Qualla: London Bridge https://qualla.com/london-bridge en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/london-bridge-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: London Bridge https://qualla.com/london-bridge London Bridge: Introduction https://qualla.com/london-bridge/ Photo credit Dorian Wallender from Lake Havasu City, Arizona, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1968, an American businessman named Robert P. McCulloch paid $2.46 million for a bridge that was sinking into the Thames. He had each granite block numbered, shipped 10,000 tons of stone through the Panama Canal to California, trucked them across the desert to Arizona, and reassembled the bridge over an artificial channel in Lake Havasu City, where it stands today as one of the strangest tourist attractions in the American Southwest. There's a persistent myth that McCulloch thought he was buying Tower Bridge — the photogenic one with the towers and the bascules. The myth was denied by Common Council member Ivan Luckin, who actually sold him the thing. McCulloch knew exactly what he was getting: John Rennie's elegant 1831 stone-arched bridge, slowly subsiding into the riverbed at the rate of about an inch every eight years.

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Image: Dorian Wallender from Lake Havasu City, Arizona, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/london-bridge-wp/gcpv-london-bridge-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full London Bridge: The Romans Made London Because of the Bridge https://qualla.com/london-bridge/ Photo credit Wishva de Silva, CC BY-SA 4.0. Until a bridge was built here, London did not exist. There were scattered Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age settlements nearby, and the Thames was a major trade route to the Continent from at least the 9th century BC, but no permanent town. The first London Bridge — possibly a ...

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Image: Wishva de Silva | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/london-bridge-wp/gcpv-london-bridge-the-romans-made-london-because-of-the-bridge.mp3 0:06 2 full London Bridge: Five Hundred and Fifty Years of Houses on a Bridge https://qualla.com/london-bridge/ Photo credit en:User:Nevilley, CC BY-SA 3.0. King Henry II, doing penance for the murder of Thomas Becket, commissioned a new stone bridge with a chapel dedicated to Becket at its centre. Construction began in 1176 under the supervision of Peter of Colechurch and was completed by 1209. The bridge that resulted was one of th...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/london-bridge-wp/gcpv-london-bridge-five-hundred-and-fifty-years-of-houses-on-a-bridge.mp3 0:06 3 full London Bridge: The Heads on the Spikes https://qualla.com/london-bridge/ Photo credit Stephencdickson, CC BY-SA 4.0. The drawbridge tower at the southern end of Old London Bridge had a grim function: it displayed the severed heads of traitors, dipped in tar to preserve them against the weather and impaled on iron spikes. The first recorded head belonged to William Wallace, exhibited in 1305 aft...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/london-bridge-wp/gcpv-london-bridge-the-heads-on-the-spikes.mp3 0:06 4 full London Bridge: The Bridge That Drove on the Left https://qualla.com/london-bridge/ Photo credit Eluveitie, CC BY-SA 3.0. By the late 17th century, the bridge had 551 residents living on it and the traffic was a permanent problem. From 1670, attempts were made to keep traffic in each direction to one side — first a keep-right policy, then in 1722 a keep-left policy. The 1722 decision has been sugges...

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Image: Eluveitie | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/london-bridge-wp/gcpv-london-bridge-the-bridge-that-drove-on-the-left.mp3 0:06 5 full London Bridge: The Concrete Bridge Nobody Notices https://qualla.com/london-bridge/ Photo credit Jordiferrer, CC BY-SA 4.0. John Rennie's elegant 1831 stone bridge — five granite arches, 928 feet long — outlasted the medieval one but was undone by simple weight. By 1924 the east side had sunk three to four inches lower than the west side. By 1968 it had to go. After McCulloch took it to Arizona, the c...

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Image: Jordiferrer | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/london-bridge-wp/gcpv-london-bridge-the-concrete-bridge-nobody-notices.mp3 0:06 6 full