
that is still going strong today,

eight centuries later.

I've come to the Guildhall,
headquarters of the City of London,

to meet the man in charge
of the money, David Farnsworth.

So how does the income
come into Bridge House Estates?

So you've got just over £1 billion
in the assets of the charity.

Over £1 billion?
Over £1 billion.

Which is rolled over the centuries

and then tolls from vessels
going under the bridge,

people going over the bridge,
properties on the bridge,

all generated money
which got put into a pot

which was set up to maintain
and repair five bridges

which are Tower Bridge,
London Bridge, Blackfriars,

Millennium and Southwark bridges.

And when the bridge are sorted out,

there's money available
to distribute

to charities across London.

It's a fantastic system.
Yeah, no, it's good.

There was a very deep
philanthropic tradition

from the City of London Corporation.

Right the way back, you
have historic figures

like Dick Whittington
that actually represented that ethos

of giving to the other
for the benefit of the city,

and I think that thread runs
right through the history

of Bridge House Estates
and City Bridge Trust.

So it is that Londoners
looking out for other Londoners.

So in a way, those five bridges
are a gift to London?

Yeah, I think they come from
Londoners, they are for Londoners.

This huge pot of money
allowed architect Sir Horace Jones

and engineer John Wolfe Barry

to build in a solution
to every objection.

In a sense, they bought off
the opposition.

Today, Tower Bridge is far and away
Sir Horace's most famous work,

but the terrible irony is
he never lived to see it finished.

He died in 1887, just a year
after construction began.

After his death, yet more
refinements were made to his design,

particularly the towers.

His original bricks were replaced

with a mix of Cornish granite
and Portland stone.

But the handsome stone we see
actually hides a strange secret -

an engineering trick that
most people know nothing about.

Whether it's throngs of tourists
taking selfies

or one of countless postcards
and souvenirs on sale nearby,

images of Tower Bridge
are everywhere.

It's the most famous bridge
in the world.

But hidden inside this British icon,

there's a labyrinth of contradictions
and unexpected surprises.

The towers are undoubtedly
the bridge's most remarkable feature.

They are what make Tower Bridge
so famous.

And many people assume
that's where it gets its name.

But it's actually named
after its much older neighbour,

the Tower of London.

The bridge's name isn't the only
misconception about it.

In fact, the handsome stone bridge
we see from the outside

isn't really a bridge at all.

It's only when you step
inside the towers

that the real bridge reveals itself.

Because Tower Bridge
isn't made of stone.

It's made of steel.

The famous stone walls
are just a facade,

concealing the 11,000 tonnes
of steel

that really hold the bridge up.

In these remarkable photos
taken in 1892

while the bridge
was under construction,

the steel skeleton
can plainly be seen.

Later pictures show the familiar
stone facing being attached,

but why bother covering up
the bridge's true nature?

Partly, the stone walls act
as a form of weatherproofing,

but there's another reason.

One look out over London
with its cutting-edge architecture,

tall glass tower blocks,

tells you that modernity
is very much in fashion.

The early years of the Industrial
Revolution were much the same.

People liked seeing
exposed metal structures.

It felt modern.

But by the 1880s, there was a
backlash against modernity.

Instead, leading lights of the day

championed a style called neo-Gothic.

They wanted to recreate England
as a kind of medieval fairytale.

Brutal steel framework
wasn't part of that story.

It's almost like the bridge
has been camouflaged,

it's been deliberately designed
to look like a medieval castle,

just so it doesn't ruin the view

of the real medieval castle
right next door.

In 1894, after six years
of construction,

this colossal Victorian fantasy
was complete.

On top of the steel, it took nearly
37,000 tonnes of concrete,

30,000 tonnes of masonry

and more than 27,000 tonnes
of brickwork to finish it off.

On June 30 of that year,

a grand ceremony was held
to mark the bridge's opening.

The Prince of Wales,
the future king Edward VII,

was given the honour of raising
Tower Bridge for the first time.

The Prince of Wales was standing
right about here

and when the bridge opened,
everyone gasped.

No-one had ever seen anything
quite like it before.

People started calling it
the Wonder Bridge.

It's a name that's richly deserved.

Ever since that day,

people from around the world have
been awestruck

by the sight of Tower Bridge

raising its 61-metre-long
central span.

But most of them have no idea

just how clever
the lifting mechanism really is.

I'm now underneath
the South approach road

to the bridge
in the old engine rooms.

These boilers were used
to create steam

that powered the rest
of the machinery.

This is the start of a system

that was a marvel
of Victorian ingenuity.

When these engines were in use,
men worked here 24 hours a day,

seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.

Today, it's a museum.

Much of the grimy machinery
has been cleaned up

and lovingly restored.

And welcome hosts
like Katie Williams

are on hand to explain it all
to visitors.

This is beautiful machinery.

I can't get enough of this stuff.

This is the last stage
of the bridge lifting, isn't it?

Yeah, the very final stage
of lifting the bridge.

How long would it take to actually
get the bridge to fully lift?

So it would take around 90 seconds
to lift the bascules.

The entire time, though, using
the steam system, it never failed,

from 1894 until 1976.

That's brilliant!

I like that.

The river traffic always
has priority,

so as soon as a boat needed to come,

they had to be ready to lift
the bridge.

It couldn't get stuck 'cause if you
imagine it got stuck

when the bridge was up, it would
cause traffic chaos in London,

nobody would be able
to get anywhere.

If it got stuck down, then the boats
wouldn't be able to get through.

Although the 360 horsepower
steam engines

could lift the bridge on their own,

that wasn't their main job.

They were designed to pump cold water

into Victorian energy storage devices
called accumulators.

It's the accumulators
that really powered the bridge.

Four of them are buried inside
the bridge's massive supports -

the piers.

Normally, the piers are off-limits
to the public,

but we've been allowed
to take a look.

I'm now deep inside the south pier

and the first surprise
is it's hollow.

From the outside, you'd think it was
made of solid stone,

but that's not the case at all.

And once you come down in here,
you can see why.

This is one
of the main accumulators.

It's a giant.

And there are three others
hidden inside the piers.

To prepare the accumulators
for action,

water was pumped into a cylinder
under the floor here

at 750 pounds per square inch -

13 times the pressure
of a typical household water supply.

I have a basic model
of this extraordinary machine

to explain how it works.

Now, inside the cylinder
was a huge piston and, so,

the reason you needed
such high water pressure

being pumped into the bottom
of the cylinder

was because that piston
was being weighed down.

Now, I'm using a can of beans.

The real accumulator had 120 tonnes
of pig iron inside pressing down.

So now I've got this mass
being held at height.

This would have been pumped right
to the top of this tower here,

a huge amount of potential energy.

Whenever they wanted to do
a bridge lift,

all they needed to do was open the
valve at the bottom of the cylinder

and let the water out.

As the 100-tonne weight descended,

that high pressure was shot
with enormous force

into driving engines -
essentially, huge gearboxes.

Those gears turned a shaft
that was connected to the back

of the moving part of the bridge,
the bascules,

raising them in 90 seconds flat.

This is the bascule chamber.

And above me is the bascule.

It's the back end of the bascule
and what we can see,

the huge white area,
that's the counterweight.

So when they want to lift the bridge,

the front end of the bascule,

the road section goes up

and the back end swings down
into this huge, cavernous void.

Each side of the bascule
is called a leaf.

But these leaves weigh
1,200 tonnes each.

The cast-iron counterweights
alone weigh 450.

I need to leave
the bascule chamber now,

because the bridge is about
to lift and, for obvious reasons,

the staff don't want anyone in here

when that thing above my head comes
swinging down, so... I'm out.

Although I can't be inside the
chamber itself,

I have been allowed to stand just
next door in the service tunnel.

I'm about to witness something
few people ever get to see.

The underside of Tower Bridge
swinging into action -

literally.

It's all about to happen.

Here we go.

I'm now standing as close
as a human being is allowed to be

as this gigantic Victorian machine
comes to life.

Look at it! It's right there!

It's not fast, it's majestic.

Here we go. Job done.

Beautiful. Beautiful.

One of the most impressive things

about this fast
and complex arrangement

is that from on top of the bridge,
you can't even see it.

Almost everything was tucked away
below the main road deck.

It's another one of the remarkable
things about Tower Bridge -

it would work perfectly well
without its towers.

The main reason the towers
were built, of course,

is to hold up the high-level
walkways.

But the truth is for
most of the bridge's life,

those walkways were never even used.

Originally, the river authorities
wanted the bridge to be lifted

for two hours every day at high tide,

so the walkways were added
so pedestrians could keep crossing

while it was open.

Only, that part of the plan
never happened.

The bridge could be raised
and lowered so quickly,

it wasn't necessary to keep it open
for long stretches.

Tower Bridge lifting
was such an incredible sight,

most people didn't bother traipsing
all the way up here to get across.

They'd much rather wait
and watch from down there.

It was way more interesting
and much faster.

The walkways became little more
than a hangout for prostitutes

and pickpockets and in 1910,

they were closed to the public,
just 16 years after they'd opened.

For more than 70 years,
the towers were little more

than expensive scaffolding
for hydraulic pipework.

But when World War II
darkened London's skies,

those towers became something
altogether more sinister.

This great British monument
was transformed into a Nazi target.

From almost the day it opened
in 1894,

the raising bascules of Tower Bridge

became a familiar sight to Londoners.

In its first year of operation,
the bridge lifted 6,000 times.

A pace that hardly changed
for the next half-century.

But the start of World War II

brought about a drastic change
for the bridge,

and the city that surrounded it.

In 1940, London was threatened
with annihilation from the air.

The Blitz had arrived and target
number one was London's docks.

The economic engine of the whole
British Empire, Tower Bridge,

was right in the firing line.

Nazi pilots used the bridge
as a navigational aid,

lining up their bombing runs with
the towers as they headed up river.

During The Blitz,

bombs hit pretty much every building
in the area

including extensive damage to the
Tower of London, just feet away.

Somehow, the bridge wasn't hit,
but on 16 January, 1941,

it had a very close call.

A bomb narrowly missed,

but hit a tugboat called the Naja
just alongside.

Sadly, two crewmen were killed.

Those two joined the more than 17,500
Londoners

that had died by May 1941.

But then, for a time,
the skies above London were clear.

That suddenly changed on June 13,
1944,

when this East End railway bridge
was hit with a terrifying new weapon.

That weapon was the V1 flying bomb.

This unmanned, unguided weapon
was crude but effective.

The Nazis aimed it at a preset
target and let it go.

A timer then sent it into a dive
after a prearranged flight time,

sending it plummeting to the ground,
destroying whatever it hit.

There were around 10,000 V1s
unleashed on London

and it's a little-known fact
that they all have the same target.

Tower Bridge.

The weapon's guidance system
was so primitive, though,

the bridge was hit just once

when a V1 bounced off
one of the towers.

By a horrific twist of fate,
the same tug that was hit in 1941,

the Naja, was hit again
in the middle of a shift change.

This time, the entire crew
of six men died.

By some miracle, Tower Bridge
made it through the war

virtually unscathed.

The post-war years saw
several lucky escapes, too.

Like a number of planes
flying between the towers.

But possibly one of the most
extraordinary things

that ever happened on Tower Bridge

took place on 30 December, 1952.

That day, a number 78 bus was on its
usual route across the bridge when,

without warning, it started to open.

A bridge worker had failed to stop
the traffic

and the bus jumped over
the gap between the bascules.

The driver, Albert Gunter,
made it safely across

and his passengers suffered
only minor injuries.

He was given a £10 bonus
for his heroics.

The bridge had survived all this,

but its fate was nearly sealed
by something much slower

and harder to see - economic decline.

By the early 1970s,
the pool of London here,

once the heart of the busiest port
in the world, was dying.

The advent of containerised shipping
meant that most of the cargo

was now being unloaded at a new port,
Tilbury, some 20 miles to the east.

At the same time,
thanks to mass car ownership,

road traffic going across the bridge
was becoming ever heavier

and lifting it became more
and more of an inconvenience.

In order for the bridge
to be lifted 24 hours a day,

the boilers needed to be fired,
maintained,

and fed with coal around the clock.

But bridge lifts were becoming
an increasingly rare occurrence.

The City of London finally decided

it was time to retire
the old steam-driven system

and they seriously considered
never opening the bridge again.

But even if the city had wanted to
leave Tower Bridge permanently down,

they couldn't.

The Act of Parliament
that authorised its construction

states river traffic
could NEVER be obstructed,

and that's still the law
of the land today.

So, the city went
for another option -

drastically cutting costs
through modernisation.

The grand old steam system
was finally retired in 1976

and this was installed in its place.

It's an electrically-powered
hydraulic engine.

A huge pump that forces hydraulic
fluid into the drive system.

This is the set-up that drives
the bridge

here on the south-east side

and there are three identical systems
on the other corners of the bridge.

It's not as exciting
as the steam engine,

but it's way more efficient.

That said, from this yellow piece
onwards are the original parts.

The new electrohydraulic system

meant that the team of 82 people

that used to keep the bridge running
was reduced to just 15.

And lifting the bridge
takes just one.

There's a sailing barge called
Gladys and she's waiting upriver,

somewhere just over there,
can't quite see her here.

Now, she's typical of the ships

that used to ply the river
day in, day out.

And she wants to leave the pool
of London and head downstream.

The problem is, her tallest masts
are 15 metres high.

Whereas the clearance
under the bridge is only 10 metres.

That means Tower Bridge
needs to go up

and I've been given
special permission to lift it,

under the watchful eye of bridge
technical officer Sean Naidoo.

When I - and in this case, you -
are opening the bridge,

you have responsibility
of the vessel,

the people on the road,

members of public, members of staff,
and anyone nearby, so...

You've now just made me very...

Should go alright!
You've now just made me very nervous.

The lifting process starts
with a short announcement

to clear the bascules.

Stand-by, bridge crew.
Stopping traffic.

- Is it happening? There we go.
- OK.

Once the bridge has been emptied
of people and vehicles,

I can take control
of a British engineering landmark.

Now you can do the nose bolts,
which is next to...

This one here? Yeah.

Hand on the lever. That's open.

OK, yeah. Right.
And pull it towards you a little bit.

Just to get it moving at slow speed.
Keep it there for a few seconds.

Right, now all the way.

That was brilliant. Here we go.
Up you go.

That's it.

Yeah. This is a dream come true.

It's a lifelong dream come true.

Look at it! That is amazing.

Just the amount of steel,

the sheer weight that my hand
on this lever is pulling up.

Gently come back
to the middle position.

And give them a green light,
which is next to your right hand.

This one here? That's it.

There he is. Lovely.

There you are. Congratulations, Rob.

That was brilliant.
You've just lifted Tower Bridge.

Thank you so much.
How did I do? Did I do alright?

You did fine. Yeah?

Nothing's crashed into anything.
Excellent.

Safety, I've still got a 100% record.
Yeah. 100% record.

Excellent. Let's keep it that way.

While updated machinery gave
Tower Bridge a new lease of life

on the inside,

the weathered exterior was looking
increasingly drab and tired.

Probably one of the most distinctive
things about this bridge

is its patriotic red,
white and blue colour scheme.

But it hasn't always been like that.

For most of its history,
this bridge was painted... brown.

In 1977, that became
a bit of a problem.

The bridge was due
to feature prominently

in the Queen's Silver Jubilee
celebrations.

Only the existing paint scheme
wasn't very jubilant.

The bridge was repainted with a much
more festive red, white and blue.

It was such a hit with the public,

the city decided to keep it
and it's been with us ever since.

And in 1982,

the city took another step
to breathe new life into the bridge.

The old walkways, which had been
out of use for more than 70 years,

were reopened
as a tourist attraction.

Today, it's a big hit with more than
half a million visitors every year.

It's hard to conceive
of London without Tower Bridge.

But now I know the story of how
it almost never came into being

and how close London came
to losing it through the war

and through economic decline.

It makes me think how lucky we are
to have it.

It really is the Wonder Bridge.

Captions by Ericsson Access Services
SBS Australia 2017