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The area is named after the 19thCentury stone bridge which was designed by John Nash to carry Hornsey Road across the cutting leading onto the Great North Road. The original stone bridge was demolished in 1897 and replaced with a “graceful iron bridge” which was the work of Sir Alexander Binnie as part of the widening of Archway Road. It was completed in 1901. Not long after its completion its earned the unfortunate moniker “London’s Bridge of Sighs” because of the occasional suicide. Jerry White in his seminal history of the city, London in the 20th Century writes: “With its new bridge a symbolic gateway to London from the north.”
