thumb|Audio description of the bridges by [[Sophie Thompson]]

The Hungerford Bridge crosses the River Thames in London, and lies between Waterloo Bridge and Westminster Bridge. Owned by Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd (who use its official name of Charing Cross Bridge) it is a steel truss railway bridge flanked by two more recent, cable-stayed, pedestrian bridges that share the railway bridge's foundation piers, and which are named the Golden Jubilee Bridges.

The north end of the bridge is Charing Cross railway station, and is near Embankment Pier and the Victoria Embankment. The south end is near Waterloo station, County Hall, the Royal Festival Hall, and the London Eye. Each pedestrian bridge has steps and lift access.

History

thumb|right| photograph of the bridge by [[Fox Talbot]]

The first Hungerford Bridge, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, opened in 1845 as a suspension footbridge. It was named after the then Hungerford Market, because it went from the South Bank, specifically a northern point of Lambeth, soon close to London Waterloo station to that place on the north side of the Thames, specifically to the market (later Charing Cross Station) about 200 yards or metres east of Trafalgar Square partly in the parish of Saint Martin in the Fields, Westminster, the spire of which can be seen from the bridge.

In 1859 the original bridge was bought by the Charing Cross Railway Company, who obtained the (23 & 24 Vict. c. cxlvii) to allow them to extend the South Eastern Railway into a new Charing Cross railway station. The railway company replaced the suspension bridge with a structure designed by Sir John Hawkshaw, comprising nine spans made of wrought iron lattice girders, which opened in 1864. The chains from the old bridge were re-used in Bristol's Clifton Suspension Bridge. The original brick pile buttresses of Brunel's footbridge are still in use, though the one on the Charing Cross side is now much closer to the river bank than it was originally, due to the building of the Victoria Embankment, completed in 1870. The buttress on the South Bank side still has the entrances and steps from the original steamer pier Brunel built on to the footbridge. In the mid-1990s a decision was made to replace the footbridge with new structures on either side of the existing railway bridge, and a competition was held in 1996 for a new design.

Further justification for new footbridge structures on the west flank and east flank was that the brittle wrought iron support pillars of Sir John Hawkshaw's railway bridge were vulnerable to impact from riverboats.

The Golden Jubilee footbridges

The concept design for the new footbridges was won by architects Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands and engineers WSP Group. Detailed design of the two bridges was carried out by consulting engineers Gifford, now Ramboll UK. The steelwork for the new footbridges was fabricated by Butterley Engineering Ltd. of Ripley, Derbyshire.

Their construction was complicated by the need to keep the railway bridge operating without interruptions, the Bakerloo line tunnels passing only a few feet under the river bed, and the potential danger of unexploded World War II bombs in the Thames mud.

In 2014, the planning application for the now cancelled Garden Bridge, revealed in its assessment of pedestrian movement across the Thames that the footbridges are the busiest in London, with an estimated footfall of 8.5 million each year.

In fiction

  • "Hungerford Bridge" by Elizabeth Hand, Conjunctions 52, 2009.
  • "The Woman Who Fell In Love With The Hungerford Bridge" by Lavie Tidhar, Ambit 2014.

See also

  • List of crossings of the River Thames
  • List of bridges in London
  • Charing Cross Bridge (Monet series)

References

  • Survey of London entry
  • Golden Jubilee Footbridges
  • Hungerford Bridge (1845) had a span of Bridgemeister
  • Hungerford Bridge Graveyard
  • Imágenes y descripción del puente de Hungerford en PUENTEMANÍA (Español)