"London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down,
London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady."

Chances are as a young child, you sang these words as you passed under a pretend bridge and swayed back and forth in the arms of make believe jailers who took the key and locked you up. Children of all ages have sung the memorable tune and played the familiar game for hundreds of years. And although the original London Bridge may have fallen down, that's not all there is to the story.

The reality of London Bridge's past and present is stranger than fiction. There have been at least five London Bridges rebuilt over the Thames River in England in the last 2,000 years. Each bridge has its own tale of adventure.

Little is known of the first and second bridges. It is believed that the Romans crafted the first London Bridge in 43 A.D. by laying planks across a row of anchored boats. Tradition reports a scandalous witch-hunt in 984 and a woman was accused of practicing witchcraft after she pierced a man-like doll with pins. As punishment, she was forced onto the bridge to be drowned in the icy depths of the Thames. Centuries later, Danish ships navigated those same chilly waters and their occupants seized and terrified London.

But the event thought to inspire the popular children's song occurred in 1014 when English King Ethelred, along with the help of Olaf of Norway and his Viking companions, literally collapsed the bridge by tethering their boats to its supporting beams with ropes and cables. The bridge's wooden supports dislodged as the Norsemen sailed full speed ahead, breaking apart the bridge beneath the feet of London’s Danish invaders. A Norse poet, Ottar Svarte, penned words to commemorate this extraordinary event:
'London Bridge is Broken down
Gold is won and bright renown'
Centuries later this poem resurfaced with slightly different words and a catchy tune.

Unfortunately, Danish intruders and destructive Vikings proved to be one of London Bridge's lesser problems. London's oldest bridge was to suffer more than its fair share of heartache and disaster in the years to come. The London Bridge was no stranger to the perils of fire. Between the years of 1077 and 1136, the wooden bridge endured fire damage on at least ten occasions. The faithful Londoners continued to patch up the bridge time and again until they began work on a modernized stone bridge in 1176.

Panorama of London by Claes Van Visscher, 1616. Source: wikipedia.org

The stone bridge took thirty-three years to build its nineteen Gothic-style arches and was sturdy enough to last 654 years. Spinning water wheels ground grain beneath the massive arches, and then in 1580 pumped water into the city. On the Northern end stood a wooden drawbridge meant to keep attackers out and allow large shipping in. On the Southern end, a stone gatehouse displayed iron spikes upon which the boiled and tarred heads of traitors were displayed. Between the drawbridge and the gruesome display of severed heads, merchants built tall buildings. The upper levels were used as housing, the lower levels served as shops. By the middle of the fourteenth century, there were nearly two-hundred houses crammed along both sides of the bridge’s span which was as long as three football fields or three hundred yards.

In 1212, two fires began on both ends of the bridge and burned out of control, trapping terrified patrons and merchants. Many panicked householders received were consumed by flames and burned to death as they rushed to salvage their property.

Yet another fatal fire broke out in 1623 when a maidservant left a pail of ashes under a flight of wooden stairs. Forty-three houses were destroyed and many shops were damaged. Afraid of what might happen next and unable to continue rebuilding everything from scratch, merchants began to move their businesses off of the dilapidated and charred bridge.

London Bridge, stereopticon card photo from early 1890s. Source: wikipedia.org

The mass exodus resulted in all the houses and shops being pulled down between 1757-1762 and the decaying bridge was partially widened and rebuilt. It continued to stand like this until 1831 when yet another London Bridge was completed. It had five arches and was the length of four football fields (928 feet) and forty-nine feet wide. This bridge survived two world wars and stood until 1962 when history began to repeat itself. Another offender threatened to take down the London Bridge but this time the culprit was neither fire nor aggressor. Instead the fiendish foes were mud and motor-cars. The London Bridge was slowly sinking in the mud due to increased weight from traffic.

Although a modern bridge had to be rebuilt, the one-hundred and thirty year-old bridge was spared from destruction. In 1968, a wealthy businessman named Robert McCulloch purchased the bridge for over two-million dollars. At the time, it was recorded as the most expensive antique ever sold. Then the proud new owner packed up the bridge and shipped it from lively London to its new home in the Arizona desert.

London Bridge moves to Lake Havasu, March, 1971. Source: wikipedia.org

That's right! The Bridge moved 10,000 miles from the city of rain and fog to a land of sunshine and cactus. It became the worlds' heaviest and largest jigsaw puzzle. Every one of the 10,276 granite blocks were carefully numbered to specify their exact position. It took three years and an additional seven million dollars to transport the bridge from London to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, and reassemble it. Robert McCulloch believed his time, money and patience would pay off and turn the small, quiet town of Lake Havasu City into a booming tourist resort. He was right!

Lake Havasu City gave a new life to the London Bridge, yet ironically, the city received a new life of its own upon the bridge's completion in 1971. Once a vast expanse of land, a man-made lake and a few shops, the opening day of the London Bridge drew in an excess of 50,000 spectators.

London Bridge over Lake Havasu with mock English village in background. Photo by Christy Evers

Today more than two-million tourists visit Lake Havasu City for its unique blend of history and present-day recreation. Lampposts, which were fashioned out of cannons captured in the Battle of Waterloo, line the streets of the mock English village. Visible scars mark the granite bridge reminiscent of a WWII Nazi attack. In contrast to the rich history, jet-ski’s and boats dot the crystal blue water surrounded by a coastline of campgrounds, fishermen and beaches.

The history of the London Bridge is like an action-packed movie or a good fiction book. It should be interesting to see what adventures are in store for this unique antique in centuries to come.