 Dyw i'n meddwl ar y llyfr yng Nghaerfyn Cymru. Felly, fel ydych yn fwyaf i ddyddol i'r bwg, gan gyda chi'n gwneud i'r bwg sydd gennym yn y Hysgrifennu Cymru. Mae'r hyn sydd yn meddwl i'r gweinwyr ydym ni. Mae'n meddwl i'r modd i'r gwneud i'n meddwl i'r gwneud i'r meddwl i'r meddwl i'r wneud. Felly, gynhwys Gwyl dropen hwn. Mae'n olygu yn fawr yn gweithio'r ganwyr â'r wneud i chi'n gallu'r ffordd iawn diwrnodd yr ydau'r cerddol yn gywir. Fyddai'n ffwllwch yn digwydd awkwardd, ddyn nhw'n fawr. Ames, roi'r amser mai llawer o'r fynd i'ch drwy'r ddefnyddio'i ddech chi'r yma... Roeddwch yn ddiolch. Roeddwch ar hyn i'r ysb Log. Roedd yn usesnig o gyd—'a gydag bwysighau, Dynodd, the main topics of interest I think would have been something like the five hide unit or the county affinity bridges very definitely was seen as really rather odd. I'm delighted to know now that the infrastructure is very much the flavor of the month and. I hope I should say, there is a great deal of medieval transport infrastructure that survives. A great deal of many magnificent projects were built. If this talk has a subtext, it's largely just to show you quite a number of pictures of this magnificent infrastructure, but of course, there is an argument. My argument is that Old London Bridge has been seen as the archetype of medieval bridges. This really was not a very good one, however picturesque it was. So to take a popular book, Hopkins writing in 1970, described in a history of bridges, The Roman bridges, which was really rather good, then went on to the medieval bridges, of which he just showed London as the one prime example of the medieval bridge, before turning to Florence and then the modern bridges. In a sense, there was a feeling that London Bridge was a bit like Dr Johnson's dog. It was remarkable that it walked on its legs, but it's pity he didn't do it very well. Even distinguished scholars like Ted Ruddock, who looked at bridges after 1835, as the background for those super 18th and 19th century bridges, picked out London and three other bridges as what was wrong with medieval bridges and why the new bridges had to be built. I said in 2004 that this was quite false, that if you looked at ordinary medieval bridges, they had little in common with medieval, with London Bridge, and about 150 of them survived and more fragments as well, which shows that they were really quite adequate for the task. But when I returned to bridges, I read, well, was London Bridge typical of the great bridges or the larger bridges, and this is what I want to look at today. Starting with the date of construction, so London Bridge is built 1176 to 1209. Some people have tried to argue it was later to give more emphasis to the work of Isenbert of Saint, who came in in the early 13th century, but the Archae of the Abutment dendrochronology suggests that quite a lot was being done by the 1190s. Secondly, the foundations, and this is where much of the criticism has been made. They were built on stallings, which I'll describe later, and there's a tremendous fall through the bridge. It meant huge sums of money had to be spent on maintenance. London Bridge had a large income and spent it on this, an income of about 500 a year spent it on this and the bridge estate. Shooting the rapids became a sport for adventurous young people. Secondly, the arch spans were really quite small. This is a drawing on the right by night in 1821, I think, and there is in fact an arch was found under Adelaide House in 1921 when it was built, but I haven't found a photograph, but there must surely be one somewhere. The third thing is the number of buildings on the bridges. This is a wingard from the mid-16th century. You can still see the old chapel, the old central gate, which was replaced by Nonsuch House, and the stone gate, which had been rebuilt in 1437. The bridge fell twice, one in 1282 after Eleanor of Provence had been given the bridge estate funds and neglected the bridge, and the other in 1437 when the stone gate was rebuilt. Finally, to go on to the date of demolition. The buildings were removed in 1760 and the bridge finally demolished in 1831. I wouldn't want to be thought that before the 12th century bridges there were no bridges. In fact, there are a number of very substantial bridges in Anglo-Saxon England, for example, Chester, Rochester, York, etc. All you'll know about. The remarkable series of bridges were excavated at Hemmington, which the first set had these caissons here, recreated in two possible ways here, which were wooden pier bases with a lot of ballast inside. They were subsequently strengthened after collapsed by a wooden trellis bridge, and then a series of piles were put in place. This was typical of the Anglo-Saxon bridges. We don't know exactly how many, but there are clearly a very significant number of major bridges. So, just to give you an idea of what a timber bridge looks like, rather unnecessarily, this is Oobain Bridge near Mandalay, built in 1849 to 51, but gives some rather nice sense of an old timber bridge. Surprisingly, to go to the English origins of stone bridges, we need to travel to that centre of innovation, Oxford, where Robert Doiley, having been visited, according to the Abendon Chronicle, by the Virgin and asked to repent for his land grab as a mistreatment of the monks, built the bridge. The 16th-century map of Brees knows showing the many arches, which are now lie under the road to the south of the bridge, and the tower was built in the 13th century, and excavations by the Oxford Archaeological Unit found what definitely thought to be some 13th-century arches still existing, and thought there was a structure of an 11th-century bridge leading on for hundreds of metres south of the river. I should add here that I was rather delighted to read about a decade ago that there was a fabulous, there was a description of this bridge as the finest surviving 11th-century bridge north of the Alps. I thought I wonder who said that because the footnote just referred you to a series of articles. So I went through article after article, each just repeating it, but not giving the original source. To my astonishment, when I got to the original source, it said personal communication by David Harrison. So I must have really been a rather drunken exchange. One needs to be very careful. So on the left you see part of the river immediately to the south of the main channel, and it's said that there are some medieval, probably 13th-century arches buried deep within there, and here is a recent excavation where recent public utility work is done on the road south, in the Abingdon Road, and this is thought to be the arches of the long causeway. Of an early 12th-century bridge, we have Bow Bridge at Stratford. We know quite a lot about it from early 14th-century inquisitions, which say that it was built by Queen Matilda, the wife of Henry I, and there was a great deal of squabbling between the abbey of Barking and Stratford about maintenance. This was largely because at this period there was some thought about how do you endow and maintain a bridge. It is said that Matilda endowed Barking Abbey because you couldn't leave it to a layman, because their heirs might fail, so they needed a perpetual institution to give the funds too. Sadly, this mechanism seems to have failed almost everywhere, and the monks of the nuns of Barking passed it on to Stratford. There was then a large quarrel about who was responsible, and so we see as the Middle Ages progresses, almost all major bridges have bridge estates run by people with a direct interest in the subject. There were probably more than three arches in the bridge, and it's like so many other bridges being built up as the river has been canalised, and only three of what probably several arches remain. It was a very major project, so here is Bow Bridge, and then perhaps for this reason, because the river was braided here, many small channels, lots of islands, a series of bridges were built right across here with causeways in between. The person who studied this described it as possibly the major public works project in medieval England, or one of the major projects. I think everybody who studies any of these similar projects comes to the same decision. So many of them are major and imposing public works. Next we come to Franwell Gate Bridge. On the left here you see an arch that is probably part of the bridge built by Ronald Flambard, who was Bishop of Durham in the early 12th century. It was described by Simeon of Durham that Flambard joined the two banks of the weir with a stone bridge, a major construction supported by arches, as if at this date an arch bridge is really quite a rarity. Glouster Bridge is in fact a series of bridges again, so there is Ober Bridge, that this channel was created at a much later date in the 15th century, as the river was constantly shifting its main channel. You see here Westgate Bridge, which is there, and beyond Westgate Bridge was Forum Bridge. So three bridges, Forum started as the major bridge, then Westgate, and then subsequently Over Bridge. It's staged in the 14th century that it was built by Nicholas Waldrodd in the time of Henry II, and there's no real reason to doubt that is the date of Westgate Bridge. But it is, I mean, if only Glouster looked like that today. So moving on, we come to what's the largest surviving causeway. I'm afraid this distinguished looking gentleman isn't me. It's a mile in length. It's here that Bonnie Prince Charlie ended his incursion into England and turned back to Scotland and disaster. The original, the bridge over the river channels went in the 18th century, but a series of medieval arches of which one can identify, Wong, that may be late, perhaps be late 13th or early 14th century, survive. The first reference is 1204, but it may, but it's not quite clear when it was first stone. And dating is a considerable problem for so many of these structures. Now the longest arch bridge in England, this is at Burton on Trent, 36 arches, a total length of almost a mile. There's a bridge by the early 12th century. It was stoned by 1322, though hard to say when, and it survived long enough to be photographed, not a great photograph here, and there was a chaplain housing at the west end of the bridge here. Now according to the historic environment record for Staffordshire, there's arches surviving under a house at the south end of the bridge, and these are they, and I guess could be well, you'll be in much better place to say than me, could be 13th or 14th century. And next I come to somewhere which is just a causeway, really, but shows what very formidable bits of engineering were undertaken. These were whole, as you know, refounded by Edward I, and in the late 13th century a series of causeways were built across the floodplain of the River Hull to Beverley, Cottingham, and Hesl. I've written reports saying that we shouldn't build on the floodplain, but of course this goes back a long way, and Hull is one of the very, I suppose, worst and first examples of floodplain construction. No environment agency to stop Edward in those days. He had permission, he granted permission to build three roads. Hull to Hesl was about five to six miles. Hull to Beverley, 11 to 12 miles. The initial roads were found to be, initial causeways were found to be inadequate, and were raised by six foot in the 14th century. The cost of this was very considerable. In the mid 15th century, Robert Home left £46 for the repair of these roads. Lailand travelling from Cottingham to Hull noticed there were two miles of causeway diaked with ditches on both sides. We have wonderful records for the 15th century for Abingdon Bridge here. There's a magnificent poem survives. It's in a tablet in the arms house at Christ's Hospital, but alas is illegible, but fortunately was recorded by Thomas Herden and put into his edition of Lailand. The bridge itself, we know, had 300 men working on it in the summer of 1416, and a thousand marks were spent in that year. The poem records the efforts of one of the young men to hold back the water, so he might assume that some sort of cofferdam was in use. The whole works went from the river at Abingdon here, along causeway down here, Cullum Bridge, so this is the town bridge here, which is in two parts, this is part of it, Cullum Bridge, which was here over the swift ditch or backwater, and across this was a causeway, of which you see some part here. And the road continued to Dorchester. I think it was all part of an attempt to provide land transport from Abingdon to Henley because the river in the Lake Middle Ages had become unnavigable as far as Abingdon, and Henley was largely used as the main port. In the 1427s, the Gerard Braybrooke left money for the completion of this fabulous bridge at a barford across the Great Isle. There had not been a bridge there before. It's a new bridge of this period, as Abingdon was. Nearby is the bridge of St Ives, with its chapel, again, early 15th century, but what I point out here is the flood arches, these are a reconstruction, and to show the river in flood. So it shows how medieval design is as modern ones to have to make allowance for the fact that they needed to cover the whole flood plain rather than just the river channels in some way or other. And we have a long series of accounts for work on the causeway, which records adding sand and gravel on an annual basis. One of the joys of St Ives here is that it's close to traffic, so you have to go quite like no, have to go several hundred yards or so upstream to cross the Great Isles. And it reminded me of just how wonderful the continental bridges are. This is at Prague, where the International Bridges Group met in several merry days in July this year. And just as a way of a digression, it shows really what could be done with medieval bridges in England if we were to follow the example of St Ives and the continent. By the end of the Middle Ages, most bridges were of stone, but there were a number of timber bridges left, particularly on the lower Thames between London and Reading. This is the one at Stain's. And again, to the right, sort of rather sad survival of a very important causeway at Egan. Stain's didn't seem to have a sufficient endowment to maintain the bridge during the Middle Ages. So it was a constant recipient of pontage grants, which very commonly refer to the causeway as well. So, having looked at really the date, something of the date of construction, these causeways, great causeway bridges, I'd like to turn to the estuarine bridges. The top is a diagram of the bridge made after the London Bridge, made after the fire of 1633. And underneath is a drawing of the bridge taken in 1821 by Knight. As so many people have said, huge problems caused by having these great starlings, which required constant maintenance. But the real problem was that there was no other way of building a bridge in tidal waters, in deep tidal waters with leaky gravel until many centuries later. So what was done is, first of all, some piles were put in here. They couldn't be watertight because of the changing tide, the leaky gravel. Stones and rubble were put in, and then they were surrounded by these things called starlings, with another ring of piles into which more stones were put to try and make the bridge stable. It obviously was far from satisfactory. But given how rarely London Bridge fell, and with huge maintenance, it worked. Other potential extra bridges built about the same time as London Bridge. Walter Gervais was the main instigator. Hooker says in the late 16th century that he spent £10,000. I don't know what to make of that. The main bridge was demolished in 1771, but a series of arches survived, which had been studied by Stuart Brown. There should be a great monograph coming out this year, I hope. This strange map here is, as it is now, showing it's upside down so I could get the bridge in the right direction. Here is the old bridge. Here is the 18th century bridge. There is the extraordinary expressence built in the late 60s and 70s to allow far too much traffic into the centre of Exeter. This is a drawing of 1662 by Shelling. It shows how much easier it was in a way to construct the bridge at Exeter, which, when it was constructed, was at the end of the tidal range on the Ex. Subsequently, its conditions were made even better because Countess Weir was built in the late 13th century. These things here you see are pack horses. I'm not sure they're just put in for effect, but they show the bridge is really shallower than it was at London, so it was possible to protect the bridge by putting in stakes, ballast round the stakes and woven into the stakes where a sort of wattle effect, so that a wattle and stake enclosure into which cobbles were put. Obviously the bridge had its problems and did collapse from time to time, but essentially it worked. These are some marvellous drawings by Stuart Brown. They show that, and I went round with him this last summer and I was quite convinced that the pointed arches and the semicircular or segmental arches were all part of the original build. There's very little sign of fundamental reconstruction where the arches, where the piers might have fallen, which would have led to reconstruction in, say, a pointed style, except for the eighth pier, which we can't see here, which is at the very end, where there was a lot of new work underneath on a pier we knew fell. And here is the pointed arch and the semicircular arch, surprisingly probably of the same date. Nottingham, again quite difficult to date, we have a reference to construction of a bridge there in 1250, but a further reference in the early 14th century. This is a nice mid-18th century drawing that both shows the bridge there with its starlings, you can just see here. And then there was a long pause way to Nottingham, which was at some distance. So until the 19th century, Trent Bridge was in the open countryside. Two arches survived, which at a cursory glance, Jenny Alexander kindly looked at them for me and thought probably of the 14th century. A photograph survives before demolition, and I think you can see here that even at this date some medieval arches survived, but others had been rebuilt in the 1680s and earlier. Interesting here that Edward the Elder built a bridge at Nottingham, which may have been on the site of this, though we can talk about it later if you want. I'm not sure. But there was in Anglo-Saxon times a sort of James Campbell-like powerful state taking the role in bridge building. By the early 14th century, the person building the bridge is Alice Palmer, the widow of a prominent Nottingham merchant. Rochester is like London, the bridge that created the most problems. You see some advances here on London Bridge where there are piled foundations under the piers and then starlings around it. But if anything, so you get, when it was demolished, 10,000 piles were found, it was 560 foot long, and the platforms themselves were 90 foot long and 40 foot wide. But Rochester Bridge did suffer more than London Bridge in that there were constant collapses throughout the 14th century and very large sums of money had to be spent. I mean 10 years, 20 years after it was built, two of the arches had started to crack. In Devon, we have two other very long bridges, Bideford at the top two slides, which was wooden until 1459 and rebuilt in stone sometime in the late 15th century. Barnstable however was built in stone by the 14th century as it was repaired in stone in 1311. Here the foundations were on sand which made it much easier since apparently waterlogged sand is a very good foundation. So what was needed here was the protection of the piers in the same way as they protected Exeter with stakes interlaced with wood into which the cobbles were dropped. Cornwall similarly had its two great bridges, Wade Bridge on the right, this is an 18th century picture, this is a modern picture after widening, and this is Lou Bridge now lost. Wade Bridge is again late 15th century and Lou Bridge was earlier a wooden bridge and rebuilt in stone after 1411. It did have a nice little chapel on one of the piers. Finally, the last and perhaps the greatest of the bridges founded on starlings is Berich. Built over 1,000 feet long, cost £15,000 or a good account, built between 1610 and 24, built because of the Union of the Crowns and sponsored by James I. In 1611 there were 170 men at work and the largest arch was 22 metres. So here you have really quite big arches and now we turn to look at the way that, especially in the north of England, arch size increased over time. Possibly the first effort we can see at creating a larger opening is Elbert Bridge, probably built in the 13th century. The first bridge was built by Hugh de Pwysig but was then rebuilt, it would seem about 1230, though one of La Prisée's arches may be in this round arch here next to one of the bridge chapels, or two chapels on the bridge. Newcastle Bridge has the first strikingly large span and it collapsed in 1771 in the great Tyne floods. But we know from a drawing made at the time that the central arch was 55 foot and two archs on either side were 52. So we're getting really substantially bigger arches than we had at London Bridge. It still had these starlings and Hutton, who wrote the first sort of great work on English bridges, blamed the starlings for its collapse. But as more modern bridges collapse on the Tyne at the same time I'm not really sure. It should perhaps be no surprise that by the mid-thirteenth century arches of considerable size could be built. On the right is the St Thomas's Tower of the late 1270s and on the left is an even greater span in the Ponsante Spree, 1265-1309 with spans of 80 to 114 feet. In England we get larger arches at Chester similar to Newcastle from the mid-fourteenth century. There's good evidence for it being constructed in the mid-fourteenth century but again there's talk about it being broken in the 1380s. So clearly it was a long process of construction. The largest arches is of 60 foot. And it still stands. This was a period when throughout Europe very, very big arches were being constructed. The largest is this of the Castle Vecchio bridge in Verona, built by Canggrande II and has a span of the largest arch. It's so big really that you don't notice how big it is. The largest span of about 50 metres. When I say it's a mid-fourteenth century bridge it's not quite true. It was demolished by the Germans in 1945. So it's a complete reconstruction. Those similar structures were being not quite so big were being constructed throughout the north of England. So this is Framwell Gate, the older bridge of which one arch we saw built by Ronald Flambard was washed away in 1400 and under Bishop Langley from 1407. This bridge of two great arches was finished soon after. The span was 90 foot. Other places in the north are at Kirby Lonsdale. There's no record actually of when it was constructed. There was a Pontage Grant in 1365. There was also a Pontage Grant in 13th century but these could just be for repair. The Royal Commission on Historic Monuments was writing in 1936. So the existing structure couldn't be earlier than the late 15th century because of the round form of the arch. I don't believe that myself but you probably know better than me. Finally of these great arches we have Great Ooze Bridge. A couple of the arches fell in 1565 and in 1566 this vast span of 80 foot was erected. Again it was on starlings and this shows, I think it's drawing by Vali nicely shows the starlings in use. An interesting feature here is the bridge chapel. You see the Lancet windows in the 13th century but this if you can decipher shows that there was also 12th century chapel there. When I first did my research I counted about 100 bridges which had chapels but subsequently have undertaken work with Bruce Watson and Peter McKee and now found there probably as many as 150 and possibly a few more. Now these were mostly on great and urban bridges. McKeeb who with Simco undertook one of the best studies of county bridges that best and most comprehensive and most detailed that for Bedfordshire found only four chapels in the county and one of them in the county town of Bedford. Although the chapels were dissolved by the 6th a number found other uses and were not demolished to the 18th century and indeed a few have survived as I'm sure you know. At York there was a really quite a significant establishment four Chantry priests in 1499 and an inventory supply shows six surplices for children of the choir. They're obviously used for Chantry messes but also were used by people travelling to and fro though the amount is disputed in a great court case from the 1360s Various views John de Cusie, a bunch of York said bluntly men who travel rarely hear mass especially such as he saw during these days journeys that is common men such as merchants. On the other hand another person said that coming from York merchants heard mass on Oos Bridge. The best known surviving bridge Chapel Bridge is at Wakefield dating from the mid 14th century with a licence for the chaplins from 1356. He has another example of just how barbaric our highway engineers are building this bypass bridge so close to the old roadway that it really can't be enjoyed you don't see any pedestrians walking on there at all but I digress. This shows the bridge as it was in the 18th century. In 1847 the west front was completely rebuilt by Gilbert Scott and the old west front was taken to I think it's Kettlethorpe Hall where it formed a very nice boat house at the end of the lake. Alas the hall fell into local authority control was vandalised and the friends of Wakefield Chapel have tried to preserve what's left and this is a less all that's left. Wakefield was the first chapel to be reused for services the first bridge chapel and that happened as long as it goes in 1848. Other chapels were St Ives came back into use in 1930 Rochester in 1937 and a few other chapels subsequently. Chapels could be in various places this one at Catterich was by the end of the bridge and unfortunately there were bridge chapels at all the great west country bridges it was at these great bridges where the ordinary bridges tended not to have chapels. At Wade Bridge the Wade Bridge Institute was found in 1838 on what seems to be in the site of the old chapel Alas it closed in 1912 it is now a bistro and at Barnstable a plan of 1584 shows where the chapel was which was there. A Bristol the chapel was in a most unusual site so here it was built across the roadway providing a very large interior underneath well that is a 16th century map this is a later reconstruction which may be a little better on either side of the opening were council chambers a series of houses were built across this shows the difficult mid-13th century bridge has an unusual in having a fall like the bridge at London and these houses sorry so there were about 150 chapels perhaps more mostly on great bridges or urban bridges many fewer houses on bridges I guess it depended on whether it would be profitable to do so and that required you to be in an urban environment where it made sense to build houses to draw the rents and of course it didn't be on a great bridge and this is Lincoln Bridge heavily restored but giving an impression of what it looked like there were shops and houses at Newcastle here a chapel and a tower with a prison above and a series of shops this slide in some respects gives me the greatest delight it's X Bridge in 1777 it also shows York Bridge with houses and booths here that were subsequently removed shows the old church at Exeter on the bridge and there was a chapel opposite which is well I say barely discernible it's not really discernible at all there's very little evidence of any burials in the chapels on the bridges a skeleton I think was found here there probably wasn't Walter Jerby's who was thought was buried somewhere more prominently but of course it was the parish churches that had the burial rites and for example Henry Yeevely who who built designed and paid for the chapels and Thomas on London Bridge was buried at St Magnus the Martyr St Edmund became a parish church was turned from a chapel into a parish church but the real delight here is this opening here which may be the latrine on Exeter Bridge this was something we discussed in the conference in Paris and I've looked out rivers were perfect places for latrines at London Dick Whittington built a long house near Cannon Street on the banks of the Thames for 64 men and 64 women at York Bridge Wardens built pissing holes in 1544 there was a contract for the local widow to keep them clean just like the sort of situation you often find in many developing countries today she was also asked to ensure that there was no fly tipping and people didn't cast any rubbish in the 16th century we're hearing the Glouster of a common jacks at London the Bridge Wardens spent 11 pounds at Exeter a peck of lime for the latrine Fortnceitney was spent in 1343 and possibly this long vaulted vaulted chamber known as the Pixie or Ferry House and possibly this is it was the latrine on Exeter Bridge as far as I know it's the only illustration we have of a medieval latrine on a bridge and there were similar evidence for latrines of both Salisbury Bristol and Shrewsbury Other public utilities included water towers and here in the early 17th century next to the gate and entrance to D Bridge Chester this water tower was built I think it was somewhat oddly and probably wrongly painted by Randall Holm in the 17th century I'm not really sure it ever looked like this and you see it again here in an 18th century engraving similar water works at London Bridge but there are also towers on the bridge and this is the one you just sort of see here this is the defensive tower built at Chester Bridge in the early 15th century and here we have a better view of it now as a sort of archway to go through there are probably about 30 to 40 depending on how you might define a bridge tower in England in the late Middle Ages they could be on small urban bridges this is Bishop's Bridge in Norwich the tower was demolished in 1791 but you can still see that possibly this structure here reflects where it was it had its uses and played a role in protecting the city from Kett's Rebellion in 1549 there are two surviving bridge towers this is a Walkworth Bridge the bridge itself probably one of those northern bridges with very large spans probably about 1380 it would be very nice to think it was built by John Lewin who some people think might have been building the tower at Walkworth Castle at the same time but it's probably just a bit of wishful thinking at the moment the tower is some disto at a few yards from the bridge but originally as you might see here it was connected to the bridge and I wonder if there was a drawbridge there the 1760s were a bit like the 1960s in being a time of tremendous road improvement and this was the time when most of the bridge towers were demolished Bedford Bridge, the old tower you see here went in 1760 and subsequently as part of a scheme for widening the bridge the good citizens the ruling citizens of Bedford realised because of the increase in traffic they needed to widen the bridge unfortunately they brought in Robert Milne who had recently been building Blackfriars Bridge and he said you don't need an old bridge it's obviously insecure it's going to fall down what you need is a brand new bridge and so instead of being widened at much more expense than had ever been suggested it was rebuilt by Wing in 1810 such was the difficulty in demolishing the bridge that there was now cry and it may be why so many of the other old bridges survive in the area the bridges of course were used like obviously haven't got time to go into it much in warfare Henry Somerset gave me the reference in 1265 Edward I ordered the bridges to be over the 7 to be demolished except Gloucester there were also a lot of alterations often arches were removed in many bridges in the Civil War here we have a drawing of the second half of the 18th century showing that the wooden plank put in for the Civil War was still in place the tower and the bridge were demolished in the early 19th century and after 1770 between 1770 almost all the bridges over the 7 were demolished as part of the spirit of modernisation Worcester which you can see a few remains of a tower there was pulled there in 1781 and the piers were found so strong to be capable of bearing any weight and were with the utmost difficulty demolished Shrewsbury had two bridges this is upside down this is West and this is North you have Welsh Bridge here English Bridge here this is English Bridge the tower was rebuilt in 1545 demolished in 1760s when again the council planned to widen the bridge but after they called in the engineer he said it should be entirely rebuilt and was rebuilt in 1771 Welsh Bridge had two towers which you can see here and here this is the model gate the gate went in 1781 the bridge itself was demolished in 1795 and all that survives then are some of the piers that have been remodernised at Bridge North Bridge there was a tower that that went in the early 19th century and this is a nicer view of it but as I say some of the some of the wider piers survived Last day York sorry last day on this bit of the talk they decided to demolish again they wanted it widened Thomas Harrison suggested demolition demolition went ahead and this is when a man who must often have been at the Antichrist at least John Carter stepped in and complained about the the plan destruction arguing that there should be a bypass bridge he urged he said that the reasons urged for the approaching over through the bridge he wanted room for the rapid dash of equestrians and baroush drivers improving the ready communication on the risk ground instead there should be a bypass bridge alas that stage Carter failed but 20 years later a bypass bridge was built but the spirit of the times was changing and after about 1820 very few bridges were demolished now just look at those which were sorry before I get on to those which were new bridges were built in London but in the Thames around London it was impossible really at this period to build a structure that was more sophisticated or much of an improvement on the starlings used for old London bridge the first bridge near London to be tried was 1729 at Fulham which survived until 1885 and you can see the new bridge being built here he was actually in Aqueduct of 1856 similarly at Westminster a painting by Canaletto of 1746 in fact the bridge wasn't finished until 1749 Lubberley used caissons which were a sort of barge with stones the stone pier in the barge with an opening bottom the place it was to be laid and dropped it was seen as an improvement but very rapidly the pier showed signs of settlement and the bridge was demolished in the mid 19th century so it may have been a little better and people in the 18th century thought it was an improvement but it certainly wasn't an adequate solution to building in these areas the first bridge to be able to use modern bridge techniques was at Waterloo in the early 19th century you can tell from the name when it was built it used cheap piles and was able to make use of water engines to take the water out and for the first time you could use a cofferdam for a Thames bridge near London after that the old bridges started to be demolished so London went in 1831 and Rochester in 1856 there's a wonderful photograph here of the post of demolition and the Royal Engineer said it would be great fun to try dynamite given the difficulty demolishing the bridge and here you see the experiment the last few bridges to go went after 1850 and these were all the last large bridges Lou in 1853 Burton on Trent in 1864 there's the new bridge very straight you can just see the old bridge bending round subsequently people said maybe the old bridge wasn't so bad after all because it was an angle to the river whereas this went straight so although the openings were larger they actually perhaps provided less of a waterway or so it was argued and given the number of medieval archers that survived the case was made that it could have stood perfectly well and this is Nottingham here which was the last to go in 1870 but despite this some of the great estuarine bridges have survived Biddiford, Barnstable and Wade Bridge in the west country here Biddiford had had problems possibly following the great winter of 1863 when there's snow and ice on the bridge the piers were weakened and two of the arches collapsed but it was perfectly possible to repair these by putting in iron rods and modern foundations and the bridge survives well to this day so conclusions how like other bridges the other great bridges was London Bridge well as for the date as you can see quite a lot of building had been done in the 12th century but stone bridges continued to be constructed throughout the medieval centuries and were still going on in the 15th century though by then the network was in very very large part stone the starlings used at London were not widespread they were used when it was necessary but I'm pretty certain that elsewhere from a fairly early date cofferdams could be used and as we've seen there was nothing better in some places than starlings until about 1800 demolition, London Bridge, the houses etc were removed for road improvements in 1760 which was very typical but the demolition in 1831 was really very late for the demolition of medieval bridges the arch spans as we can see those at London were smaller and over the span of the middle ages if you excuse the pun much larger arches were built culminating in the 90 foot span of Franwell Gate which wasn't significantly exceeded until the 19th century as for buildings chapels they were 150 they tended to be an essential part of the great bridges but also in urban settings they were rare outside either of those two locations towers 30 to 40 and were a key part of defences especially in areas where this was important for example along the 7 shops they were fairly rare and I think really more or less a handful as far as I can see only presumably where it was profitable public utilities an impressive number of latrines on medieval bridges providing great service to the public and finally governance by the end of the middle ages this was done by bridge estates because it really was the only adequate way of providing proper maintenance for the bridges so thank you very much