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Papers relating to a Design for the New London Bridge , onthe Principle of Cementitious Architecture:—exhibited to theCommittee of the House of Commons , on the 11 th of April1823*
I. To the Comptroller of the Estates of London Bridge .
Sir,
I beg leave to submit to your notice the following sugges-tions upon the subject of the removal of London Bridge , towhich the mind of the public is at the present time so muchdirected, premising that I agree with the Second Report of theCommittee of the House of Commons , that a work of suchpublic importance as the plan of 1814- should not be under-taken without the greatest and most unequivocal certainty ofultimate success, and that it is, as the Committee conceived, ex-tremely doubtful whether a New Bridge would not ultimatelybe found less expensive than the proposed alteration.
The River Thames is considered as a river having an arti-ficial obstacle, producing a rapid and extremely irregular fallat London Bridge , differing only from rapids as generally un-derstood, on account of its double action, viz. upwards anddownwards according to the state of the tide whether ebbingor flowing; the ebbing tide producing the more violent rapid,from two causes, the one an increase of the water from theupper country, the other the greater ease of discharge from thewidening of the river and its greater depth towards its mouth.
The City of London has most judiciously improved therapids of the river upwards, as far as their conservancy of thenavigation extends, by constructing locks and weirs.
It seems somewhat singular that the improvement of therapid at London Bridge should not have been publicly dis-cussed otherwise than by investigating the question whetherthe removal of the dam of the Bridge itself were a safe andprudent measure.
Having been much impressed with the necessity of anample consideration of the measure in all its bearings, I vi-sited Holland in July last, conceiving that before I communica-
* Mr. Telford’s Report, in 1823, on the effects on the Thames of re-building London Bridge , and another paper on the same subject, will befound in Phil. Mag. vol. lxii. p. 21,28.
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