Editing London Bridge (section)

===Early medieval bridges {{anchor|early_medieval}}<!-- * See talk section "Anchors" * -->===
With the [[end of Roman rule in Britain]] in the early 5th century, Londinium was gradually abandoned and the bridge fell into disrepair. In the [[Anglo-Saxon England|Anglo-Saxon period]], the river became a boundary between the emergent, mutually hostile kingdoms of [[Mercia]] and [[Wessex]]. By the late 9th century, [[Viking Age#England|Danish invasions]] prompted at least a partial reoccupation of the site by the Saxons. The bridge may have been rebuilt by [[Alfred the Great]] soon after the [[Battle of Edington]] as part of Alfred's redevelopment of the area in his system of [[burh]]s,<ref>Jeremy Haslam, 'The Development of London by King Alfred: A Reassessment'; ''Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society'', 61 (2010), 109–44. Retrieved 2 August 2014</ref> or it may have been rebuilt around 990 under the Saxon king [[Æthelred the Unready]] to hasten his troop movements against [[Sweyn Forkbeard]], father of [[Cnut the Great]]. A [[skald]]ic tradition describes the bridge's destruction in 1014 by Æthelred's ally [[Olaf II of Norway|Olaf]],<ref>{{citation|author=Snorri Sturluson|author-link=Snorri Sturluson|title=[[Heimskringla]]|date=c. 1230}}. There is no reference to this event in the ''[[Anglo-Saxon Chronicle]]''. See: {{cite journal|first1=Jan Ragnar|last1=Hagland|first2=Bruce|last2=Watson|url=http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/arch-457-1/dissemination/pdf/vol10/vol10_12/10_12_328_333.pdf|title=Fact or folklore: the Viking attack on London Bridge|journal=London Archaeologist|volume=12|date=Spring 2005|pages=328–33}}</ref> to divide the Danish forces who held both the walled City of London and Southwark. The earliest contemporary written reference to a Saxon bridge is {{Circa|1016}}, when chroniclers mention how [[Cnut the Great|Cnut]]'s ships bypassed the crossing during his war to regain the throne from [[Edmund Ironside]].<ref>See [[Battle of Brentford (1016)]]</ref>

Following the [[Norman conquest of England|Norman conquest]] in 1066, [[William I of England|King William I]] rebuilt the bridge. It was repaired or replaced by [[William II of England|King William II]], destroyed by fire in 1136, and rebuilt in the reign of [[Stephen, King of England|Stephen]]. [[Henry II of England|Henry II]] created a monastic guild, the "Brethren of the Bridge", to oversee all work on London Bridge. In 1163, Peter of [[St Mary Colechurch|Colechurch]], chaplain and warden of the bridge and its brethren, supervised the bridge's last rebuilding in timber.<ref name="Thornbury 1872, p.10">[[George Walter Thornbury|Thornbury, Walter]], ''Old and New London'', 1872, vol.2, p.10</ref>