Blackfriars Bridge

Where it sits. Blackfriars Bridge carries the A201 across the Thames between Waterloo Bridge upstream and Blackfriars Railway Bridge immediately downstream. The northern end lands in the City of London near the Inns of Court and Temple Church, beside Blackfriars station; the southern end reaches Southwark a few steps from Tate Modern and the Oxo Tower. It is the point where the buried River Fleet finally reaches the Thames, discharging through an outfall under the north abutment, and traditionally the tidal turning point of the river, a distinction the bridge itself records in stone.

Two bridges, not one. The first crossing here was designed by Robert Mylne in an Italianate manner, 995 feet long, with nine semi-elliptical arches of Portland stone. Authorised in 1756 and opened in 1769 after nine years of work, it was only the third bridge in built-up London after London Bridge and Westminster Bridge, and was briefly named William Pitt Bridge before the older name of the Dominican priory nearby won out. The workmanship was poor; extensive repairs between 1833 and 1840 failed to save it, and it was dismantled in 1860. The present bridge, by Joseph Cubitt, has five wrought iron arches, is 923 feet long, and was opened by Queen Victoria on 6 November 1869. Traffic growth forced a widening between 1907 and 1910, from 70 to 105 feet, and a tramway crossed it from 1909 until 1952. It has been Grade II listed since 1972 and is maintained by Bridge House Estates, the same medieval City charity that looks after London Bridge and Tower Bridge.

Look at the piers. The stone capitals carry carved birds by John Birnie Philip, and they are not decorative filler: the downstream side, facing the estuary, shows seabirds and marine life, while the upstream side shows freshwater birds, marking the bridge as the meeting point of salt and fresh water. The bridge ends are shaped like pulpits, a pun on the Black Friars. A statue of Queen Victoria stands at the northern end, and a plaque there records the 1909 reopening by Lord Mayor Truscott. Downstream, the modern Blackfriars station straddles the river on the piers of Cubitt's old railway bridge, its roof covered in thousands of solar panels; the stumps of the demolished 1864 rail bridge still stand in the water, painted red, with the original insignia of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway preserved on the north bank.

On screen. The bridge and the rooftops around it carry the London foot chase in Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018). The production moved here in early July 2017 and filmed at Blackfriars Bridge and Tate Modern, using the roofscape between the river and St Paul's Cathedral for a pursuit that reads as one continuous run but was assembled over months. In August 2017 Tom Cruise misjudged a jump between two buildings for that sequence, hit the wall and broke his right ankle; he pulled himself up, finished the run and only stopped once off camera, and the take is in the finished film. Production shut down for seven to eight weeks. Director Christopher McQuarrie used the hiatus to rework the chase and to secure locations that had not yet been agreed, St Paul's Cathedral among them, which is why the sequence ends up with a stronger geography than it started with.

A darker footnote. On 18 June 1982 the body of Roberto Calvi, chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, then Italy's largest private bank, was found hanging from scaffolding under the northern arch with bricks and about 14,000 dollars in three currencies in his pockets. The death was first recorded as suicide; forensic reviews in 2002 concluded he had been murdered, and five suspects tried in Rome were acquitted in 2007 for lack of evidence. The case is why the bridge appears in a great deal of true-crime writing about the Vatican bank.

Getting there and timing. Blackfriars station serves both Thameslink and the District and Circle lines, with entrances on each bank, which makes this the easiest bridge in London to arrive at and leave from. The walk south leads directly onto the Bankside riverside path toward Tate Modern, the Globe and Borough Market; the walk north climbs to Ludgate Hill and St Paul's in about seven minutes. The classic photograph is taken from the eastern pavement at dusk, with the cathedral dome to the north and the red piers in the water. Any month works; late spring and early autumn give the longest useful light and the driest pavements.