While London prides itself on its modern infrastructure and fast-paced city life, there are occasional quirks that remind people of the long-standing history that made it what it is today.

One of these is an ancient ruling to warn river traffic of repairs, which requires construction workers to hang a bale of straw from a bridge.

In pictures shared on X (formerly known as Twitter), a contractor used a black rope to lower the bale off the side of the bridge.

This is something that they were legally required to do.

By-law 36.2 in the Port of London’s Thames rulebook states: “When the headroom of an arch or span of a bridge is reduced from its usual limits but that arch or span is not closed to navigation, the person in control of the bridge must suspend from the centre of that arch or span by day a bundle of straw large enough to be conspicuous and by night a white light.”

A spokesperson for the City Bridge Foundation, which maintains the bridge along with four others, said: “The bundle of straw is lowered by our contractor when they’re doing work under the bridge, in this case to install netting ahead of work to replace the separation layer between the aluminium bridge deck and the steel structure underneath.

“As a charity which maintains five Thames crossings and is London’s biggest independent charity funder, we’re proud of the part we’ve played in the history of London and our modern day role looking after some of the capital’s key transport infrastructure.”

The popular London footpath was unveiled in 2000, (hence the name Millennium Bridge) but was closed three days after its opening, as it swayed under the weight of thousands of pedestrians, gaining it the nickname ‘Wobbly Bridge’.

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To carry out the essential works to remedy these structural issues, the Millennium Bridge Trust raised the needed £5million.

In these works, which finished in January 2002 – two whole years after its initial brief opening – shock absorbing dampers were fitted, which reduced the bridge’s movements to levels that were deemed to be safe.

Millennium Bridge has had some silver screen appearances, film fans will remember it being featured in Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince. The scene, which took place in the fifth movie, saw Voldemort’s cronies, the ‘Death Eaters’ flying around the bridge, causing it to collapse with ‘Muggles’ scrambling off to get to safety.

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