Bridges No.4 - Cannon Street Railway Bridge

The bridges through Central London are pretty close together, and closely upstream from London Bridge is the first railway bridge to cross the Thames. As its name suggests this bridge takes trains over the river into Cannon Street Railway Station on the north bank. Services from Cannon Street pass over this bridge, travel through to London Bridge station and then out to south and south-east London and occassionaly to Kent and East Sussex.

The bridge was designed by John Hankshaw and John Wolfe-Barry for South Eastern Railways and opened in 1866. Wolfe-Barry later went on to work on Tower Bridge following the untimely death of the original architect, Horace Jones. The Cannon Street Bridge was originally known as Alexandra Bridge, named after Alexandra of Denmark the Queen Consort of the future King Edward VII. It was widened between 1886 and 1893 and underwent an extensive refurbishment between 1979 and 1982. This latter work led to the removal of the ornamental features on the bridge leaving it with it currently industrial look.