A book of bridges

by Walter Shaw Sparrow

But I regret always that from the Ponte Vecchio I can get no idea of the effect made in nature by Old London Bridge. Is there extant any bridge that helps us to realise the work of Colechurch and Isembert? The once famous watermills at Meaux, in Brie, and the Pont du Marché there, are somewhat of an aid in this matter. Brangwyn visited them in 1913, and was fascinated. Some writers say that the first watermills at Meaux were built in the twelfth century; and on a recent photograph taken from a picture I read: Meaux, Les Moulins sur Pilotis, xii. siècle. But these mills disappeared before the year 1835, and they belonged to the end of the fifteenth century, not to the twelfth. Viollet-le-Duc put this date on record, together with the fact that the bridge and its mills were entirely of wood.[90] In 1420 the English captured Meaux, and they held it till 1438, when they were defeated by the Constable de Richmont. Had they retained the little town till the end of the century, we might venture to suppose that the timber bridge and its wooden mills were built by our ancestors, in order to keep themselves in mind of Old London Bridge. The modern mills are many-storeyed places of business, and they stand very erect on stone piers. To-day the Pont du Marché has eight stone arches, and a single row of early timbered houses. I have four photographs of it, and in each it is charming. Next summer I may see it in nature, but if a pontist travelled to see all the bridges that attract him, he would need a life of several hundred years and a river Pactolus to finance his research.[91]

Is there any reason why England should not have a great bridge of shops, or of watermills, or of houses? Let Brangwyn and Mr. Lutyens collaborate, and then we shall have a masterpiece indeed! Here and there we have a small bridge with a watermill close at hand; there is one in Sussex between Midhurst and Easebourne, for example, but I know not one that warms my patriotism with a glow of pride. Viollet-le-Duc draws three charming pictures of French mill bridges which have disappeared. There was the Pont aux Meuniers at Paris, that crossed the great arm of the Seine below the Pont au Change, facing the Palais; it resembled the Millers’ Bridge at Meaux. A great stone bridge at Châlon-sur-Saône was decorated with round towers above the piers, and between these towers, on the right of every arch, a little mill was busy. This mediæval arrangement, so rich with a quaint citizenship, lasted till the seventeenth century. Over the Loire at Nantes was another picturesque bridge that united in itself the merits of many good burgesses. Impudent houses with peaked roofs were balanced on the piers and throve well as shops; a footway of wood was corbelled out from the parapet; and between some of the piers windmills behaved like human creatures, for the harder they toiled over the business of daily bread, the more loudly they complained. Their noise implied that corn was very hard to crush; and the reluctant movement of their revolving wind-sails was an image of self-pity.

THREE-ARCHED BRIDGE AT VENICE, OVER THE CANAL OF ST. GIOBBE. BRICK AND STONE. RENAISSANCE

As mediæval towns of importance were encompassed by walls and defended by castles, there was little free space; hence the building of a new bridge was always a great event; it enlarged the civic life and prepared a foundation for a new street or for a fresh line of defensive works. Thus the Bridge of Saintes was a long line of fortifications ([p. 300]), while the bridges of Paris were housed and populous, unlike many a village where poor Jacques, in the midst of unceasing war, lived the life of a hunted wolf. Unfortunately, the tenants of Paris bridges wanted to thrive at their landlords’ expense, and at last they ruined the landlords, who were bridges, not men, I am sorry to say. The great corbels that supported the houses pressed too heavily on the spandrils; caves and hiding-places were dug into the piers; and when the houses were removed from the Pont Notre-Dame and the Pont Saint-Michel, it was found that every tenant had misused his home, even to the extent of excavating secret chambers behind the haunches of an arch. For human nature has ever claimed the privilege of doing justice to itself in actions of foolish violence.

For instance, it is disgusting to read about the desecration thrust upon English bridge chapels after the reign of Henry the Eighth. As an example we can take the Chapel of St. Mary on Wakefield Bridge, Yorkshire, a beautiful piece of Decorated Gothic dating from the fourteenth century. After the Reformation it became many profane things, including an old clothes shop, a warehouse, a den of flax-dressers, a newsroom, a cheesecake house, a tailor’s shop, and I know not what else; so “we think upon her stones, and it pitieth us to see her in the dust.” At last—it was in 1847—an effort was made to rescue her from further degradation: quite a big effort, for it cost £3000, yet the cause had nothing to do with sport or with self-advertisement. To raise so much money in the service of history was a great achievement. But the chosen architect was less fortunate than he might have been; he was one of those Victorian “restorers” whose zeal at times was excessive. In a few months the Chapel of St. Mary was rebuilt, almost, so thorough was the renovation. Even the original front was torn off and carted to the grounds of Kettlethorpe Park, where it still remains, I believe; and not enough care was shown in the choice of building materials, for the new work was carried out in Bath stone and Caen stone, which were much too soft for the Wakefield atmosphere. Indeed, the new front perished so quickly that in less than forty-five years a part of its detail looked more friable than the ancient work at Kettlethorpe; and a second renovation became necessary.

The subscriptions raised for these remodellings and repairs call to mind the fact that in much earlier times Wakefield Bridge and its chapel were objects of charity. For example, in 1391, the fourteenth year of Richard II, William de Bayley, of Mitton in Craven, left C sol ad confirmacionem cantarie in Capella Sce Mariæ sup Pont de Wakefield; and a deed dated the 27th of September, 1454, the thirty-second year of Henry VI, mentions a yearly dole of three shillings to be paid to the bridge chapel at Wakefield. At an earlier date, in 1398, two chantries were ordained in St. Mary’s Chapel, thanks to the generosity of William Terry and Robert Heth, who obtained licences from Richard II “to give and assign to two chaplains celebrating divine service in the chapel of St. Mary, on Wakefield Bridge, lately built, ten pounds rent in Wakefield, Stanley, Ossett, Pontefract, Horbury, Heckmondwike, Shafton, Darfield, Preston, Jackling, and Frystone by the water.” Norrison Scatcherd gives this quotation from a document in the archives of the Hatfield family, but I know not what to say of it; for a charter of an earlier date mentions a sum of £10 and two chaplains ([p. 230]).

However, the chapel is built on a little island in the river Calder, and the plan is arranged below so as to offer the least resistance to the river. “The extra width required for the chapel above is obtained by corbelling out on each side, which gives a total external width of about twenty feet. The total length is about forty-five feet. The front towards the bridge is very elaborate, and is divided into five ogee-headed compartments, with buttresses between. Three of these, the centre and two ends, are doorways, the other two being panelled. Over this is a series of five panels filled with sculpture representing the Annunciation, the Birth of Jesus, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Descent of the Holy Ghost on the Disciples. Surmounting the whole are battlements; and a bold group of pinnacles at each end of the front over the buttresses. Each side has three three-light windows, and the east end has a large window of five lights; all have rich Decorated tracery. A well-designed turret stands at the north-east angle, and contains the staircase which communicates with the roof and crypt. On the north, south, and east fronts is a panelled parapet, and there is a canopied niche over the east windows. There was formerly a priest’s house adjoining, but the last vestiges of it were removed in 1866.... The windows on the south and east are filled with stained glass. The interior is in good repair, and is fitted up for service.”[92] And service also is held there.[93]

Leland, who returned from his antiquarian tour in 1542, collected in Wakefield a good many suppositions about the origin of St. Mary’s Chapel. He was happy there, because a right honest man fared well for “2 pens a meale.” On the east side of a fair bridge of stone, under whose nine arches the Calder flowed, Leland was charmed to see a right goodly chapel of Our Lady, with two cantuary priests founded in it, by the townsmen, as some say; but, on the other hand, the Dukes of York were taken as founders because they had obtained the mortmain. He heard someone say that Edward IV’s father, or else the Earl of Rutland, brother to Edward IV, “was a great doer of it,” for “a sore batell was fought in the south feeldes of this bridge,” and in the flight of the Duke of York’s party, either the duke himself, or his son the Earl of Rutland, was slain a little above the bars, beyond the bridge, going up into the town of Wakefield. “At this place is set up a cross in rei memoriam.”