Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a massive 3000-year-old oak bridge on the Thames foreshore at Vauxhall. Wide enough to let two carts pass, the structure was built in the middle of the Bronze Age, a millennium and a half before the Romans erected what was always thought to have been the original London Bridge a couple of miles downstreamin what is now the City.
      The remains - the most significant prehistoric find in London - were unearthed during the three-year Thames Archaeological Survey. The oak posts are up to two feet in diameter and likely to have weighed several hundred pounds each. They are set in the ground pointing inwards between 12 and 14 degrees from the horizontal. Archaeologists believe the posts crossed diagonally in a scissors construction in order to support a platform perhaps 15ft wide. The bridge might have led from land to a midstream island or been part of a crossing of the entire river.

Source: London Evening Standard (17 september 99)