In the middle of Burgess Park is an old and seemingly pointless bridge. It's red, it crosses nothing worse than a footpath and you can walk/scoot/cycle past at ground level alongside its entire length. It need not be here and yet it is, and what's more it's just been repaired, restored and reopened to the public.
It's here because 200 years ago a canal was built to connect the Surrey Docks to their Southwark hinterland. It was called the Grand Surrey Canal and bifurcated shortly after passing beneath the Old Kent Road, with one branch heading south to Peckham and the other heading west to a wharf on the Camberwell Road. We're on the latter.
Initially this area was mostly agricultural so no bridge was needed, but as residential streets and factories started to spread local people became increasingly annoyed that there was nowhere to cross the canal for over half a mile. It took until the start of the 20th century for Camberwell council to finally build a footbridge to connect Neate Street with St George's Way, demolishing a couple of properties on either side to make way for cobbled access.
The Borough Engineer designed a steel lattice girder bridge 125 metres in length, or 410 feet as he'd have measured it. Its central span was made from oak planks and provided seven feet of headroom above the water. The opening ceremony was held on the afternoon of 29th January 1906 with the Mayor of Camberwell doing the honours. You can read a much fuller account of its origins on the excellent Friends of Burgess Park website.
As local trade declined the canal was no longer needed, so in 1970 it was closed and subsequently filled in, here with a footpath and elsewhere more irreversibly. More dramatically the surrounding homes and factories were demolished and combined with bomb-damaged areas to create a large recreational space named Burgess Park. Thirty streets disappeared but the footbridge lingered on.
Inevitably the bridge became less safe, there being no need to repair it, and in the early 1990s the steps and upper deck were closed to the public. It's stood there teasingly ever since, and deteriorated further, having gained the nickname The Bridge To Nowhere. Many's the parkgoer who's walked wistfully underneath when it always looked like it would be much more fun to walk across the top. And now you can.
Repairs started in April courtesy of Southwark Council, who spent what's simultaneously a) a lot of money and b) less than the price of a studio flat at Elephant Park. They replaced all the planks on the upper deck, many of the beams underneath and all the eroded bricks. They added new coping stones, repaired cracks, sandblasted all the metal parts and repainted the steelwork in the original red. It looks splendid.
The barriers came down last month, so I'm not particularly on the ball here, but it was a delight to step up onto the bridge for the very first time and walk pointlessly across it. I wasn't alone, some joggers had just taken advantage in an attempt to add a few contours to their morning run. But most people carried on underneath as normal - promenading, pram-pushing, skateboarding, e-biking, whatever - because why go out of your way to make your journey more difficult?
It was a crisp morning with a low sun so the latticework cast attractive shadows across the oak planks. The bridge also coincidentally lines up with the Shard, which can be seen poking out above the massive curtain wall of flats on the Aylesbury Estate (at least until the latter is demolished). But perhaps best of all it was great simply to get a loftier view across the park, which is generally iron flat, and to imagine the main path once again as a canal plying across pre-industrial Surrey.
It's unusual for a council to spend money on a project that does nothing useful and is defiantly not step-free. But hurrah, The Bridge To Nowhere is once again a Bridge To Somewhere, even if that's back down again to ground level pretty much where you started.
