Welcome to Brainsuff, a production of I Heart Radio.

Hey Brainsuff, Lauren Bogobom here.

Crossing the River Thames between the City of London and Southwark, the London Bridge in some form has welcomed travelers for two millennia.

Yet, despite its longevity and fame, it even has its own nursery rhyme. Oh what people think of as the

London Bridge is often not the London Bridge at all. In fact, do a Google search for

images of London Bridge and what you'll probably see instead are images of the Tower Bridge, the famous Victorian Gothic structure with two towers, which to be fair, is also a bridge in London.

The actual London Bridge offers a much simpler profile

and while the current structure dates for the late 1900s,

the story of the bridges that have stood on that site is considerably longer.

Today, the London Bridge, Tower Bridge, and three others are all managed by the City Bridge Foundation which has been

operating in one form or another for some 900 years. It's a charitable trust and

money's not required by the bridge maintenance budget go to helping out

Londoners in need by the funding arm, a city bridge trust.

The city bridge trust donates 30 million pounds a year in this way.

Okay, the first stone bridge on this site across the Thames was built between 1176 and 1209

CE. It was replaced in the early 1800s, and then again when the existing bridge was built in the 1960s and 70s.

However, even before the 12th century stone bridge,

a series of wooden bridges had been constructed at the site, and the story of the London

bridge begins with a Roman invasion and the founding of the settlement of Londinium.

It got its start as a military pontoon bridge built by the Romans when they were settling the area.

For the next 2,000 years, the position of the bridge remained a nexus for economic development.

Timber bridges on the site were damaged by multiple fires and a storm.

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