Nostalgia: London Bridge over the Thames in 1854

This picture of London was published on Saturday the 8th. April 1854 in The Illustrated London News.

A steam locomotive pulls a passenger train across London Bridge: “This bridge is a beautiful wooden structure with a span of 160 feet.”

In the center of the skyline is probably the Castellated Tower of London with a few church towers that share the cityscape.

London, we are told, “is a very prosperous city with a population of about 10,000 … the streets are wide and straight, the city is very substantial and handsome.”

Among the streets are Oxford Street, Cheapside and Piccadilly; as well as Covent Garden Market.

Known as “the Forest City”, London is the tenth largest city in the country.

Nicholas D’Ascanio writes in Readers Digest Canada: “We’re bigger than London, Kentucky.”

The London I’m writing about is in Middlesex, Ontario, Canada! One of 29 cities named London in the world.

London and the Thames were named as the future capital of Upper Canada by John Graves Simcoe in 1793.

The village, which was first settled between 1801 and 1804, was founded in 1826 and incorporated one year after our antique print was published in 1855.

Today, London is the largest parish in southwestern Ontario and Canada’s eleventh largest city.

View the antique print from Frontispiece Ltd here.