Bridging history

The Prince of Wales is to unveil a plaque next month to mark the 100th anniversary of the opening of Tower Bridge by his great-great-grandfather, King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales. The 12,000-ton structure, with its two distinctive lifting roadways each 100 feet long and weighing 1,200 tons, carries more than 40,000 vehicles a day and attracts more than half a million visitors a year. No public money has ever gone into the estimated pounds 200 million spent on the bridge.