Water feature shut as mobile phone users make a splash
A £1MILLION water feature has been bricked over after people staring at their phones repeatedly fell into it.
The owners of The Rill, a 285yd open channel of flowing water that has linked Tower Bridge with London Bridge Station since the early 2000s, were apparently worried about potential lawsuits from pedestrians glued to their screens. David Keavney, 36, who works nearby, said: “The amount of people I’ve seen walking and texting and they fall over, it happens all the time,” he said. “I’m all for design, but public safety has to be a priority.”
The planning application to pave over the water feature was submitted to Southwark council by Broadgate Estates in May. The documents state that The Rill will be blocked up in a way that means it could be reinstated.
Ian Kirkpatrick, of The Fountain Workshop, in Kent, which built the water feature, said: “We don’t know why the decision was made, but obviously we are very sad to see it go.”
Since 2003, the most charming feature of the development of offices and shops between London Bridge Station and Tower Bridge has been the little channel of clear water bubbling along for two or three hundred yards. It was called the Rill. George Macdonald, the immensely popular Victorian creator of myths and fairytales, once declared that he’d like to have a stream of water running through his room, even along the table, so extraordinary to us is this compound of hydrogen and oxygen. What have they done near London Bridge? Filled the whole thing in. People looking at their mobiles apparently kept falling in. That comes as no surprise. Many of them are not safe out alone. The best thing that could happen to them would be a splash of cold water to wake them from their zombie walk. Please bring the Rill back.