Wandsworth Bridge

Wandsworth, the next bridge, narrow and lofty, is available only for light traffic, and very much resembles a railway-viaduct.

It leads from Eel Brook Common, Fulham, to Wandsworth, and commands a long exposed stretch of river, which in high winds becomes tempestuous.

From this bridge in 1900 the sight was pretty nearly the most uncomely in London.

From the Middlesex end, and looking across the river, at this point remarkably wide, on a dull November day, at an hour when the tide is dead-low, one saw beyond the broad margin of mud, nothing but groups of hideous mills and factories, flanked right and left by chimneys vomiting clouds of smoke.

The vision was of brick, a curtain of dirty brick, cutting the background of leaden sky in hard uncompromising lines without a curve or bend.

Looking hopelessly to the right for some relief from this depressing picture, there was nothing but the commonplace height of Wandsworth crowned by an unsightly modern church of the raw-brick packing-case type with a steeple, resembling a gigantic skewer stuck through a teetotum of Brobdignagian proportions.

Next: Putney Bridge