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Fire struck the Bridge in 1633. This fire
was started when a maid servant left a pail of ashes under wooden
stairs. Forty-three houses were destroyed and many of the shops
were also burned and damaged. Most of the bridge escaped the
Great Fire of 1666 as the fire years before had left a gap so
wide that the flames were unable to reach the rest of the bridge.
This fire lasted for 4 days but only the new houses on the end
of the bridge were burnt. |
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London was then to be rebuilt and the new
style of architecture was also adopted on the bridge. The ancient
timber houses were replaced by new blocks so 'modern' that they
even had roof gardens.
In 1722 an attempt was made to control congestion by ordering
all traffic to keep to the left, an order that became the established
rule of the road. |
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By 1763, all the houses were pulled down. The bridge was widened
and partly rebuilt with a wide centre arch. This however proved
to be a problem in itself as the torrents of water were now
concentrated at one point and this started to tear away at the
existing piers and to make the bridge unstable. |
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