London works reveal Gate Pa history

A former Tauranga man working on a London bridge has discovered the remnants of a newspaper detailing events at the battle of Gate Pa in the 19th century.

The newspaper is a copy of the Evening Star of July 14, 1864 and it was found during works undertaken near a Victorian era railway bridge across the Thames.


A clipping from the 1864 newspaper found in London depicting events of the battle of Gate Pa.

Jeremy Gordon worked in Tauranga for Beca for about four years, including some of the pre-construction work on the Harbour Link Project, before moving to the UK in June 2007.

He's has been working on the Blackfriars Bridge refurbishment and widening project for the last three years.

'It's been a very challenging project and I've mainly been working on the bridge pier widening works within the River Thames,” says Jeremy in an email to SunLive.

The newspaper discovery came as a surprise.

'It was an exciting find – our foreman looked into a dark void we had just exposed and saw an old newspaper.

'We had been breaking the concrete cap above and keeping the area damped down with water, so the paper was a bit wet.

'Only when it had fully dried out and I opened it up in the office was I surprised to see the report from back home of 147 years earlier.

'It was also interesting to read another article about the American Civil War which was happening at the same time.

'Note the article was written on 18 May 1864, so the news took about two months to get back to Britain.”

James and his team are demolishing the piers of the London Chatham & Dover Railway Bridge, which was opened in 1864. The newspaper is from the same year.

'The newspaper must have been put there by one of the Victorian construction workers,” says Jeremy.

'It was found in a void behind the flowery castings at the top of the pier.

'If you refer to the attached bridge photos it was found in one of the now demolished red piers which were located to the right of the standing pairs of red piers.”


The newspaper clipping was found in a brick-filled red pier.

Jeremy says demolishing the piers was hard work.

'Luckily we knew exactly how the piers had been constructed before we started the demolition work after finding the old construction record report and drawings of 1864 in the Institute of Civil Engineers archives down the road at Westminster.

'We knew it was going to be tough going when noting that the five foot diameter cast iron columns were ‘filled solid with the hardest brick procurable'.

'Our guys can confirm the Victorians certainly knew how to make hard bricks.”

You may also like....

0 comments

Leave a Comment


You must be logged in to make a comment.