Original subtitles

to catch up.

Everybody up here largely oblivious to what's going on underneath,

the installation of the lighting scheme now properly under way.

Each of these light fittings has got its own 14-digit unique identifier.

The parts of the codes that are relevant to us...

is LO for London Bridge, DS stands for downstream,

and it's Gray's fitting number 0019.

Number 19 of 500 plus that are being installed.

Are you behind at this stage at all?

A little bit. We're going to have to make the time up, and we will.

I don't want to drag the project out.

It will get finished when we say, give or take a day or two.

OK. So you're comfortable you've got a bit of flex in that

So, here we are up on London Bridge.

I've got flex in the men rather than the programme, yeah.

Right. Yeah, yeah. Putting in some hard yards.

Yeah, just make sure that everyone just works totally focused,

totally safe, but slightly faster.

With the time pressure on and the benchmark test just a few

clays away, work continues through the night.

So, over here, you can see the night shift team on Southwark Bridge.

People have been working during the day on certain parts of the bridge.

And a whole different team turn up,

get all their enormous amounts of kit on, and get to work.

Right, are we ready?

And what's incredible is that...

Do you see it as an opportunity or an issue that needs to be managed?

No, I very much see it as an opportunity.

So, we worked alongside the illuminated bridges project to

try and talk with the designers to encourage them to look about how you

can design a bridge without ambient light going into the river itself.

And they've been absolutely really sensitive to making sure that

light is not thrown into the river.

So, yeah, we welcome the project.

Right, go on, then.

You've been studied.

Off they go.

I believe so. Right, OK. Shall we go?

you would never think we're just a few sweeps of a net...

right here right next to the Tate Modern,

you would catch a handful of fish of different species.

Environmental concerns are one of the biggest

issues for the lighting team.

The benchmark test in just a week's time

will reveal any light spillage and how much of it hits the water.

Keeping all the agencies happy

will be key for the project to stay on schedule.

But before they can have the test,

they need to get the lights on the bridges.

HE LAUGHS

now that I'm stepping between girders,

I'm missing hanging from the rope.

Climb across? You can go across to where Anya is for me.

There you go. Nice. Watch your footing, though, Charlie, yeah?

And that's... This is the light fitting we've got,

and this is going to be attached to that thing.

Our job is to fit a £1,200 state-of-the-art light fitting

to the bottom of the steel arch.

So we're going from this ledge here...

...down to the ledge right by the water.

And the water seems to be coming up to meet me.

It does get quite close.

While dangling seemed precarious,

All this effort is just to get one light attached.

I'm starting to realise what a huge undertaking this is.

But there are perks.

Whoa!

HE LAUGHS

The view is amazing. Oh, it's amazing, isn't it?

Not many people get to experience that.

No.

Each light is unique and has to be fitted in an exact location.

You've got it? Lovely. OK.

Lee will need to identify and control each individual strip

THEY LAUGH

Tonight, I'll be helping specialist abseilers Lee

and Anya fit lights onto Southwark Bridge.

So, if you go in, is it an automatic inflate?

Yes. Yeah? Fine.

Well, at least I know how they work.

If I was nervous of abseiling before,

the view of a black abyss below has certainly raised my heart rate.

Uh...

It's looking quite a long way away.

It's definitely looking chilly, that's for sure.

I don't want to fall in that.

What is your opinion about the Illuminated River project?

Keep coming. ls your heart rate even slightly raised at this point?

Not yet. No.

Well, obviously, it's because you are here with me.

Yeah. You could set anybody's pulse rate racing.

Oh, mate, you're a charmer!

Nice and easy. Yeah?

Right, let that lay against the...

There you go, and then bring your legs off.

Oh, that's better. OK?

Right. Are you happy?

Yeah. Yeah.

It's been a long road back to the clean river we have today.

Well, I suppose, they've just gone somewhere else, I suppose.

I mean, obviously, I don't know how they've got down.

It's a fair old jump.

So, I mean...

They're brave little things, aren't they, jumping off there?

With Dean giving the all clear,

the work can finally continue on Cannon Street Bridge.

The authorities looking out for the wellbeing of wildlife

are not just concerned about the animals on the bridge

but also the wildlife under the bridge.

It's hard to believe 60 years ago

the Natural History Museum declared the River Thames biologically dead.

...under here just hiding away.

Hello, Alison. Hi.

How are you? All right. Welcome, Charlie.

I'm meeting with Alison Debney

from the Zoological Society of London

to do a health check on the capital's river...

Great. Really comfortable.

HE LAUGHS

...and also to see whether she has any environmental concerns with

the Illuminated River project.

You'll hold this end. Yes.

But at the other end, there's one here, and you need to sort of

With Southwark, Millennium,

we've been delayed by various things like geese

and electricity suppliers and bits of kit not arriving on time,

so I think we're up against it to make sure that it's right.

The contractors have very worried faces,

and I have to keep sort of saying, are we on track? Are we on track?

And they keep saying to me, well, we are

until we find any other problems.

It's the unknowns that we're worried about.

There are going to be a lot of late nights between now

and the benchmarking tests - that's for sure.

The river illumination project is in full swing.

use your foot... Yes.

and London Bridge all having electrical cabling threaded

throughout in preparation for the first lights to be fitted.

And, finally, there is

some breaking news about the delay to Cannon Street Bridge.

Well, they've hatched, and there's seven of them down here,

the mother and father. Three days ago, they hatched.

You can see them around here, and walking down the pier.

There's the parents and all seven wobbling behind each other.

Before work can continue, Dean has to check to see

if the geese have left the bridge.

I'm just trying to see if they're under any...

Because they're a relative of the salmon and trout,

Do you know why it's called smelt? No.

Do you want to have a smell, see if you can smell anything?

Oh, my God.

That smells of cucumber.

Yeah.

So, often the fishermen used to know, well, you'd catch a fish

because you can smell it on the net before you can see the fish itself.

It's an interesting history, the smelt.

It used to be, like, the primary fishery of the Thames,

and, you know, back in the 1700s,

there were 500 fishermen working on it.

But over the years, water quality has basically finished them off.

European smelt.

they're very sensitive to dirty water, and they need clean water.

So it's great that we're finding them in the Thames.

It is really encouraging that the smelt numbers are increasing.

However, I can't help wondering what the

effects of thousands of new LED lights on the bridges will

have on the wildlife and specifically fish swimming below.

What impact does artificial light have on nature in the river?

When you start putting in artificial light, it confuses them.

Fish, like us, are... We're adapted to day and night

so that artificial light is shown to have

an impact on their successful migration.

So, we're really going to catch...

...like that. Like that. Exactly.

And then in a dignified way, you've got to shuffle around.

In a dignified way. It's highly technical.

It's quite glamorous, this, isn't it?

SHE LAUGHS Excellent.

Who thought marine biology was bikinis and...

Yes, suntan lotion. Yeah, and turtles.

The best way to check how wildlife is doing in the Thames is to

basically scoop it up and see.

And in the meantime, try not to fall over

or activate the water sensitive life jacket.

and each individual node to add his artistic vision to the bridge.

AIR RUSHES INTO LIFE JACKET

THEY BOTH LAUGH

I think that's an overreaction.

Um...

Right. Let's bring it in.

See if we've caught anything, then.

Oh, yes. That's exciting. We've got eels.

Oh, eels.

So, there's four, well, three different species there.

Alison now records what we've found, and it's very encouraging.

Smelt, yeah.

I think fundamentally the most important thing is to make sure

Safety of the public and protection of wildlife are key,

so there can't be too much glare or light spillage onto the river.

Does it feel a bit like exam day? Worse. It feels worse than exam day.

I haven't felt this nervous, certainly professionally,

for a very, very long time.

This is such a D-Day for us on this project.

As I say, if we get it right now, it's a massive relief.

Well, yeah, we've got our planners from Southwark

and also the City of London, the Lighting and Highways team

from City of London as well.

We've got our planning consultants, we've got our architects,

we've got our lighting engineers, we've got our contractors.

and not the rest of the environment.

there isn't any glare, that no-one gets blinded by the lights.

The planners are armed with light metres.

Their job is to make sure the lights aren't too bright.

What happens if the planners aren't happy?

HORN BLOWS

Well, that's exactly how I feel if the planners aren't happy!

As the sun finally goes down, it's time for the demonstration to begin.

First up, Millennium Bridge.

At the moment, we're only lighting the deck from this side.

So the level is higher

because we're having to light the whole thing from this side. I see.

Yeah, it seems like quite a lot to do yet.

It's going slow, I don't know, maybe 60% slower than a normal day.

It's just the weather because you never know, in England,

you have winter, autumn and summer on the same day!

Pretty hectic.

This particular bridge, Cannon Street, we haven't got any

power here yet, so we are having to run off a generator.

And that's causing a few problems with voltage fluctuations

and some of the lights aren't working at the minute.

We've still got to install a cable tray across the soffit,

pull the cables, put the wide steels that support the lights in.

It's a lot of work.

Because the issue here has always been when it gets darker than this,

I think within the Conways umbrella, there is becoming

a little bit of competition, without a doubt.

But we are all for the greater good!

It's a big night.

As the sun sets on London,

judgment time has arrived for Sarah, Leo and the team.

The city planners are preparing for a night-time inspection.

If they think the lights are causing problems or have been installed

incorrectly, they have the power to seriously delay the project.

What they're actually looking for is light pollution.

To ensure that we light up the bridge

...It's set to be a nervous wait for the verdict tomorrow.

there's a big problem.

That's not good, is it?

The light metres are going off the scales.

Yeah, this is no good, is it?

It's the moth to the flame thing, isn't it?

The lights are far too bright and directed too much at the footpath.

We're being completely blinded by the lights under London Bridge.

They are basically directly looking at us and so you can't see a thing.

You're absolutely blinded by them.

It's not a pleasant experience, actually.

With the go-ahead in the hands of the city planners...

I can't look at them.

Finally, they move on to London Bridge and suddenly,

So how have we done?

Next time, it's full steam ahead to get the final lights on the bridges.

The whole of the other site has been done.

There's literally just these last few units to go in.

Artist Leo touches down in London and starts work.

You know, after nearly three years of thinking about it,

to sit in front of the bridge with the actual lights

and to be able to control it, is pretty incredible.

The build-up to the big switch on gathers momentum.

And London's new look is revealed for the first time.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media

What are you thinking?

do you have a real stark adjacency

between the lighting levels on the bridge?

One of the planners has noticed a big difference between

the light colour on Millennium Bridge

and the surrounding buildings.

Ian was saying there's the potential to make the colour

temperature a bit warmer and to reduce the brightness. That's it.

I suppose, yeah, it's how warm we want it to go.

Onwards! One down, three to go!

Next, Southwark Bridge.

And so far the judges are not giving anything away.

It's certainly a challenge. So it's quite bad.

What do you think? What do you think, do you like it?

It's just a test colour, is it?

As they pass under the bridge,

glare from some of the lights becomes the talking point.

Why do they seem brighter at this end than that?

I was going to say, because of the angle you're getting.

It's just the angle, is it?

To a city planner,

dazzling passing pedestrians is a huge safety concern.

The laws of physics, when you're looking straight into a fitting,

you won't be able to avoid it. Yeah.

who started probably in '37 at the beginning, it was all men.

So in the 1930s, construction started on a new bridge.

So Keith, what's your connection with Waterloo Bridge?

My grandfather and father both worked on the bridge during the war.

In the construction phase? Absolutely, yeah.

My grandfather was on the project from the beginning, 1937,

something like that.

And he finished in '45, which is when it was completed.

So he saw it right from the very beginnings,

all the way through to the grand opening? Yes, he did.

So, what do you know about the story behind the name of this bridge,

as the Ladies' Bridge?

Well, my grandad Charlie,

it eventually became unusable.

There were like 500 men.

'39, war was declared and they started to get called up.

And so they needed to carry on working, they needed to carry on

working on the bridge and so they started recruiting women.

But there were no skilled women welders or anything,

they would have just joined as labourers.

And I guess those with talent learned from the men

that were left to do the specific jobs.

NEWSREEL: At government training centres all over the country,

more and more women are releasing men for the fighting services...

And while there is plenty of newsreel footage of women

...known to the river community as the Ladies' Bridge.

I mean, is this what you thought you'd be doing when you grow up?

No, not really!

THEY LAUGH

So, Anya, how long have you been doing this?

I've been working for them for the last...ten months, since October.

And do you enjoy it?

Yeah, I love it.

Yeah? I love it.

Anya may be the only woman working with me today

but I have heard that just up the river, women played a huge

roll in building one of London's most famous bridges...

doing their bit for the war effort, for decades no-one could find

TOUR GUIDE: We're just approaching Waterloo Bridge.

They call it the Ladies' Bridge...

As these tourist boats plough up and down the Thames,

the watermen on board tell wonderful tales about the myths

and legends of the river and the bridges.

And one of my favourites concerns this bridge. Waterloo Bridge.

The story goes that this concrete arched bridge was built by women.

The first Waterloo Bridge was opened in 1817,

in the presence of the Duke of Wellington, marking

the second anniversary of his victory in the Battle of Waterloo.

Not designed for modern traffic and damaged by tides,

of each of the four bridges lit up for their approval.

And with no official record,

the story of Waterloo Bridge became nothing more than hearsay.

Until one day, after years of research,

three photos were found locked away in the archives.

They are believed to be the only evidence of women

working on the bridge.

Finally, four years ago in 2015,

Historic England officially acknowledged their work.

The Illuminated River project is heading for a milestone.

Work is flat out because in just a couple of clays,

city planners are insisting on seeing one arch

and to declare the new Waterloo Bridge to be open.

For Sarah, Leo and the team, it's a nervous time.

You have to be careful how different it might look compared

to what they've seen.

But I do think a lot of it is about brightness, isn't it? It is, yes.

I think that would be the way round the situation. Yeah.

They can only hope all the supervisors, electricians

and workmen can finish on time.

As the deadline approaches, everyone is feeling the strain.

The bridge has created a number of issues in the sense

that it's so slim and slender and minimalist,

there's very little opportunity to hide anything.

And all the records have gone. There's no records of anything.

any hard evidence of their apparent contribution to Waterloo Bridge.

One of the interesting things is the fact that

when the war started, it became a confidential project.

So they weren't allowed to take any photographs.

I've got no photographs of my grandad and my dad on the bridge.

There's nothing during the war time because they weren't allowed to.

Because this was sort of an infrastructure,

national importance project? Yeah, yeah.

They wanted it for troop movements and all sorts of things.

And so there was no reporting,

no-one was allowed on the bridge other than people working there.

So it's just under two weeks until the test and, unfortunately,

Because I said, "Have you got a record of my grandad

"and my dad working on the bridge?"

"No," they said, "we haven't got anything from anybody."

As war raged in Europe,

back home Waterloo Bridge was secretly being built.

And when victory finally came, remarkably,

the work of the women remained unacknowledged.

The final blow came in December 1945 when Deputy Prime Minister

Herbert Morrison opened the bridge and in his speech,

thanked only the men who built it.

I will proceed to cut the tape

the motion of the trains, boats and buses as they pass above and below.

It's an ambitious goal and if they pull it off, it has

a claim of being the biggest piece of public art ever created.

In this first phase of the project,

four bridges on a half-mile stretch of river will be illuminated.

Starting in the east, London Bridge.

Then Cannon Street Rail bridge.

Southwark Bridge.

And finally the Millennium pedestrian bridge.

Each of these structures will have unique installations to

transform them.

Work has begun on London

and Cannon Street bridge where subtle light movements will mirror

the bridge structures.

On the underbelly of Southwark Bridge, subtle shifting hues will

emphasise the elaborate latticework within its 100-year-old arches.

Right, one of the first things that we're going to be doing here are

going to be lifting these stainless steel covers and box off this area.

And at London's newest, the Millennium Bridge, the dead

silhouette will be turned into a blade of light, spanning the Thames.

I really am looking forward to getting this project up and running.

When you go up and down the river, the whole of London is lit up,

the only thing that isn't are the bridges.

The brain behind the project to transform Britain's most

famous river is renowned American artist Leo Villareal.

When they are lit, 200 million people will see them every year.

of the soffit? Initially we thought, no,

but just through working, we've discovered that we have a few

points where this rail is snaking,

so they might have to relocate the lights a little bit lower. OK. OK.

Cos that looks pretty straight down there so you're actually saying

that it's the coming together of the concrete and the railjust drifting.

Yeah, and we're talking 30mm here. Yeah.

It all goes to show the precision of this work. You've got a job.

Yeah. Perfect.

The slight bend in the rail is already causing a headache

and this is just one of 15 bridges.

Leo and his team have a state-of-the-art light

So they need to get it right. You are now passing under London Bridge,

opened by Her Majesty the Queen.

Poised to be fastened to London Bridge,

thousands of lights are being tested by electricians off site.

This is an example of one of the 500 Linear Graze lights that are being

fitted just to London Bridge.

48 individual light nodes within each fitting.

It's something like 25,000 LED nodes that are going to be powered

through the software.

The overall idea is to use cutting-edge LED technology,

producing sequenced patterns that subtly unfold across all

It's that classic, to me, you know, as a layperson,

So, we've got a date in the diary, so we can't just say, "Oops,

"we're not ready yet," so we're going hell for leather now.

The race to reveal the multi-million pound face-lift is on.

Four weeks, five weeks, six weeks, seven weeks, eight weeks,

nine weeks, 10 weeks, 11 weeks...

\ 12 weeks. I

It's in 12 weeks' time.

With the clock now ticking,

Sarah's left the office to give

the on-site workers a bit of a pep talk.

So, we're just here to sort of say, "Well done. Keep up the good work.

"And finish on time."

\ Yeah. We are. I

construction, building site thing where there's one person

doing the work and there's four of them looking at him.

I never really understand that.

One of the conditions of the Illuminated River project

is that the lights must be hidden from view

and not spoil the look of the bridge.

So, it's quite a difficult bridge this, isn't it?

This has been one of the most challenging among them all really.

You know, I think, it's an artwork in itself and it's

so streamlined, but there's plenty of places to hide

stuff in the other bridges without impacting them at all

director Sarah Gaventa.

control centre in his New York studio.

Here his computer engineers can create lighting designs

using 3D models of every London Bridge.

We're doing a lot of, a huge amount of work here,

but until we get to London

and on the banks of the Thames, we won't know.

You know, what is the right tempo?

What is the right pallet?

And all these things will happen, you know, by gathering

information from the site itself.

In charge of this transatlantic collaboration is project

and the amount of equipment you are trying to fit up into the underside

Where's Wolfie? My dog is here. Where's the dog? Oh, no, we all like clogs.

He can make some of the more key decisions for us.

It's her job to make sure the £45 million project goes

smoothly and to time.

Leo, the artist, and I, we have a kind of conference call every

couple of weeks just to sort of check in on progress,

see how they're getting on and I think in a way

kind of reassured Leo that things are on track as much as possible.

A switch on date for the first four bridges has now been set

and on the guest list will be London's great and good,

the world's press and a plethora of international dignitaries.

I can wake up on one side of the bed and think, "All it is is sticking

And with the Thames home to an array of endangered species...

Seal, look, there. Oh, my God!

...protecting the fragile ecosystem will be paramount.

Fish don't like light. Right. So, they use...

So this is really not good.

In the build-up to the big switch on...

You turn this on, you hadn't seen this

and there's all these people here. No pressure.

...can the artist behind the project... I'm under scrutiny here.

...pull off the feat of turning the Thames into a river of light.

Last time, I joined the team who've been spearheading this

project for the last three years.

of the world has to wait a bit, you know, how will they prioritise us?

"lights on a bridge," but actually it's far more complex than that.

I saw why these bridges are crying out for a makeover.

And from what I understand, all the lighting is faulty

and has never been fixed.

It's just a dark void. Suddenly realise that the bridges

are not at their best in any way.

I travelled to New York to meet the artist with

the vision for a new Thames. This is not a loop.

All these layers are all independent and being dynamically recombined,

so you never see the exact same layering twice.

And got my first glimpse of how it will look

In this series, I will follow the ins

For 2,000 years, it has been the lifeblood of London,

nurturing the city that has grown along its banks.

And today, it is still very much a working river with

tens of millions of journeys over and along it every year.

But it's about to undergo a change like never before.

There is a plan for an audacious engineering project

the likes of which this city has never seen,

which promises to transform London's skyline for good -

the plan to light the River Thames.

15 iconic bridges with a combined span of 2.5 miles spread

over five miles of river.

when it's finally finished.

and outs of this extraordinary project.

Charlie, tell me you've got hands on.

And see exactly what it takes to get something this

ambitious off the ground.

This has to work.

If you would close the bridge, £2 million for 20 minutes.

What? £2 million for 20 minutes.

A project on this scale will be pitted with

challenges from public scepticism...

...to unforeseen delays.

I don't care if somebody else's project in another part

It's quite some way to travel. It works. Yeah, true.

With no way of fixing the lights to the bridge from above,

the workers will need to add 800 metres of light strips using

a bespoke trolley suspended from the underside of the bridge.

Whoo! Right.

So, this is the containment that they've started fitting in to hold

the lights. The lights, the electrical cables,

all the junction boxes for the electricians to link into,

this will all be here. It all wants to be invisible to the public eye,

so you'lljust see the light, I think is the general idea. Right.

How do we move? Manually, we push. We push? Yeah.

Tourists would pay hundreds for this, let's go. Right, let's go.

Ready when you are. Hey!

when you drop off, that's the exciting bit.

London Bridge has over 17 million people walk over it each year.

It's one of London's busiest arteries,

but I can't help wondering how many of them

are aware of the transformation going on below their feet.

The trolley ride is fun, but we have some serious work to

get on with if we want this bridge to be lit up on time. Yep-ah!

That's it. Slide on. Slide on, hold that up.

Before the lights can be attached to the bridge,

a tray for the cabling needs to be added with millimetre precision,

despite the bridge being a third of a mile long and 100 feet wide.

Have there been any problems about the size of the space

It's 9am, it's rush hour on London Bridge, as you can see,

You know, it's a lot of responsibility.

This is a lot of money, a lot of effort that's going into it

and we have to get it right.

Today, work on the £45 million Illuminated River project

officially kicks off.

A team of 60 electricians, steel fabricators and abseilors

will start the process of fitting nearly 300,000 LEDs to the

bridges of central London.

When you get at those, feather that out and lower it into them, yeah?

This morning, I'm going to be joining the London Bridge team to

see exactly how they're going to pull off this huge undertaking.

and with this, it's completely different.

a very busy place to be trying to work.

We'll be rigging up some safety gear

so we can go over the edge of the bridge and drop into a cradle.

As an architectural designer, I'm used to examining all

sorts of structures up close, but this is something different.

OK, so you've abseiled before, used this sort of equipment in the past?

Yes. I mean, I wouldn't mind a brush up. Yeah. Yeah.

I'll see what I can do. I was just going to get you over.

London Bridge is just 12 metres above fast-flowing, freezing water.

You know, heights are deceiving, aren't they? Right.

Yeah, that's the moment, isn't it,

A lot of them did suffer from syphilis.

stuck as a name for the area's prostitutes.

Just 150 m from the bridge, Imogen has taken me

to a memorial to the generations of women who worked on these streets.

This is quite something, isn't it? It really is, yeah.

So we know, from the 1590s, there was a single women's

graveyard somewhere around here, and this is probably the site of it.

Cross Bones graveyard.

"In medieval times, this was an unconsecrated

"graveyard for prostitutes, or Winchester Geese," we know about.

A huge proportion of the burials here are not of the prostitutes

themselves but of all the children that they lost.

The life of a prostitute in this area is really hard.

well into the 20th century, and the term Winchester Geese

We know from their bones that they would have had venereal

diseases for many, many years before they died.

This was not a nice place to live - it was not salubrious, it stank.

It's a really horrible, hard life that they lived. Mm.

It's a sort of a living memorial to the...

Yeah, people want to remember these people who were kind of

overlooked for quite a lot of the last few hundred years, I suppose.

Even today, ribbons are tied to these gates to remember

London's forgotten - both past and present.

The Illuminated River project is moving forward at full pace.

The brackets and trays are now all set, and hundreds of metres

legalised brothels in operation, employing hundreds of women.

I'm meeting with an author who's written

extensively about this area and who can explain

the origins of Southwark's slightly seedy reputation.

I think it helps to think about the Romans as living on that

side of the river and, traditionally, I think

Roman cities very much have the nasty stuff

outside of the city walls - things that you don't want.

Everything that smells happens over here.

You've got tanneries and breweries and that kind of thing.

But it was prostitution that gave Southwark its real notoriety.

By the 12th century, it's thought there were as many as 18

of data and electrical cables are starting to be laid.

So then who's making the money? Who's controlling that trade?

That goes to the Bishop of Winchester. A bishop? Yes.

A bishop is controlling the sex trade of London? Absolutely!

You know, it was a lucrative position to hold, I think,

a bishop, in the medieval times.

The prostitutes were known as Winchester Geese. Winchester Geese?

His flock of Winchester Geese.

While the Bishop of Winchester,

who controlled the diocese of Southwark, officially condemned

prostitution, he had no reservations about profiting from it.

Southwark remained London's red light district

pollution because, actually, the lighting that we're using is

the visualisations maybe won't look as bright as we feared they'll look.

To find out how the Illuminated River Foundation answer

the residents' concerns, I'm meeting with the woman whose famous

banking family are behind the £45 million project.

I think that healthy debate and criticism is very,

very important, and also, if nobody disagreed or agreed,

then what would be the point of doing it?

This is a public project, and it needs debate

and it needs criticism, and I think that's a great thing.

It's not building and adding in the kind of physical way -

it's enhancing something that we already have.

It's not adding massively to the environmental damage or light

So we're hoping that maybe the colour schemes that we saw in

state-of-the-art, cutting-edge, and it will actually reduce it.

So, in this case, I would say that the footprint is very, very low.

I really, truly think that bringing light to the bridges,

making beautiful some of these things which are neglected,

which often are eyesores,

will add to the life of London for all Londoners, not just for a few.

The concerns over the new lighting schemes have not gone unnoticed,

and planners from the City of London have asked for

a so-called benchmark test.

They want to see one arch of each of the four bridges fully lit to

make sure they do not exceed the strict lighting levels.

kind of lighting, different colours, it's going to be like blinking.

There needs to be a man pretty much at every bend

when you're putting the cable in to try and control the cable

and keep it on the route that it's designed to go on.

Go on, then, just keep feeding it inside.

Because these cables weigh something in the region of 3-400 kg

in total length, if you don't get them in the right place, you can't

just pull a little bit extra because you've not pulled it far enough.

It's another major undertaking.

The flurry of activity across the bridges is starting to draw crowds.

They're putting the new lights over there on the bridge. OK.

You can see the white beams over there - different

first suburb, albeit a rather down-market one.

It's easy to forget that the river is not just for visitors

and tourists, but that residents live here too.

And not all of them are fans of the proposed lighting.

What do you think of the Illuminated River project?

Initially, the first thought was, well, it's another Disneyland.

I'm hopeful and ready to believe it will be the subtle experience

that it is saying it's going to be.

When we saw the visualisations,

we were quite surprised to see Cannon Street Bridge

and London Bridge lit in very bright pinks and purples and yellows.

And we did wonder what the rationale was for that.

Yeah, well, we're just coming up to pier head three now.

makes London very special.

HE LAUGHS

With each of these bridges, unique, unforeseen issues

and unpredictable problems are guaranteed.

They can't afford to lose any time.

The deadline for the big light up is fast approaching.

But there's a problem.

Watch out for you, watch out for the hole down there.

End up in the water.

At Cannon Street Bridge,

a squatter has moved in and work has ground to a halt.

Delays are mounting.

They are all here in a very short stretch of river and that...

It's pier head for we've got to go down.

Let's have a check down here first.

Yeah, it's just down here.

London at night is about to change forever. The bridges of the River

Thames are having their biggest makeover since they were built.

All along the river, work is flat-out to install cable trays,

light strips, fibre optics and junction boxes...

...in a bid to turn the band of darkness that currently runs

through the city at night...

...into a river of light.

But work on Cannon Street station has ground to a halt

Then I've got London Bridge which is a reinforced concrete arch.

One of the fascinating

and challenging things around the Illuminated River project

is that the light installations are having to be designed

completely differently for all of the different kinds of bridges.

And it's one of the interesting aspects of the Thames

of central London in that it has an example of pretty much every single

major type of bridge that there is in a very short stretch of river.

Standing here on the South Bank of the Thames, just near St Paul's,

it's amazing because if I look right around the corner,

I just get a glimpse of Tower Bridge, which is this extraordinary

compound of many different kinds of bridge structure in one.

because a squatter has decided to make the bridge her home.

I've got Cannon Street Rail Bridge which is a deck bridge.

Then I've got Southwark Bridge which is a girder arch bridge.

I've got the Millennium Bridge which is a suspension bridge.

I've then got Blackfriars Rail Bridge,

originally built to take trains across the Thames, but it was

so well engineered by the Victorians that quite recently they've

just dumped a railway station on top of it.

Then I've got Waterloo Bridge, another reinforced concrete

arch bridge. Just around the corner I've got Hungerford, which is

a deck bridge and it has a pedestrian bridge suspended

alongside, which is a cable-stayed bridge.

and hard to come off

I've certainly never walked across it

and, despite its elegant simplicity, this is London's least used,

and probably least well-known, road bridge.

Southwark Bridge, known by locals as the forgotten bridge,

hasn't been helped by its old lighting system which,

withered by rain and wind, now barely works.

Just taking off the lights for the pierheads,

getting all the old lighting out before we put the new stuff in.

So it's out with the old lights and in with the new.

It's just a bit time consuming.

Obviously, there's water damage and stuff, so everything's a bit rusty

and I'm not sure that I ever have been across this bridge.

and it's probably not been cleaned in 100 years!

Hopefully, this project can throw a spotlight on this forgotten bridge.

In London folklore, it's said that,

if you find yourself on Southwark Bridge, you're probably lost.

Or at least, back in the day,

that's what you might want people to believe.

Because there were some users of the bridge who knew exactly where

they were going - and it was over there, to sleazy Southwark.

Southwark started life as a swampy marshland across the river

from the Roman city of Londinium.

Eventually, it was urbanised and effectively became London's

We can't physically move her, and she's got every right to be

She's just down there.

An Egyptian goose is nesting in the bridge,

and the project's ecologists have insisted the goose not be

approached while she's incubating her eggs.

Obviously, we can't work above, within 5 m below, around,

anywhere near her.

I mean, we can't touch her for at least a month,

that we know of, if it's for the 28 days' gestation, and then

we've got to wait for the hatching and the fledglings to fly away.

So we could be aiming for a month to a month and a half, roughly,

I'm thinking. At the end of the day, it is what it is. It's the law.

The River Thames is one of the world's great waterways.

here, so there's nothing that we can do about it.

We've just got to see how it goes, basically.

For Sarah and the Illuminated River team, any delays are a huge problem.

The geese that laid some eggs - why they picked underneath Cannon Street

when they like reeds and making nice reed nests, I don't know.

The first four bridges need to be ready for the big switch-on,

and that's now just 10 weeks away.

OK, so, we are about a week behind, for various crazy reasons.

But at least work can continue on the other bridges -

from the most famous to the less familiar.

I lived and cycled around London for over a decade,