It was named after the then Hungerford Market, because it went from the South Bank, specifically a northern point of Lambeth, soon close to London Waterloo station to that place on the north side of the Thames, specifically to the market (later Charing Cross Station) about 200 yards or metres east of Trafalgar Square partly in the parish of Saint Martin in the Fields, Westminster, the spire of which can be seen from the bridge.

The railway company replaced the suspension bridge with a structure designed by Sir John Hawkshaw, comprising nine spans made of wrought iron lattice girders, which opened in 1864.

The buttress on the South Bank side still has the entrances and steps from the original steamer pier Brunel built on to the footbridge.

[8] In the mid-1990s a decision was made to replace the footbridge with new structures on either side of the existing railway bridge, and a competition was held in 1996 for a new design.

[9] It was felt, especially following the Marchioness disaster, that these should be clad in concrete at water level; but the bridge's owners, Railtrack, could not afford the work.

[11] Their construction was complicated by the need to keep the railway bridge operating without interruptions, the Bakerloo line tunnels passing only a few feet under the river bed, and the potential danger of unexploded World War II bombs in the Thames mud.

[6] The design was modified so that the support structure on the north side, which would have been within 15 m (49 ft) of the tube lines, was moved out of the river bed and onto Victoria Embankment.

This process was repeated five times until each deck spanned the river, supported by six temporary piers made of steel and concrete.

[12] In 2014, the planning application for the now cancelled Garden Bridge, revealed in its assessment of pedestrian movement across the Thames that the footbridges are the busiest in London, with an estimated footfall of 8.5 million each year.