The lampless pillar once vented a coal fire in the guard room below the bridge and has had no use since the Clean Air Act 1956.
One of the blue lampposts along Tower Bridge has no light on top, and it never needed one. The cast-iron pillar is really a chimney, disguised to look like the real lamps along the pedestrian walkway.
Start at the Tower of London end, on the north side, and a line of blue cast-iron lampposts runs along the walkway ahead. The odd one out looks as if it has lost its lamp.
Thousands of people cross the bridge every day, on foot and in cars, and most go past it without a second look.
When Tower Bridge was finished in 1894, its design included a guard room just below. The guards on duty kept warm with a coal fire, and the smoke had to go somewhere.
The solution was a flue built into the balustrade and painted the same colour as the lampposts beside it, so it could vent the fire without standing out.
The Clean Air Act 1956 put an end to the coal fire, and the chimney has had nothing to do since. It was never taken away, and the blue pillar still stands where it was first put, in line with the working lamps.
Among the blue cast-iron lampposts on the pedestrian walkway, seen when walking from the north side near the Tower of London. It looks like a lamppost missing its light.
It carried smoke from a coal fire that kept guards warm in a guard room below the bridge.
After the Clean Air Act 1956, when the coal fire could no longer be used.
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