Here came the Hey Tor granite, after dropping twelve hundred feet from the Moor above. Leaving the great wains, it was shipped upon the Stover Canal and despatched down the estuary of Teign to Teignmouth, whence larger vessels bore it away to London for its final purpose.
It came to supersede that bridge of houses familiar in the old pictures, the bridge that was a street; the bridge that in its turn had taken the place of older bridges built with wood: those mediæval structures that perished each in turn by flood or fire.
It was in 1756 that the Corporation of London obtained an order to rebuild London Bridge; but things must have moved slowly, for not until fifty years later was the announcement made of a new bridge to pass from Bankside, Southwark, to Queen Street, Cheapside. The public was invited to invest in the enterprise, and doubtless proved willing enough to do so. The ancient structure, long a danger to the navigation of the river, vanished, and in 1825, with great pomp and ceremony, the foundation-stone of the "New London Bridge" sank to its place. A recent writer in _The Academy_ has given a graphic picture of the event, and described the immense significance attached to the occasion. From the earliest dawn of that June morning, London flocked to waterside and thronged each point of vantage. Before noon the roofs of Fishmongers' Hall, of St. Saviour's Church, and every building that offered a glimpse of the ceremony were crowded; the river was alive with craft of all descriptions; the cofferdam for the erection of the first pier served the purpose of a private enclosure, where notable folk sat in four tiers of galleries under flags and awnings.
At four o'clock, by which time the great company must have been weary of waiting, two six-pounder guns at the Old Swan Stairs announced the approach of the Civic and State authorities. The City Marshal, the Bargemasters, the Watermen, the members of the Royal Society, the Goldsmiths, the Under-Sheriffs, the Lord Mayor and the Duke of York appeared.
"His Lordship, who was in full robes," so says an eye-witness of the event, "offered the chair to his Royal Highness, which was positively declined on his part. The Mayor, therefore, seated himself; the Lady Mayoress, with her daughters in elegant dresses, sat near his Lordship, accompanied by two fine-looking, intelligent boys, her sons; near them were the two lovely daughters of Lord Suffolk, and many other fashionable ladies."