The Thames Bridge That Went To Africa

Everyone’s heard the story of London Bridge being shipped off to Arizona, but London has another great disappearing‑bridge tale — one that began at Millbank and ended up in Africa. It sounds like urban myth, but it’s entirely true

Back in 1940, with the Blitz underway and the Luftwaffe targeting key Thames crossings, the government quietly built a backup bridge just downstream of Vauxhall Bridge. Officially it was Emergency Bridge No. 2

The bridge itself was no flimsy stopgap. It was a chunky, military‑grade structure: Douglas fir piles driven into the riverbed, steel girders laid across them, and a deck of heavy hardwood planks strong enough to carry tanks rolling south if invasion ever came. It stretched from the steps of Tate Britain across to Tinworth Street in Vauxhall, a strange, utilitarian neighbour to the gallery’s grand façade.

But here’s the twist: it never fulfilled its purpose. Despite the ferocity of the Blitz, both Lambeth and Vauxhall bridges survived the war intact. Emergency Bridge No. 2 stood ready, but no tanks ever clattered across it, no convoys thundered over its deck. It simply loomed there, a hulking insurance policy no one ever had to cash in. Locals quickly gave it more colourful names. Some called it “The Bridge They Never Used,” others “The Bridge They Couldn’t Get Rid Of.”

And once the war ended, London discovered that temporary bridges are much easier to build than to remove. Labour shortages meant the structure lingered until 1948, some three years after victory, irritating locals who’d grown tired of the eyesore. It had cost £135,000 to build (roughly £6.5 million today), about half the price of a permanent bridge, and dismantling it cost another £78,000 — the equivalent of £2.5 million now. Even scrapping it wasn’t cheap.

When demolition finally began, Pathé news cameras turned up to film the whole thing, capturing the oddly triumphant moment London rid itself of its forgotten wartime crossing. And then came the final surprise: the steel girders weren’t scrapped at all. They were shipped to Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, where they were reused to span a tributary of the Zambezi River.

So while London Bridge may have found fame in the Arizona desert, Millbank’s emergency bridge ended up with a quieter afterlife in southern Africa. Not bad for a structure London never actually needed.