London Stories

This is Abbey St. Railway Bridge, it carries the train lines out of London Bridge station and was built in 1836, the street is named after Bermondsey Abbey which used to border the Neckinger stream (the monk's toilet) no longer exists. You can see the bridge as you traverse the famous Bermondsey Beer Mile, there are several bridges like it (i.e. with fluted Iron pillars) along this section of the viaduct. The bridge was designed by Col. George Thomas Landmann of the Royal Engineers (1780-1854) and originally carried the London and Greenwich Railway, London's very first railway line, you can see it on this original 1840 map (below). The plan was to extend the line all the way to Dover but it never made it, other lines picking up the slack and eventually superseding the Greenwich line over the last century and a half.