Rotherhithe Tunnel Centenary
For as long as there has been a London, people have faced the watery problem of getting from one side of the River Thames to the other. For centuries, that meant bridges and ferries, but the increase in big ships, and the advances of technology, mean that for the last 165 years Londoners have been increasingly using another way of traversing the Theames … by tunnelling beneath.
8 June 2008 saw the hundredth anniversary of the opening of the Rotherhithe Tunnel, between what used to be called Ratcliff, in Tower Hamlets, to Rotherhithe on the south bank. East Enders may wonder why it was called the Rotherhithe rather than the Ratcliff or Limehouse Tunnel but never mind, it was largely for their use that the hole was dug in the first place - though not without huge disruption and heartache as around 3000 people were displaced by the digging.
The technology for the new tunnel had first been used, with no little mishap, by the Brunels 65 years before, driving the first underwater tunnel between Wapping and Rotherhithe. The Thames Tunnel had been bedevilled by flooding, collapses, deaths of workers and the constant suspension of works as the money ran out. The Brunel’s had proved wrong the sceptics who said it was impossible to build an underwater tunnel. It had subsequently been dubbed an ‘eighth wonder of the world’ and people had paid to come along and watch the revolutionary construction using the Brunels’ ‘Shield’. But pioneering works are often not financial successes, and the tunnel cost some £630,000 to finish. It was certainly needed, some 2m people a year were soon paying a penny a time to use the tunnel. Rudimentary maths shows a turnover of £8333 … at that rate it would take the new bore 75 years to cover its costs.
You could argue that major infrastructure like the tunnel shouldn’t have to cover its costs of course, and the tunnel was doing what it was designed for - getting East Enders to work at Surrey docks on the south bank, and Kentishmen (or is it Men of Kent) to the docks in the East End. But the Tunnel was a private company, with investors expecting a dividend on their investment, and there was relief when the East London Railway Company offered to take the expensive tunnel off their hands. The high tunnel, designed for horses to fit through was also sufficiently large for trains, and the first ran through the tunnel in 1869.
But now workers on both sides of the river had a problem. No foot or carriage traffic between the East End and the Surrey Docks. Workers had to head into town to cross the bridges there (and until Tower Bridge was built in 1894, London Bridge was the most easterly crossing), or rely on the ferries and boats. The world’s largest port was trying to organise its workforce on a motely collection of rivercraft. The removal of the tunnel was not just inconvenient, it was bad for business.
So from the late 1800s a spate of new river crossings was made out of the East End. The Blackwall Tunnel was driven in 1897, the Greenwich to Isle of Dogs foot tunnel in 1902, and then the new Rotherhithe Tunnel in 1908. Meanwhile, the underground railways were using variations of the ’shield’ technique pioneered by the Brunels to push tunnels under the Thames.
And in 1900 the Thames Tunnel (Rotherhithe and Ratcliff) Act gave the go-ahead for a new horse, carriage and foot tunnel. Work took four years, from 1904 to 1908, coast around £1m, and was accomplished using a shield and ‘cut and cover’ (the method used on the non-tube Underground lines such as the District).
The tunnel was opened in 1908 by the Prince of Wales (later George V) and was busy from the start, with 2600 vehicles (and many foot passengers) passing through each day. Today, it’s 34,000 a day, trundling through at 20mph. Very few We’ve all experienced the uncomfortable narrowness of the tunnel, with each lane being just 8ft wide, and cycling or walking along the 4ft wide pavements is scarcely more comfortable - and you’ll be gasping for air at the other end.
Next time you drive into the Rotherhithe entrance, notice the metal arch above your head - these are the cutting ‘teeth’ of the original tunnel shield, and show exactly how wide is the gap through which the cars have to squeeze. The sharp turns at the points where the tunnel goes under the river make things even more hairy at times. These bends had two functions - to avoid the deep docks on either side of the river and to stop the horses seeing distant daylight and bolting for the exit. A hundred years on, the overused Rotherhithe tunnel has served the East End well, though it’s now creaking from overuse.
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Beneath The Thames - the tunnels in chronological order:
1843:Thames Tunnel, originally foot, now part of the East London tube line
1870: Tower Subway, world’s first underground tube railway, then foot tunnel, now carries pipes and fibre-optic cables)
1890: City & South London Railway tunnels ; world’s first electric tube railway, disused in 1900
1897: Blackwall Tunnels, road, second tunnel 1967
1898: Waterloo & City Line rail tunnels
1900: Northern Line (City branch) rail tunnels
1902: Greenwich foot tunnel
1906: Bakerloo Line tunnels
1908: Rotherhithe Tunnel
1912: Woolwich foot tunnel
1926: Northern Line (Charing Cross branch)
1963: Dartford Tunnel (twin road tunnels, 1963 and 1980)
1971: Victoria Line tunnels
1999: Jubilee Line tunnels: North Greenwich-Canning Town, Canary Wharf-North Greenwich, Canada Water-Canary Wharf and Westminster-Waterloo
2004: Dartford Cable Tunnel
2007: Ebbsfleet-Purfleet tunnel for Channel Tunnel rail link
Planned: DLR extension to Woolwich, Crossrail tunnel from north Kent to Isle of Dogs, TfL’s Silvertown-North Greenwich rail link