Its general direction is from west to east, but its course is made up of large bends composed of small ones. In the first part of King Henry IV., Act III., Scene I., Shakespeare makes Hotspur complain of the windings of the Trent, thus:—
“Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here,
In quantity equals not one of yours:
See how the river comes me cranking in,
And cuts me from the best of all my land
A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.
I’ll have the current in this place damm’d up;
And here the smug and silver Trent shall run
In a new channel, fair and evenly.”
It is not known where or how, if at all, the Romans permanently bridged the Trent hereabouts; probably they were content with fords and ferries. In the Middle Ages, however, several fine stone bridges were erected over the river; there was a very long one of thirty-six arches at Burton in the twelfth century, and most likely there would then be no other between that town and Nottingham, some twenty miles distant. At any rate, the first record we have of Swarkeston Bridge is in the year 1276, and the oldest parts of it remaining—which appear to be the original work—appertain to the thirteenth century.