THE CAUSEWAY, SWARKESTONE BRIDGE.
To build a causeway from the comparatively high ground of Stanton on one side, and Swarkestone on the other, with little bridges spanning the intermediate rills, and a large bridge crossing the Trent itself, became early the good work of some pious founder, whose identity has, in the way usual with such things, become involved in legends. The chief legend of Swarkestone Bridge tells us that it was built by two maiden sisters, whose lovers were drowned in the passage, before ever a bridge or causeway existed. They expended all their fortune upon, and devoted their lives to, the work, and built a chapel on the bridge itself, wherein wayfarers might give thanks for their safety, and pray for the souls of those who had been drowned, and those of the pious benefactors. Another version says that the two ladies were daughters of the Countess of Bellomont, and that they expended all their fortune on the work, and were reduced to spinning for a livelihood.
But if we seek the real origin of this early work, thought to have been originally undertaken in the twelfth century, we must look to the neighbouring Priory of Repton, which built it and kept it in repair, just as many other religious houses undertook similar works of practical Christianity on behalf of wayfarers, all over the country; making roads, bridging rivers, and providing hostels for all and sundry whose evil fate compelled them to travel in those days when the best place in the world was a man’s own fireside.
In the chapel they placed on the bridge a brother of the Priory officiated, at the same time receiving offerings from grateful travellers for maintenance and repairs of the structure. And so the combined chapel and toll-house remained, until all religious institutions suffered a thorough change, under Henry the Eighth. We know what then became of it, for in the report of the Church Goods Commissioners in 1552 it is stated: “We have a chapell edified and buylded uppon Trent in ye mydest of the greate streme annexed to Swerston bregge, the whiche had certayne stuffe belongyng to it; ii desks to knell in, a table of wode, and certayne barres of yron and glasse in the wyndos, which Mr. Edward Beamont, of Arkeston, hath taken away to his owne use, and we saye that if the chappell dekeye, the bridge wyll not stande.”
The chapel was, however, allowed to “dekeye,” and yet the bridge stood, having been rebuilt so late as 1796. It says much for the excellence of the monks’ work that their bridge remained until 1795, when, not floods merely, but floods aided by a heavy lot of timber from a yard upstream, came and overthrew it.
The bridge has been the scene of some military exploits. Here the redoubtable Sir John Gell of Hopton, commanding the Parliamentary forces, routed a force of Cavaliers on January 5th, 1643; and held the approaches during all that troubled time. In 1745, too, when Prince Charles and his Highlanders came so near to overthrowing the House of Hanover, and regaining the crown of England for the feckless Stuarts, he made, as any invader from the north was bound to do, for this essential position.
The story of “the Forty-five” is closely involved with the course of the Manchester and Glasgow Road, from this point onwards, and therefore requires some brief historical summary.
“THE FORTY-FIVE”
In 1745, Prince Charles, the “Young Pretender,” son of James, the “Old Pretender,” who in 1715 had made an ineffectual attempt to secure the crown his father, James the Second, had lost, determined on a bold throw for fortune. Setting out from France, July 2nd, on the Doutelle, a little brig of 18 guns, engaged in privateering against English shipping, he landed eventually at Erisca, in the Hebrides. He had not voyaged without adventure. Accompanying the Doutelle was a French warship, the Elizabeth, which carried 68 guns and 700 men.