WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
A book of bridges cover

A book of bridges

Chapter 34: I
By Walter Shaw Sparrow
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

ArtHistory - OtherHistory - Warfare

About This Book

This work offers a compact survey of bridges, mixing historical narrative, technical description, and visual illustration to chart their evolution from primitive timber crossings and natural-arch inspirations through Roman engineering, medieval fortified bridges, and later unfortified and Renaissance types. It examines regional varieties including Chinese gabled forms, discusses materials and construction methods, and highlights the relationship between bridges, roads, social needs, and military strategy. Organized into topical chapters and appendices, the text pairs analytical commentary with plates and drawings that depict notable structures and typologies across Europe and beyond.

I

Mediæval England was a forrestial country, and many a roadside wood gave shelter to footpads and bandits, who planned ambuscades, and amused themselves with rape and rapine and murder. If they were less ready to cut a throat than to broach a tun of wine[82] the terror inspired by their evil reputation told lies that duped everybody. In fact, travellers were pitied by Acts of Parliament, but they had greater faith in the Church, which enabled them to renew their failing courage with frequent prayer at shrines by the wayside. Saint after saint was called to their aid; and from the time of St. Dunstan the Church reckoned the building of bridges among the most urgent duties of charity. Some good must have been done, yet rivers and journeys were feared very much; fords were common, and an ambush near a ford was a peril difficult to encounter. In the “Ballad of Abingdon Bridge,” which dates from the time of Henry V, we see what fords were like and how their guardians behaved to travellers. “Another blissed besines is brigges to make,” the rustic poet cries, thinking of unfortunate wayfarers who were washed from their saddles into a flooded river:—

And som oute of their sadels flette [fall] to the grounde,
Wente forthe in the water wist no man whare,
Fyve wekys after or they were i founde,
Their kyn and their knowlech [acquaintance] caught them up with care.

And this life-tax claimed by rivers was not the only trouble. The keepers of a ford knew no pity, but got their toll in relentless ways, taking bread from the beggar’s wallet and “a hood or a girdel” from “the pore penyles.” Very often, too, great woods encircled riverside towns and manors, so that outlaws after dark could steal up close to the houses and the bridge; it was then that pilgrims welcomed with the greatest relief the cresset-lights that glimmered from some friendly building on the bridge—from a chapel, or a defensive gateway, or a small bickering windmill, or a good watermill buttressed against a pier and rising high above the parapet.

And now we must pass in review six old species of bridge:—

1. The Housed Bridge, such as we find in Brangwyn’s beautiful monochrome of the quaint bridge at Kreuznach, in Germany.


OLD BRIDGE WITH HOUSES AT KREUZNACH, ON THE RIVER NAHE, IN PRUSSIA. AN OLD MILL BRIDGE, SEEMINGLY

2. The Shrined Bridge, as in Brangwyn’s alert impression of the Gothic bridge at Elche, in Spain.

3. The Bridge of Mills, as represented in the very romantic sketch of the old and broken bridge at Millau, in Southern France, at the confluence of the Tarn with the Dourbie. Another example, much modernised, exists in France, at historic Meaux, about thirty-two miles from Paris.

4. The Chapelled Bridge, as at Wakefield, and Rotherham, and Pisa, and Avignon (see Frontispiece), and elsewhere.

5. The War-Bridge, which in Brangwyn’s art receives the most varied and vigorous recognition. Never before have they been studied so completely by an artist.

6. The Bridge of Shops, as at Venice in the Rialto.