After less than eighteen months of construction works costing only £84,000, on 01/06/1860 the bridge that opened here was the first railway bridge across the Thames in London. It resulted from an opportunistic business move by the London Brighton and South Coast Railway Company. They had not been able to extend their lines across the river because of the expense of the land on the north bank. Then the water company, which had been supplying households in and about Chelsea, Pimlico and Belgravia from a reservoir fed from the river through the Grosvenor canal, were debarred from doing so by legislation and had to dispose of their land. The railway company saw the opportunity before the residential developers. Moreover, since they were not the only company that wanted to run services across the river and the area of the land was substantially greater than they needed, they leased part to other operators and included a Great Western broad-gauge track. A map of about 1862 shows the line from Victoria station to the bridge as the 'London & Brighton (West End Branch)'. Because the bridge's approaches were across Grosvenor Road on the north bank and the railway company's sidings on the south bank the total span of these works was 930 ft.
The other major operator was the London Chatham and Dover Railway Company. The combined needs for their surging businesses required an additional bridge almost immediately. This was built adjacent to the first on the downstream side at a cost of £245,000 in some 20 months in 1865-6. It was 100 ft wide where the first was 31 ft. 1907 saw the addition of a third adjacent structure to carry two more lines. However, what is there now is a set of ten bridges, each carrying one line of track, which replaced all the preceding works between 1963 and 1967. Every construction has maintained the same appearance of the arches and piers as those of 1860.

O/S Co-ords:2875.7782
Source(s):

Thames Crossings. Bridges, Tunnels and Ferries