Waterloo Bridge
Waterloo Bridge is named for a victory on the far side of Europe: it commemorates the British, Dutch and Prussians at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Work began with a first bridge designed in 1809–10 by John Rennie for the Strand Bridge Company, which built and operated the crossing as a toll bridge—opened in 1817 as “the Strand Bridge.” Before it opened, the Waterloo Bridge and Approaches Act 1816 (56 Geo. 3. c. lxiii) renamed it “the Waterloo Bridge,” and the company became “The Company of Proprietors of The Waterloo Bridge.” The original granite bridge ran 2,456 feet (748.6 metres) long, with nine arches of 120 feet (36.6 metres) span, and a width of 42 feet (12.8 metres) between parapets. In the 1840s it gained a grim reputation for suicide attempts, including the death of American daredevil Samuel Gilbert Scott in 1841. …
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