The Battersea Bridge was the first bridge in London that I walked across.  The bridge, built in 1890, connects the London neighborhoods of Kensington & Chelsea (north of the river) and Wandsworth (south of the river).  The north side had traditional, classic architecture, but the south side had some newer developments.  From the bridge looking west, I saw a bridge for the tube and several modern developments.  To the east, I saw the Albert Bridge, the Battersea Power Station, and the Shard tower then under construction.

I enjoyed this bridge.  I appreciated its simple, yet stately design.  The traffic was low, though this might have had more to do with the time of day (Sunday afternoon) than any other factor.  There were two sights near the bridge that particularly caught my attention.  The first was a statue of Sir Thomas More on the north side, with gilded face and hands, a style not familiar to me.  The second was a seemingly random statue of a flying goose just off the south end of the bridge.

The name of Battersea intrigued me, so I did a Google search to try and find the origin of the name.  The result was that there is no known origin.  The possibilities included an Anglo-Saxon term meaning Badric’s Island, battles that were fought in the river at low tide when the river was fordable, and an evolution of spellings from a term meaning St Peter’s water or river.