I can’t think of a time where getting to and from work has been forced to the forefront of all of our minds so clearly. The commute has always been the standard polite conversation starter in thousands of drink receptions over the years: “where abouts are you?”; “do you get the overland from there?”; “oh, a bike, must really help with fitness”. But, honestly speaking, how many of us give our daily trek into the office much thought apart from when we are moving to a new place and trying to balance the great eternal London question of how long can I stomach being on the tube every day in order to live in a house that isn’t a shoe box.

Of course, that has all changed in the last few months and we are now concerned about sitting on a packed tube to get to and from work. Inevitably, given my now pretty obvious passion for history, this has led me to think about some of the transport that the City has seen over the years.  There are remnants of some of those old (and slightly odd) transport all over if you know where and how to look.

It’s easy to forget now that the main method of getting around the City for pretty much all of the early modern period was by boat. The Thames was peppered with vessels of all shapes and sizes, from royal barges to tiny one-manned rowing boats. It was quicker than travelling by the crammed roads and more relaxing to boot. When you visit the Tower of London, one of the main attractions is Traitor’s Gate; the river side gate that those condemned to imprisonment (or worse) at the fortress would have to pass through. Anne Boleyn went through its imposing mouth as did many others who would lose their heads, but the key point is that they arrived at the Tower by river (as did normal visitors who were less likely to be decapitated). It’s no accident that almost all of the royal palaces from Westminster to Hampton Court are located on the river.

It’s also worth remembering that, during the Tudor age, it was a river pretty much unobstructed by the many bridges we see today. London Bridge was the only crossing over the river (below Kingston-upon Thames) until Putney Bridge opened in 1729. Westminster Bridge followed in 1750, along with a host of others, but it is somewhat remarkable to consider that everyone wanting to enter the City from the South had to cross over London Bridge. 

However, this may not have always been the case. During the 1850s, with the growth of the railways there came the problem of how to incorporate this new transport method through the city itself. One ingenious suggestion (that got as far parliament) was to build the Thames Viaduct Railway. This was to be a railway in the middle of the Thames with stops built on bridges from Westminster all the way through the city. Ultimately, the decision was made to build on land (creating the District Line) but it’s an intriguing notion that we may possibly have had a railway in the middle of the river (Blackfriars station has nothing on this). 

London Bridge itself was pretty remarkable having some 200 buildings on it during the Tudor period (not least a pre-fabricated fourstory building called Nonsuch House that was made in the Netherlands and then erected on the Bridge itself as well as two waterwheels that powered grain mills). The actual roadway was six feet wide in either direction and it could take over an hour to get from one side to another, a good example of the terrible London traffic we think a new problem.

It was also the depositary of all those heads that had been separated from their bodies at or outside the Tower of London. The traitors were dipped in tar to preserve them and stuck on spikes on the South side. William Wallace was the first to start the tradition, but the rollcall reads as a list of all those that are great and good (or sometimes notorious) in the early modern period: Thomas More, Bishop John Fisher and Thomas Cromwell.

By the 1800s, the bridge was no longer fit for purpose and it was replaced in 1831 with a “modern” one that was subsequently found to be slowly sinking. This would famously end up in Arizona when the oil tycoon Robert McCulloch bought it in 1967 and shipped it across the Atlantic and through the Panama Canal to install it in Lake Havasu City (where it still stands today). The apocryphal tale that McCulloch thought he was buying the more impressive Tower Bridge, is exactly that; entirely untrue. In reality, McCulloch owned much of the land around the bridge’s new site and used the bridge as a spur to sell the plots, recouping all of costs of buying the bridge (USD2.46 million) and shipping it. It is actually the second most visited attraction in Arizona (behind the Grand Canyon). Somewhat bizarrely, the bridge still has its ornamented lampposts, which were made from French cannon captured at Waterloo. So, there are the remnants of Napoleonic artillery sat in a desert in America.

One other interesting point about the old London Bridge is that it wasn’t where the “modern” or the current bridge is. Just next to the modern bridge is an unassuming and slightly random sculpture that consists of a giant spike. Its proper title is the Southwark Gateway Needle, it appears to have led to a lot of conjecture about what it is or represents (perhaps the spikes for traitors' heads), but what it actually does is point towards the old route of London Bridge (which would have been slightly to the right of the modern version when walking into the City). 

The original bridge entered the City next to the church of St Magnus-the-Martyr. This is well worth a look now, sandwiched almost impossibly next to offices near Monument and hidden next to the dual carriage way that follows the river. Built by Wren, it still contains stones from the original London Bridge in its small church yard. 

Of course, by the time the twentieth century arrived, more important than the route South to North was the one West to East as people began to commute and wanted a way to arrive in the City. The underground was the saviour of that idea. 

The oldest line (which would become the Hammersmith and City) opened between Paddington and Farringdon in 1863. It was the first underground railway service and it still used steam engines and wooden carriages. In order to make it actually feasible to get in a tunnel with a steam engine, the locomotives were fitted with condensers that effectively stored the steam while in the tunnels. Gaps had to be provided in the tunnels so as to give open air to disperse the steam.

One of these gaps can be seen coming into Farringdon station. Another can be seen at 23 and 24 Leinster Gardens in Bayswater where a very smart row of houses appears to have two masquerading buildings where the houses have grey windows and the doors have no handles. The houses are fake consisting of a single wall with a gap behind them to allow the exit of the steam – prime real estate sacrificed to the need to get people into the City. 

Speaking of abandoned locations, one other prominent transport related one is Aldwych/Strand Station. Sitting next to Somerset House it looks rather out of place with a very impressive red brick façade. It also has to count as potentially the most pointless tube journey of all time. It allowed travellers to change at Holborn and then travel underground to the base of the Aldwych (it was only ever open in peak hours). Its main contribution to history being as the location of the Elgin Marbles during the Second World War and the set for hundreds of films and television programmes over the years (Atonement, Sherlock, The Darkest Hour and the location for the video for Firestarter, amongst many others).  

So, this has proved a quick commute through some of the more weird and wonderful aspects of travel in London. As with every part of the City, it’s a fascinating, expanding picture of bridges being built, tunnels dug and history forgotten. With Crossrail opening (at some point presumably) the City moves into a new period of connection, but the question remains, after the current crisis, who is going to be using it in the next few years?