A book of bridges

by Walter Shaw Sparrow

Let us conjecture, then, that this barbaric bridge at Albi, with its seven pointed arches, may belong, not to the time of Saint Bénézet, but to the year 1035, or thereabouts. Nearly a century ago, in 1822, it was considerably enlarged, but the arches were not rebuilt. The bridge must have been restored many times, but there is no proof that it was reconstructed in the thirteenth century or in the twelfth. Besides, sportsmen in a controversy should be fair. Yet a good many books of reference say: “The Pont du Tarn at Albi, whose first construction goes back to the year 1035 or 1040, is thirteenth-century work”—a calumny on a very beautiful period in the evolution of Gothic architecture. We should have far too much admiration for the Valentré Bridge at Cahors to give the Pont du Tarn to the thirteenth century; and several other bridges in France do ample justice to the successors of Saint Bénézet. For example, there is the Pont St. Esprit, a masterpiece of the Pontist Friars, and a work so vast in length that Brangwyn is never tired of recalling his first impressions of its magnitude.[26] If, again, we wish to study work that comes to us from the twelfth century, then we turn to the famous bridges at Béziers and Carcassonne.

PONT DU TARN AT ALBI IN FRANCE. SAID TO DATE FROM ABOUT THE YEARS 1035-40

As to the bridge at Espalion, it has four unequal arches, and three of them are pointed, more or less. Their form is experimental, and seems to mark a first experiment in pointed Gothic. One arch, indeed, when looked at from underneath, might be an ill-planned Roman arch, so poor is its “ogival” or pointed shape; but yet the bridge, as the Brangwyn sketch bears witness, shows how an effort was made to free craftsmen from the convention of semicircular vaults. If we connect it with the age of Charlemagne we may argue thus: “Perhaps the masons were among those who at times restored a neglected Roman bridge; and perhaps the bridgemaster had gained some knowledge of Eastern arches, either at first-hand or from travellers or from drawings. East and West were united then as they were in much earlier times, so that information from each must have been conveyed to the other.” On the other hand, if we guess that the first bridge at Espalion was rebuilt in the twelfth century or in the thirteenth, then we must say also that the town of Espalion was too lazy even to seek advice from the Pontist Friars. Larousse has set forth the position very well: “The most ancient of the extant bridges, constructed in mediæval France, appears to be the one at Espalion (A.D. 780); its date is contested because we find it associated with the pointed arch; but this arch already had been used for two centuries in the East.”[27]

So we may conclude, in a conjecture perhaps strong enough to be called a hypothesis, that the pointed style in architecture may have been brought to France on three occasions: in the reign of Charlemagne, then in the first half of the eleventh century, and then after the first Crusade. There is no need to set much store by the second presumed inspiration, since the idea for Albi Bridge may have been taken from the Pont du Tarn at Espalion.

England as well as France has a controversy over arches; and I mention the fact because of Brangwyn’s masterly pen-drawing of the Monnow Bridge at Monmouth—a fortified work of the Middle Ages. In this bridge the arches are ribbed, like those in the bridges at Kirkby Lonsdale, and Warkworth, and Rotherham, at Baslow and Bakewell, in Eamont Bridge at Penrith, at Ross in Herefordshire (Elizabethan), and elsewhere. When was the ribbed arch first used in bridges?

The use of ribbed vaulting in English churches dates from the twelfth century; it came to England from France. Yet Scotland, the historic friend of France, used it very rarely in bridges; perhaps only once, in the famous Old Bridge of Dee near Aberdeen, which dates from the beginning of the sixteenth century. Mr. G. M. Fraser, a Scotch pontist, tells me that he has looked in vain throughout Scotland for another example. Old Stirling Bridge, and the Brig o’ Doon, and the Auld Brig o’ Ayr, and Devorgilla’s Bridge at Dumfries, all finely historic and various, have plain arches. On the other hand, ribbed arches are fairly common in North English bridges. One of the best examples architecturally is the graceful single arch that Sir Walter Scott loved in Twizel Bridge, that enabled Lord Surrey to outflank the Scotch before the battle of Flodden Field.[28] Why the frugal Scotch were unattracted by a new and thrifty way of building I cannot explain, unless by supposing that they loved convention even more than a hard economy. Viollet-le-Duc estimates that in arcs-doubleaux, or ribbed arches, builders use a third less of tooled and clavated masonry; hence a great saving not of cost only, but of dead weight also.

And there were other economies. An arc-doubleau is the simplest form of ribbed vaulting: at given intervals in the building of a vault a concentric arch is supposited, or the vault itself at intervals is made much thicker than at others. In Poitou, where ribbed bridges were studied by Viollet-le-Duc, the intervals between the ribs are filled in with flagging under the roadway; and with this material—or with ashlar—the spandrils above the ribs are packed. When flagstones are used, and rain-water filters down from the roadway, no harm is done; the wet trickles away through the joints of the flagstones, without causing the haunches of an arch to throw out saltpetre: a mishap that occurs often when arches are unribbed. I am writing here with the mind of Viollet-le-Duc, who makes two other valuable statements: first, that ribbed bridges are notable in Poitou; next, that they seem to belong to the beginning of the thirteenth century, or perhaps even to the end of the twelfth.

Now it was in 1214 that King John invaded Poitou without success; fifteen years later Henry III misconducted an expedition to the same province; and again in 1242 he landed in Poitou to be thrashed at Taillebourg. His aim, like that of John, was to win back the Empire of Henry II. May we then suppose that ribbed bridges came to us from Poitou? Certainly the mind of England during the first half of the thirteenth century was drawn towards the seaward provinces of France.