The date was May 24, 1862, when the brilliant vision of a new bridge over the Thames at Westminster was finally to be realised. The magnificent piece of Victorian engineering and architectural design was the talk of London.
But it had a secret – one that, it would seem, would only come out months later when the low winter sun revealed what remains, over 160 years later, London’s best joke. The original Westminster Bridge, opened in November 1750, had a nickname – the Bridge of Fools – referring to the people who put their money in the public lottery launched to fund its construction.
The new Westminster Bridge, built slightly upstream of the old one which was showing signs of decay, also has a nickname in modern times – the c***s bridge. At the right time of day, at the right time of year, pedestrians are greeted by a long line of penises, each complete with two testicles, thanks to a feature of the bridge’s design.
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Thomas Page was the man behind the design of the bridge, but he consulted Sir Charles Barry to incorporate some Gothic designs. One of these is the continuous line of trefoil shapes – a term for a pattern of three interlocking circles – along each side. Did he mean that the central circle would be elongated into a perfect phallus when the sun shone through it, while the other two kept their shape as supporting “orbs”? We would like to believe so but in reality there is no evidence to suggest so.
Why choose trefoils?
Trefoil comes from the Latin word for leaf and relates to plants that have three leaves that fan out. It is sometimes seen as a symbol of fertility, giving some weight to the idea that Barry was laughing. But the tripod is also seen in lots of church architecture as it is used to represent the Holy Trinity. Barry was one of the leading architects of the Gothic Revival at the time, and the trefoil shape came up a lot in original Gothic building designs.
As Britain was a devout Christian country at the time, it seems much more likely that this magnificent new bridge would contain Christian symbolism than have a reference to fertility. When the bridge opened, Barry’s other major project, the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster, was in the middle of construction, and we are not aware of any nefarious intentions in the seat of government power.
When is the best time to see the shadows?
Summer time is not a good time to go hunting in Westminster. The sun naturally moves from east to west throughout the day and Westminster Bridge’s position means that to get the right angle to shine through the trefoils and cast the penis-shaped light through the shadows created by the sides of the bridge, it must be mid-day.
But in summer, the sun is too high between 12:00 and 13:00, which is the point where the sun points directly towards the center of the bridge. In the summer, the light shines just low enough to cast shadows from the upper half of the lampposts onto the sidewalk, so the secret remains hidden.
In winter, and parts of autumn and spring, the sun is low enough to shine through the trefoils and the result is the wonderful display of meat and two vegetables that makes Londoners giggle as they pass by. Imagine the fall of 1862 when that secret was revealed to the public for the first time. People must have howled.
As for Sir Charles, if he intended it, he never got to see his handiwork as he died in May 1860, two years before it opened. Hats off to you, Sir Charles, whether you meant it or not.
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