Turn the clock back to those giddy days when the Sussexes were still royal and no one had heard of Covid. Suddenly, London suffered a major transport failure. Tiny fractures spotted in the pedestals of Hammersmith Bridge forced the instant closure of a major traffic route over the Thames.
That was on April 10, 2019. By sheer coincidence, just five days later, Paris also came to a standstill, too. The Cathedral of Notre Dame had just burned down.
Now, fast forward to the present day. Notre Dame is reborn, more splendid than before. And Hammersmith Bridge? Sadly, almost nothing has changed at all. After six years and five Prime Ministers, it is still closed to all motor traffic. A national landmark is now a national joke, a monument to chronic public sector inertia – from town hall to City Hall to Whitehall.
Now that this saga has gone on for longer than the Second World War, I have decided to pay yet another visit. We are less than two years from the 200th birthday of the original Hammersmith Bridge. Might the bicentenary be focusing minds?
Don’t hold your breath. The closure of the handsome, Harrods-green bridge still leaves a five-mile stretch of the Thames with no crossing point for vehicles.
At the southern end, leafy Barnes is delightfully peaceful. The A306, which used to carry five bus routes and 20,000 cars over the Thames every day, is a cul-de-sac.
To the north, the metropolis of Hammersmith, with its shops and hospital, is just a short walk over the bridge. However, if you need to go by car or ambulance, it can take an hour. All that traffic has been shifted elsewhere.
So many vehicles have to cross over Putney Bridge, to the east, that, in 2022, Putney High Street was crowned Britain’s most congested road.
Tiny fractures spotted in the pedestals of Hammersmith Bridge forced the instant closure of a major traffic route over the Thames in 2019
The bridge has remained closed to motor traffic for six years, a period spanning five prime ministers. Pictured: Cyclists riding over the bridge in July 2021
Margaret Thatcher, the IRA, two councils, all the main political parties, the Whitehall ‘blob’ and the Mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan (pictured) all have been blamed for the bridge’s failure to reopen
A local MP recently warned the current repair schedule for Hammersmith may take another ten years. Hammersmith Council says its preferred repair option – a double-decker crossing with vehicles on top and walkers below – could cost upwards of £250 million. And yet, after four years of testing, the council cannot confirm whether the ‘piers’ (the pillars in the river) could bear the weight of this design.
During the summer, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said ‘it may be the case’ that the bridge could qualify for a new
£1 billion Structures Fund for old infrastructure. The not-so-good news is that her department has failed to confirm this.
Meanwhile, planning permission has just been granted for more than 1,000 homes on an old brewery at Mortlake, south of the bridge. That will mean thousands more people needing to cross the Thames each day, many by car.
For Barnes residents like Heidi Patton, whose disabled husband requires regular hospital treatment, the situation defies belief. ‘Getting to any hospital appointment is a major operation,’ she says, ‘and we don’t even think about the theatre any more.’
‘This could be a nice village in Surrey or Hampshire,’ says fellow Barnes resident Louisa Barnett. ‘But the problem is I don’t want to live in a village. I want to live in London. And this isn’t London.’
Louisa has lived on the south side of the bridge for more than 20 years, but the final straw came in 2023 when she was unable to get across to her dying sister’s bedside in time to say goodbye. She is now preparing to move her home and her Geronimo Jones jewellery business over the river to reconnect with the world.
‘People say their lives feel smaller because they can’t move around like they used to,’ says writer Julia Watkins, part of the local action group Hammersmith Bridge SOS.
A local MP recently warned the current repair schedule for Hammersmith may take another ten years
The closure of the bridge has cut off Barnes from the rest of London, a move which has divided residents
Some of its members tell me the election of a Labour Government, in tandem with a Labour mayor and Hammersmith’s Labour council, has made no difference.
As one puts it: ‘They all hate cars and, besides, they think this is just a posh area for the rich, white, middle class.’ The south side of the bridge does, indeed, sit in one of London’s smartest boroughs, though the area also includes plenty of social housing.
I have to say that I find many people who would relish permanent closure. ‘We felt cut off when the bridge first closed but now I love the peace,’ says tech designer Elaine Mannix, walking her dog in Barnes. ‘We love all the clean air. Keep it like this,’ says another dog-walker, Olivia Reynolds.
I meet Nigel Edwards, who is chairman of the action group and has painstakingly documented years of inaction. Why does he still bother? ‘Because we are a major G7 nation and I cannot think of any other country which would allow a vital piece of infrastructure in the heart of the capital simply to fall apart.’
When it comes to apportioning blame, you can take your pick from Margaret Thatcher, the IRA, two councils, all the main political parties, the Whitehall ‘blob’ and the Mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan. All, to some degree, have explaining to do.
It was exactly 200 years ago, in 1825, that work began on the first suspension bridge across the tidal Thames. It opened in 1827 but, within 50 years, it needed upgrading. The great Victorian engineer, Sir Joseph Bazalgette, designed a larger replacement which sits on the same ‘piers’ we see today. He did the whole thing for £12 million in today’s money.
There were new owners in 1986, after Mrs Thatcher dismantled the old Greater London Council (GLC). The capital’s rail bridges ended up in the hands of Network Rail, some road bridges ended up with Transport for London (under the Mayor of London) and City of London river crossings are funded through a £1.5 billion medieval trust fund. Then a bright spark decided to hand the rest to whichever council had a similar name. So Hammersmith Council got Hammersmith Bridge.
This overlooked the fact that most users are from the opposite borough of Richmond and that the cost would be impossible for one local authority.
The condition of the bridge was not helped by the IRA, who tried to blow it up in 1939, 1996 and 2000. However, what has really done for the bridge has been the lack of council maintenance over the past two decades, by both Labour and Tory administrations.
When those tiny fractures appeared in 2019, it emerged that the bearings which allow the bridge to move had seized up. There was an eye-watering initial estimate for repairs: £120 million. That has since doubled.
A furious four-way, cross-party blame game ensued. Hammersmith’s (Labour) council demanded help from the (Conservative) government which, in turn, expected the (Labour) Mayor to dig into its Transport for London budget. Richmond’s (Liberal Democrat) council angrily blamed everyone.
A previous propsal would have turned the bridge into a permanent inaccessible monument
Bikes and pedestrians are able to use the bridge. (Pictured: Jeremy Vine on a penny farthing using the new carriageway)
That anger intensified a year later on August 13, 2020, when a heatwave exposed fresh cracks and there was a fear of imminent collapse. The bridge was closed to all traffic, including boats below.
Britain was an international laughing stock. On September 7, The New York Times declared: ‘London’s bridges really are falling down.’ Just two days after that headline, the then transport secretary Grant Shapps announced a ‘Hammersmith Bridge Taskforce’ which would ‘get this thing sorted’.
It was still almost a year before anyone was allowed across again – and only on foot. Since then, the bridge has had new rubber bearings and decking costing £48 million. New cycle lanes mean people can, at least, ride across instead of pushing their bikes.
There has been just one meeting of the ‘Taskforce’ since the election, a 90-minute session back in January which concluded with a request for more traffic surveys. The council and the Department for Transport say they are ‘considering a range of options’, while the anti-car lobby agitates for a permanent closure.
However, new support is gathering for an old idea. I meet retired chartered and marine engineer Tim Cunis and independent Hammersmith councillor David Morton, who are arguing for proper scrutiny of a 2019 plan by maritime engineers, Beckett Rankine. This offered two options for a temporary self-funding toll bridge, leaving the existing bridge free for repair at a fraction of the current estimate.
A toll bridge to the west would be the easier option, since it could start from the grounds of St Paul’s School which has indicated it would be amenable to leasing the necessary land. The other end would feed into the Hammersmith gyratory system.
However, it would be very close to a block of flats and involve the removal of some parking bays and trees. ‘The Labour leader told me there was no way the voters in that ward would accept that,’ says Mr Morton, who fell out with the Labour group in 2023.
The Victorian bridge is Grade II Listed by Historic England, meaning it is a ‘particularly important’ national structure of ‘more than special interest’
Elements of the Grade II listed bridge that need repair include pedestals, anchors and chains
Mr Cunis takes me through bundles of papers on the viability of the scheme, including a 2020 report from the vice-president of the Institution of Civil Engineers who acknowledged it could be done.
‘The council and TfL have rubbished the proposal,’ sighs Mr Cunis. ‘But no one has properly looked at how it could work.’
The council says the decision to reject the Beckett Rankine plan was made by TfL engineers but TfL’s report only analyses the proposal to the east, not the proposal to the west.
A TfL spokesman says that it ‘continues to work closely’ with the Government and the borough, adding that, ultimately, this is a decision for the council, not for TfL. And so the bureaucrats just keep on passing the buck.
Have they either overlooked this game-changing solution, or else buried it for fear of a few ‘Nimby’ voters? The man behind the plan insists it would still be relatively straightforward.
‘You could have a temporary bridge paying for itself up and running in three to four months using standard units which are widely available. The main issue would be planning consent,’ says Tim Beckett of Beckett Rankine. The old bridge could then be lifted out in sections, he says, and repaired in five years, after which the toll bridge (which would pay for itself) would simply be removed. He points to the recent restoration of the Union Chain Bridge between Scotland and England across the Tweed at Berwick. It’s also a suspension bridge, slightly smaller but even older than Hammersmith, and is now carrying traffic once again after a complete overhaul. Duration? Two years. Cost? A mere £10.5 million.
Given that this shambles has lasted more than six years and the current estimate is £250 million, surely this idea is worth a fresh look?
It comes with a pedigree. Tim Beckett’s company operates all over the world and has completed 200 projects on the Thames alone. Mr Beckett’s father, Major Allen Beckett, played such a key part in the success of D-Day in 1944, with his floating roadways and anchors for ‘Mulberry’ harbour, that the French have erected a memorial to him at Arromanches.
But then the French know about restoring national landmarks – even charred cathedrals. Sadly, it’s we Brits who are in need of a miracle.
