Literary London

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Westminster Bridge

The bridge Wordsworth crossed at dawn in 1802, when Earth had not anything to show more fair.

In the storyFree

Photo by Berit from Redhill/Surrey, UK, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy crossed the old Westminster Bridge on top of the Dover coach on the last day of July 1802, and the city 'all bright and glittering in the smokeless air' became the best-known poem ever written about London, dated by its author to September and by Dorothy's journal to July. The bridge he stood on was replaced by Thomas Page's green-painted iron one in 1862, coloured to match the Commons benches, but the view is the one he saw: the river, the towers and the sky, at whatever hour you cross.

Where
Westminster Bridge, SW1A 2JH
Nearest station
Westminster · 3 min walk

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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