The bridges over the Thames inside London

Map of 19 locations in London, United Kingdom

Two systems hold up the crossings between Hampton Court and Tower Bridge. One is an 11th-century endowment that spends around £30 million a year on five City bridges at no cost to the taxpayer; the other is a patchwork of borough responsibilities created when the Greater London Council was dissolved in 1985, under which Hammersmith has been shut to cars for seven years, Albert closed in February 2026, and Waterloo has cracks measured at 2mm. Read in order downstream, the spans here come with their opening dates, their inspection records, and in several cases the funding document that says what happens if nobody pays.

Places in this collection

  • Twickenham Bridge — An arch road bridge opened on 3 July 1933, on the same day as Chiswick Bridge, both built to carry the new Great Chertsey and Chertsey arte…
  • Hampton Court Bridge — A concrete and steel arch road bridge opened in 1933, running from Hampton Court to East Molesey and carrying the A309. The Thames Path cro…
  • Kingston Bridge — A stone arch road bridge opened on 17 July 1828 and a toll bridge until March 1870, widened twice since completion. A crossing here was the…
  • Richmond Bridge — Opened in 1777 and still carrying the A305 across the Thames between Richmond and East Twickenham, with two lanes, footways on both sides a…
  • Kew Bridge — A stone arch road bridge opened in 1903 at a crossing point old enough to have shaped the next bridge downstream: the Hammersmith Bridge Co…
  • Chiswick Bridge — A reinforced concrete arch bridge opened on 3 July 1933, the same day as Twickenham Bridge upstream, and carried by the A316 as the Great C…
  • Battersea Bridge — An iron arch bridge opened on 21 July 1890, replacing the modest wooden bridge of 1771 that first linked industrial Chelsea with the farmin…
  • Chelsea Bridge — A self-anchored suspension bridge opened on 6 May 1937, replacing the Victoria Bridge begun in 1851 and completed in 1858, which was rename…
  • Wandsworth Bridge — A steel cantilever road bridge opened on 25 September 1940 and maintained by Wandsworth Council, which runs a dedicated works page and FAQ…
  • Waterloo Bridge — The present bridge opened in 1945 and now carries more than 25,000 vehicles a day between the South Bank and the Strand. A council funding…
  • Lambeth Bridge — The current road bridge opened on 12 May 1932 and is one of the three central crossings named in Ara's May 2026 report on bridges added to…
  • Westminster Bridge — The present arch bridge opened on 24 May 1862, replacing the span of 1750 from which Wordsworth did not in fact compose his sonnet: he wrot…
  • Putney Bridge — A stone arch bridge replacing the earlier Fulham Bridge of 1729, and the downstream limit of the Thames towpath. With Hammersmith Bridge sh…
  • Blackfriars Bridge — A steel arch road bridge opened in 1869, which also carried trams from 1909 until July 1952. It is the westernmost of the five crossings ow…
  • Millennium Bridge — A suspension footbridge between Bankside and St Paul's, opened on 10 June 2000 and one of several pedestrian crossings added to the Thames…
  • Southwark Bridge — A steel arch road bridge opened in 1921 and carried by the A300. It is the least used road crossing of the Thames in London: Wikipedia's ac…
  • London Bridge — The site of one of the first two Roman crossings of the Thames, the other being at Staines, and for centuries the only bridge below Kingsto…
  • Tower Bridge — A combined bascule and suspension bridge built between 1886 and 1894, and one of five Thames crossings owned and managed by City Bridge Fou…
  • Albert Bridge — Opened in 1873, thirteen years before the car was invented, and closed to motor vehicles on 7 February 2026 after a seized axle in a cast-i…

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