The spooky mortuary under Tower Bridge where bodies washed up from the River Thames

The tiles have a spooky tale to them too

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Tower Bridge is a Grade I listed site that famously opens twice a day to let boats through and is one of London's best known landmarks. Sandwiched between the Greater London Assembly and the Tower of London, it's impossible to miss the iconic bridge.

But what isn't well known is that beneath the bridge lies what was once a spooky mortuary where bodies washed up from the Thames were kept after being dragged from the water. Known as Dead Man's Hole, bodies would wash up at the spot during the Victorian era frighteningly often.

If you look closely down the eastern side of the bridge, you will see an L shaped set of stone steps curving down to the river. These are thought to have been used to make retrieving the bodies easier. Dead Man's Hole is located directly opposite Starbucks on Katherine's Way under the left of the two arches at the Tower Bridge Exhibition, on the north side of the river.

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Once a corpse was retrieved from the water, it would have been left in the mortuary until it was identified, or until it was taken for burial. It's decorated with shiny white tiles that look unassuming, but these also allegedly have a harrowing past.

It's been rumoured the tiles made it easier to clean up the area as the collected corpses could at times explode due to trapped gas. Passers by can now find the area which is clearly signposted as part of the directions for the Tower Bridge exhibition.

Tower Bridge was opened to the public in 1894, almost 900 years after its neighbour the Tower of London, but it wasn't always the multicoloured masterpiece we know. It was originally 'bright chocolate' brown, rumoured to be Queen Victoria's favourite colour.

In fact, it stayed this colour until pre-WWII when it was repainted as a camouflage colour. In 1977, its railings and supports were repainted the red, white and blue colours you can still see today, to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee.

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