London Walk 4: London Bridge to Canary Wharf Via Wapping 1
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London Walk 4: London Bridge to Canary Wharf via Wapping 1 London Bridge Station. The oldest station in London opened in 1830 by the London & Blackwall Railway which was 3.5 miles long. Pre-dated Euston by 7 months and is soon to be London's newest station as part of the £6bn Thameslink programme. 2 The Shard, the tallest building in the UK at 309m/1016', but only the 4th tallest in Europe and 87th tallest in the world. Cost £435m to build and owned by the State of Qatar. Built by Renzo Piano - the style is called "Neo- Futurism". The 828-metre (2,717 ft) tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai has been the tallest building in the world since 2008. The Burj Khalifa has been classified as Megatall. 3 The Upper Pool. After the Elizabethan voyages of discovery there was a boom in shipping in London and many wharves and warehouses were built to cater for the trade. However due to increasing smuggling and crime, Queen Elizabeth specified 20 quays on the north bank to be designated “Legal Quays” over which all cargo had to be discharged and cleared by Customs who collected duty. Over the next century this monopoly became abused and many traders and shipping men complained of extortion pleading for more quays to be opened. By contrast at this time, Bristol had 4000’ of quays compared with London’s 1400’ Crime was rife with ships being raided and cargos sold before they reached the legal quays and by 1797 it was estimated that over £500,000 of cargo was being stolen annually. River Police were formed to combat this but the building of the enclosed docks proved to be the most effective deterrent – the West India Docks were the first to be built in 1799 followed by the London Docks in 1800. 4 Hays Wharf & St. Olaf House. This is the oldest wharf in the upper pool and used to stretch all the way along to Tower Bridge. Nicknamed "The Larder of London", it closed in 1969. St Olave House was built in 1931 by Goodhart-Rendel as the HQ of the Hays Wharfage Company and is classic Art Deco style. 5 London Bridge. This site dates backs to Roman times and was the first crossing of the Thames. The medieval bridge stood for more than 600 years being replaced only in 1831 with one whose lights were cast from Napoleonic cannons. This bridge - lights and all - was famously then sold to America (Arizona), with the present bridge opening in 1973. Adelaide House - Built 1925 when it was the tallest office building in the City at 131' (43m). Built in Art Deco style incorporating Egyptian motifs. Billingsgate Fish Market first opened in 1850 but the present building dates from 1875 and is used for corporate events, filming etc. The fish market moved to Canary Wharf in 1982 Hays Galleria - The mechanical statue in Hays Galleria is called "The Navigators" designed by David Kemp in 1986. 6 HMS Belfast Name: HMS Belfast Ordered: 21 September 1936 Builder: Harland and Wolff shipyard, Belfast, UK Yard number: 1000 Laid down: 10 December 1936 Launched: 17 March 1938 She was launched on St Patrick's Day Completed: 3 August 1939 Commissioned: 5 August 1939 Decommissioned: 24 August 1963 Identification: Pennant number C35 Motto: Pro Tanto Quid Retribuamus (Latin: For so much, how shall we repay?) Honours and awards: Arctic 1943 North Cape 1943 - assisting in the destruction of the German warship Scharnhorst Normandy 1944 - Belfast took part in Operation Overlord supporting the Normandy landings. Korea 1950–52 Status: Museum ship since 21 October 1971 General characteristics Class and type: Town-class light cruiser Displacement: 11,550 tons Length: 613 ft 6 in (186.99 m) overall Beam: 63 ft 4 in (19.3 m) Complement: 781–881 (as flagship, 1939) Armament: 1939: 12 × 6-inch (152 mm) Mk XXIII guns (4×3) To emphasise the range of the ship's armament, the forward six-inch guns of A and B Turrets are aimed at the London Gateway service area on the M1 motorway, some 12½ miles away on the outskirts of London 12 × 4-inch (102 mm) Mk XVI dual purpose guns (6×2) 16 × 2-pounder (40 mm) anti-aircraft guns (2×8) 8 × 0.5-inch (13 mm) AA machine guns (2×4) 6 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes (2×3) Aircraft carried: 2 × Supermarine Walrus (disembarked June 1943)[6] Aviation facilities: 2 × hangars 1 × catapult (removed 1945) Saved from scrapping by HMS Belfast Museum Trust and opened in 1971 Opened to the public in October 1971, Belfast became a branch of the Imperial War Museum in 1978. A popular tourist attraction, Belfast receives over a quarter of a million visitors per year. 7 City Hall Home of Mayor of London and Greater London Assembly As the most powerful directly-elected politician in the UK, it is important the Mayor is held publicly and democratically accountable. This function is performed by the London Assembly That is the job of the 25 London Assembly Members, Eleven represent the whole capital and 14 are elected by constituencies. The building was designed by Foster Associates, who incidentally designed the Gherkin and was nicknamed the Pickled Onion within Foster Associates. A 500-metre (1,640 ft) helical walkway, reminiscent of that in New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, ascends the full height of the building. At the top of the ten-storey building is an exhibition and meeting space called "London's Living Room", with an open viewing deck which is occasionally open to the public. The walkway provides views of the interior of the building, and is intended to symbolise transparency; a similar device was used by Foster in his design for the rebuilt Reichstag (parliament) in Germany. The council chamber is located at the bottom of the helical stairway. The seats and desks for Assembly Members are arranged in a circular form with no clearly defined "head", podium, or chair where a speaker, council chairperson, or mayor might be seated. Raised tiers of seats for visitors or observers is located to one side. In 2006 it was announced that solar photovoltaic cells would be fitted to the building by the London Climate Change Agency. This enhanced the environmentall efficient principles according to which the building was designed. The unusual shape is due to the need to control the heat build-up that comes from exposure to sunlight in this glass building. City Hall is designed to do this in a number of ways: in conventional terms, the building has no front or back – it’s a geometrically modified sphere. This minimises the surface area of the roof exposed to direct sunlight, which reduces the amount of heat build-up inside the building the building's spherical shape means it has around 25 per cent less surface area than a cube of the same volume. This means that less heat escapes during the winter, and the building doesn't get too hot in the summer the building leans back away from the river, to present as little surface area to the sun as possible. This also means that the building does not leave the river walking in shadow. the floor plates at the back of the building are staggered inwards, providing natural shading for the floor beneath Reusing ground water Cold ground water to cool City Hall, which is very energy efficient. the actually cold water is brought up to the building through bore holes, where it flows through beams on each floor to chill the office spaces this reduces electricity consumption as we don’t need to refrigerate water or use air conditioning systems after being used to cool the building this water is then used for flushing the toilets The building runs its cooling on a quarter of the energy used by a typical modern office building. We manage this every day, for example: the building is naturally ventilated, with user operated vents beneath every window heat generated by computers and lights is recycled recycled materials have been used to fit out the building, including recycled floor tiles in the public areas 8 Tower Bridge The first bridge below London Bridge and until the construction of the QEII Bridge at Dartford, it was the only bridge below London Bridge. Sir Joseph Bazalgette, of sewerage and Thames Embankment fame, proposed a design for a single arch bridge in 1879 but it was rejected because of insufficient headroom. In 1884 it was decided to build a bascule bridge. John Wolfe-Barry engineer (Henry Marc Brunel) and Sir Horace Jones (City Architect – Billingsgate, Smithfield), were appointed following a competition in which their design was chosen. Sir Horace Jones was coincidentally one of the judges. In 1885 an Act of Parliament was passed stipulating an opening span with 200ft clear width and headroom of 135 ft. it was also required to be in the Gothic Style. Construction started in 1887 and took eight years with five major contractors Jones died in 1886 and George D. Stevenson took over the project. Stevenson replaced Jones's original brick façade with the more ornate Victorian Gothic style, which makes the bridge a distinctive landmark, and was intended to harmonise the bridge with the nearby Tower of London. The total cost of construction was £1,184,000 (equivalent to £122 million in 2015). The bridge is 800 feet (240 metres) in length with two towers each 213 feet (65 metres) high, built on piers. The central span of 200 feet (61 metres) between the towers is split into two equal bascules or leaves, which can be raised to an angle of 86 degrees to allow river traffic to pass.