It is one of London’s best-known landmarks, attracting hundreds of tourists to the Thames each day - but Tower Bridge is looking a little shabby.

It is to undergo a three-year restoration in which its flaking exterior will be stripped to its original framework this month for the first time in its 114-year history and replaced with 22,000 litres of white and blue paint.

The City of London Corporation said that urgent action was needed to return it to its former glory. Eric Sutherns, operations manager at Tower Bridge, said yesterday: “If you give it a close inspection, you can see it’s getting pretty grubby. The blue in particular is very faded.”

While the facelift will cost more than £4 million, it will cost the taxpayer nothing - thanks to a group of monks who invested wisely the money they collected from bridge tolls dating back to 1097. Their trust, the Bridge House Estates, now worth £700 million, will pay for the repainting of Tower Bridge and Southwark Bridge this year. Scaffolding will go up by the end of this month but a quarter of Tower Bridge will be refurbished at a time, to minimise disruption to road and river traffic.

Mr Sutherns assured the public that the bridge would not be completely obscured by scaffolding. “People will still be able to take their photo from angles where you can’t see the work going on.”

Tower Bridge was encased originally in brown paint until it was splashed in red, white and blue to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee in 1977. At that time, the new coat of paint was simply placed on top of the old.

However, because of modern health and safety regulations, the original lead-based paint must be removed, leading to an operation of enormous proportions - and precautions. All scaffolding will be enclosed with airtight seals to ensure that lead dust does not fall into the river or on to passing pedestrians.

For the first 18 months of work, traffic will not be disrupted and at least one side of the bridge will always be open to pedestrians. However in 2010, when the underside of parts of the bridge are painted, it is expected to be closed for several months, causing a headache for motorists. Southwark Bridge will be painted in its original colours of green and yellow.

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