Each month a photograph is selected at the Myall U3A Photography Group’s meeting to be printed in News of the Area. This month’s theme was ‘Industrial’
The photo was taken during a guided tour of the wheel house under Tower Bridge in London.
Tower Bridge was built between 1886 and 1894 and has stood for well over a century as an icon of London and the United Kingdom.
Instead of chains pulling up the bascules (‘Bascule’ is a French word, which can be translated as seesaw) from the towers, the hard work of opening and closing Tower Bridge is left to eight large cogs. These are about 1m in diameter, four on each side, which rotate to open and close the Bridge.
The power required to rotate the cogs was initially supplied by steam and then, post-1976, by electricity.
The photo, submitted by Mandy Craig, shows one of these large cogs used to raise the section of the bridge.
For information on the Myall U3A Photography Group contact Paul at mulvaney@bigpond.com.
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