Kumpelkante, on 21 November 2012 - 09:26 PM, said:
you are right. the brigde is pretty high compared to moc-standarts. otherwise it was planned that way for boats to fit under the arches (if the river was not frozen). also bridges in my city are of a similar hight compared to humans... or think of tower bridge and rialto bridge...
Whilst the buildings on Old London Bridge varied quite considerably over the 700 years it was in existance the majority of the arches remained the same (one or two did fall down and were replaced hence the nursery rhyme "London Bridge is falling down"). In general the arches varied between 20 and 30ft (appox. 6 to 9m) the entire bridge itself being around 900ft (appox. 275m) in length. The arches need to be 31ft (9.3m) above low water at neap tides, bearing in mind that the Thames is a tidal river and rises and falls around 23ft (7m) at London Bridge. Indeed the old piers used to restrict the river so much that there could be as much as an 8ft (2.4m) drop between the upriver and downriver sides of the bridge which meant that "shooting the bridge" (passing between the piers of the arches) was fraught with danger and there were regular fatalities.
The seminal reference tome is Old London Bridge, Gordon Home, published by John Lane The Bodley Head, 1931, although Old London Bridge, Patricia Pierce is a more recent work and more likely to be found on Amazon or similar bookstores. Living in London I did once consider doing a full Minifig scale MOC of Old London Bridge but abandoned the project when I realised that it would be at least 25 baseplates long or 20ft (6m) real world length. Maybe one day when I have a bigger room...