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🗓️ 6 July 2016
⏱️ 9 minutes
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In July of 1967 London Bridge was put up for sale. It was sold to an American millionaire who had it dismantled and transported to the USA where it was rebuilt, stone by stone, in Arizona.
(Photo: American entrepreneur Robert P McCulloch, standing in front of London Bridge as it is dismantled, ready for transportation back to America, 1968. Credit: Jim Gray/Keystone/Getty Images)
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0:00.0 | Hello and thank you for downloading witness from the BBC World Service with me Ashley Byrne. |
0:05.2 | Today we're going back to the late 1960s and the story of how British Landmark was sold to an American |
0:11.0 | millionaire from Arizona. It was in July 1967 that headlines first |
0:16.0 | started to appear in English newspapers suggesting that a buyer was wanted for London Bridge. |
0:21.2 | Londoners couldn't quite believe it, but it turned out to be true. |
0:26.0 | The only way in which it can be preserved is to sell it in its entirety. |
0:30.0 | You wouldn't consider a piecemeal then, you know, I understand you may have had some offers for LEM posts or balustrades? |
0:36.0 | Yes, we've had several offers from private individuals. |
0:39.0 | That mean that the bridge would be dispersed over a wide area and you lose its individuality completely. |
0:47.0 | London Bridge, known to children all over the world because of the nursery |
0:56.8 | rhyme wasn't actually falling down but it was about to be dismantled stone |
1:01.6 | by stone and replaced with a new bridge. |
1:05.0 | Open by King William IV in 1831, the London Bridge in question had replaced a medieval |
1:11.8 | bridge, but by the 1960s it was struggling to cope with the |
1:15.7 | sheer weight of modern traffic and sinking into the river Thames. |
1:20.4 | It was too expensive to maintain, and so it was decided it should be pulled down and sold for scrap |
1:26.4 | But one local politician called Ivan Luckin felt it should be saved |
1:31.3 | His friend and colleague Archie Galloway remembers. He felt that the |
1:36.6 | city would find a buyer if it was up for sale because of the historical content and the nursery rhyme etc. I gather he was greasied with some |
1:46.6 | sort of mirth at the suggestion and somebody then asked what sort of money he would get if they were selling it and he |
1:55.6 | seemingly stuck his finger in the air and sell a million pounds and so there's |
2:00.5 | more laughter about his decision. |
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