Description
Nonsuch House was reconstructed on the bridge using joiners' techniques alone, without any carpenter's nails, mason's mortar, or smith's iron. Only wooden pegs were used in the construction. Its archway straddled the bridge. The house was in the centre of the bridge with its principal front facing towards the Southwark end, the principal approach to the city of London from the south. Occupying the place of an entrance to the city, it was elaborately carved with ornate decorations on its east and west Dutch stepped gables, which protruded beyond the sides of the bridge. The house was about twenty-seven feet wide with a floor space in the middle of twenty usable feet.
Nonsuch House had two fronts to the River Thames with large columns, windows, and outside carvings. The square towers at each of its four corners were crowned with onion domes. The gilded vanes on top of these domes could be seen from all parts of the city, as they stood clear above the surrounding structures of the bridge. The house had two sundials on top on the south side. On one of them was painted the adage: Time and tide stay for no man.
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