The bridge at the top of Parkway leading to the Outer Circle

IT was once hailed as one of the finest bridges in London, but today it spans a canal that no longer exists –  a quarter of its lamp have gone missing.

Now Camden Council is asking its own planning department to replace all 12 globes on the Grade II-listed Gloucester Gate Bridge, where the top Parkway meets Gloucester Gate on the edge of Regent’s Park.

Its application says the work is needed as three of the 12 lights are missing and the others are “in a dilapidated state”.

The bridge was built in 1877 by William Booth Scott, engineer to the Vestry of St Pancras, and according to the council’s heritage statement “was once regarded as one of the finest bridges in London”.

It carried the road over the Cumberland Basin arm of the Regent’s Canal, which the official list entry says was filled in around 1942. Grace’s Guide, the industrial history archive, says the basin was filled “with rubble from wartime damaged buildings”.

That left an ornate Victorian bridge with nothing to cross. The local historian Andrew Whitehead has written on his blog that it “has good claim to be quite the most remarkable, and the most pointless, in London”.

It has had a bumpy ride since. The heritage statement says bomb damage in 1941 caused “the loss of one of the four cast bronze gas lamp standards and a commemorative plaque”. Later the bridge was “damaged by a road accident, and another commemorative plaque was stolen”.

The bronze reliefs showed the martyrdom of St Pancras and were originally by the sculptor Ceccardo Egidio Fucigna. The panel now on the bridge is by the sculptor Stuart Smith, who, according to Art UK, recreated it “from a photograph of an 1877 original”.

The new globe lights will be lit by LEDs at “a warm, ambient colour temperature (2700K)”. The bronze frames will be replaced with aluminium with a “bronze paint with patinated finish effect”.

The Regent’s Park Conservation Area Advisory Committee has raised no objection. Its chair, Richard Simpson, said the bridge “is an important gateway between the conservation areas of Regent’s Park, Camden Town, and Primrose Hill”.