A book of bridges

by Walter Shaw Sparrow

It is clear from this brief record of events that the Pont St. Bénézet, like many another great bridge of the Middle Ages, had but a poor chance of becoming social and useful. Instead of being an open road to the democratic spirit and the growth of trade, she kept watch and ward incessantly, and aided the misruling class to nourish their egotisms without any care at all for the common weal. It said very little for the half-sense of ordinary men that they in their millions were unable to defend themselves against a tiny class of despots. The people were like leaves on forest trees, that fluttered ineffectually as soon as a gale began to blow. For the ounces of brain in each human skull have never been of any real worth until genius has taken control of them, for good or for ill. More than one insect has had a brain more fertile than that of the average man. Thus the cerebral ganglia of the ant, though not so large as a quarter of a small pin’s head, have evolved a marvellous routine of life, which includes the making of bridges and the boring of tunnels under running water. Ants were civil engineers long before men had constructed their first tunnels and drains. Have you ever tried to imagine what would have happened in the world of primitive men if every atom in every ounce of human brain had been as fertile as the cerebral ganglia of the ant? A civilization no worse than our own might have been evolved by the year 100,000 B.C., if not earlier.

From time to time, however, amid the congealed blood that lay so thick over the mediæval history of France, some true social justice did shine out, here and there. A few French nobles built communal bridges, and set the Law to keep them for ever from the tyrannies of a superior class that found in ordinary men neither the intelligence of ants nor the discipline that united wolves into formidable packs. The people being too silly to defend their own rights, these few good nobles tried to foresee all dangers, but their legal documents were rarely strong enough to resist their incessant foes, the stupidity of the mob and the gradual encroachments of military leaders. When Eudes, Count of Chartres, built a bridge at Tours, as an act of piety that would benefit his soul, he decreed that its public value for all time was to be as free from all restraints as a church. At an earlier time, in a deed of 998, William the Great, Duke of Aquitaine, went so far as to forbid pour toujours a collection of tolls on the Pont Royal. He did not realise that his populace would cease to value the bridge as soon as they got the freedom of it for nothing. Again, in France during the Middle Ages no bridge could be fortified without permission from its founder or founders. This was a rule or law, and yet it must have been broken hundreds of times, for what bridge of any importance did not become a fortified work, a genuine stronghold?

OLD BRIDGE OVER THE BORNE AT ESPALY, NEAR LE PUY IN FRANCE; BEHIND THE CROIX DE LA PAILLE, A ROCK OF VOLCANIC BRECCIA, WITH HOUSES, AND WITH RUINS OF A THIRTEENTH-CENTURY CASTLE

One form or custom of the Middle Ages tried to encompass bloodshed with the glamour of religious fervour. After the battle of Towton, for example, a chapel was built on the stricken field by the Yorkists as a memorial to the souls of their dead. And a famous chapel on the Ouse Bridge at York is said to have been erected after a stiff fight between the citizens and a Scotchman named John Comyn. The fray happened on the bridge itself, in 1168, or thereabouts, and John Comyn lost several of his followers. Then came some negotiations, in the course of which it was agreed that the city should erect a chapel on the spot, and find priests to celebrate mass for the souls of the dead. Another story relates that in 1153, when Saint William was restored to the See of York, a vast crowd assembled on a timber bridge that crossed the Ouse, so eager were the citizens to welcome their prelate, who in 1147 had been deprived of office after a reign of three years. In the hustle and excitement of the home-coming, the bridge gave way, and many persons fell into the river, but no one perished because William prayed and his prayer was answered. To commemorate this miracle a chapel was built on the new bridge. This legend may have some truth in it, for the chapel was dedicated to Saint William; and perhaps the other legend about John Comyn is not entirely mythical.

One thing is certain: that in Norman times a stone bridge was built at York and graced with a fine chapel. Between 1215 and 1256 it was reconstructed by Archbishop Walter de Gray, who preserved some portions of the Norman chapel. More than three centuries later, in 1564, two arches were destroyed by a flood, with twelve houses that stood upon them; and for nearly two years the bridge remained in a ruined state. Then the broken arches were rebuilt in the thirteenth-century style. Among the contributors to this work was Lady Jane Hall, whose donation was recorded on a brass plate on the north side of the bridge. The inscription was quaint:—

William Watson, Lord Mayor, An. Dom. 1566.
Lady Jane Hall to: here the works of faith doth shew;
By giving a hundred pounds this bridge to renew.

On the west side of Ouse Bridge there were several houses, which flanked the Chapel of Saint William. At the Reformation the chapel contained several chantries, the original grants of which are still among the records of the city. After the Reformation, of course, these pious endowments were confiscated, and the beautiful little building was turned into an exchange where the York Society of Hamburg Merchants assembled every morning to transact business. At last, in 1810, the chapel was removed. Some parts of it were excellent work in the Early English style, while the porch and a stone screen were enriched with cable and chevron ornaments, characteristic of Norman work. A few etchings of these charming details were published in Cave’s “Antiquities of York” (1813).