In 1136 occurred also one of those terrible fires which swept over the city, burning both east and west, starting near London Stone, and spreading to Aldgate one way and to St. Paul's the other.
The old timber bridge was burnt or considerably damaged, but it seems to have been very soon repaired, otherwise people could not have stood on it to witness the pastimes recorded by Fitzstephen.
Soon after this we first hear of Peter of Colechurch, whose name has been so inseparably connected with London Bridge, for it is recorded that in 1163 he not only repaired it, but also newly remade it of timber.
Whatever these last repairs were, the old timber bridge was doomed to disappear, and to be replaced by the first stone bridge, which was started about 1176 by the same Peter of Colechurch, priest and chaplain, a real Pontifex Maximus.
It was no easy matter to lay the foundations to carry stone piers and arches in a stream wide and moderately deep, with a tide ebbing and flowing continually.
Peter of Colechurch was also called of St. Mary's, Colechurch, but not much is known of him or how he came to be employed. He died before the completion of the bridge, about 1205, and was supposed have been buried in the Chapel of St. Thomas on the east side of the bridge.
It consisted of nineteen or twenty arches, the largest of which was not more than thirty-five feet span, and although authorities differ as to the actual width, if two wagons could pass one another, and there were footways for passengers, besides the houses which stood on it, it certainly could not have been less than thirty to thirty-five feet wide. The houses, perhaps, were not there originally.
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