II

Weought not to be surprised that mediæval bridges were connected in a self-evident manner with all the principal motive-powers of social life. They were excellent places where kings and nobles could show off their military ambition, and where the Church could be active in good work done for the safety of wayfaring. Shops on a bridge were valued because of the continuous traffic that brought trade to their doors; and a few private houses on a market bridge gratified a middleclass vanity, that took pride in paying the higher rents of a business thoroughfare. To live on Old London Bridge was a distinction; to be a tradesman on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, or on a timber bridge in Paris, was to be prosperous, for no bridge of shops was wide enough to be unpopular among those who had money to spend. Can anyone explain why the feminine joy of going to market has ever been most adventurous in narrow streets, or in short streets of a mediumwidth?[83]

Whatever the reasons may be, here is a point to be remembered when we study such a bridge as the Rialto, at Venice, which carries three little streets on an arch twenty-four feet six inches high, and ninety-one feet in span, with a soffit about seventy-two feet wide. To-day the Rialto shops are trivial and mean, but in the great time of the Republic they displayed the most luxurious oddments of fashion, and delighted the idle rich. Very often it is said that the Rialto was built from a design by Michelangelo, as if this wonderful master of a tragic and supreme dignity could have amused his leisure with such a pretty whim in ornate building! Modern criticism shows a very poor taste when it repeats this old fallacy, or when it describes the Rialto as a masterpiece of architecture dating from the Renaissance. In comparison with the bridges of Isfahan, which belong to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Rialto is a mere toy. Its origin is the subject ofRondelet’s“Essai Historique sur le Pont de Rialto,”where we watch a great competition between Palladio and Antonio da Ponte. Palladio was the greater man, but the Senate rejected his designs,[84]and in 1588 Antonio da Ponte built his arched scaffold or centring and laid the first blocks of Istrian marble.

In Brangwyn’s picture the Rialto is gay enough to belong to the joyous times of the Republic; and by comparing this picture with the pen-drawings of the bridges at Isfahan, in Persia, it is easy to note the difference in spirit between two cities that attained in the same age their greatest prosperity. In 1590, Isfahan became the capital of Persia; and by this year Venice had recovered from the destructive fire of 1577, and was beautifying herself in many ways, as with the Piazza di San Marco.

THE RIALTOTHE RIALTO, VENICE DESIGNED IN 1588 BY ANTONIO DA PONTE, ARCHITECT

THE RIALTO, VENICE DESIGNED IN 1588 BY ANTONIO DA PONTE, ARCHITECT

At Isfahan no fewer than five old bridges cross the Zendeh Rud, the most ancient being the Pul-i-Marnun, which was built by Shah Tahmasp, who reigned from 1523 to 1575. It is not a great bridge, so it stands apart from the Pul-i-Khaju and the vast Bridge of Ali Verdi Khan, which undoubtedly are among the finest bridges in the world. Their beauty has such a gracious power, such brightness and grandeur, that even the Roman bridge at Alcántara may seem to rival it unsuccessfully. Brangwyn has drawn these Persian masterpieces, but the Pul-i-Khaju alonebelongs to this section on housed bridges—except in some architectural points common to both. Their arches are Moorish, and their builders may have borrowed from the Romans an idea which has come down to our time in at least one antique monument, namely, the ruined aqueduct at Lyon, not far from Saint Irénée. Through the piers of this aqueduct arches are cut transversely, so as to form a side arcade all along the length of the structure. These lateral arches vary much in size, and some of them have been built up. I know not for what purpose they were used; but they lighten the piers, which are uncommonlymassive. It is this arrangement—a vaulted gallery cut through the sides of piers—that we find also at Isfahan in the two historic bridges of the Sefi kings.

THE PUL-I-KHAJUTHE PUL-I-KHAJU OVER THE ZENDEH RUD AT ISFAHAN, PERSIA

THE PUL-I-KHAJU OVER THE ZENDEH RUD AT ISFAHAN, PERSIA

The Pul-i-Khaju has been described many times, but Lord Curzon’s account of it is by far the mostvaluable:—

“The Pul-i-Khaju is shorter than the bridge of Ali Verdi Khan, being only 154 yards in length, owing to a contraction in the bed of the river, which here flows over a ledge of rock. The structure consists, in fact, of a bridge superimposed upon a dam. The latter is built of solid blocks of stone and is pierced by narrow channels, the flow in which can be regulated by sluices. This great platform is broken on its outer edge, the stones being arranged in the form of steps descending to the river-level. Upon the platform or dam repose the twenty-four main arches of the bridge, which is of brick, and the chief external features of which are four projecting two-storeyed hexagonal pavilions, one at each corner, and two larger pavilions of similar shape in the centre, a third storey being erected upon the roof of the more westerly of the two. As in the case of the Julfa Bridge,[85]the basement is pierced by a vaulted passage, running the entire length of the bridge through the piers on the top of the dam, and crossing the successive channels by stepping-stones six feet deep. The main roadway of the bridge, twenty-four feet broad, is also flanked by a covered gallery on each side, leading to the hexagonal pavilions, and opening by a succession of arches on to the outer air.Finally, there is a terrace-walk at the top, which was originally protected by a double parapet and screens. The pavilions were once adorned with rich paintings and gilding, and with panels containing inscriptions. The decoration is now more jejune and vulgar, and the spandrils of the arches are mostly filled in with modern tiles. In olden days this bridge was a favourite resort in the evening, where the young gallants of Isfahan marched up and down, or sat and smoked in the embayed archways overlooking the stream. Now it is well-nigh deserted save in the springtime, when the snows melt in the mountains, and in a few hours the Zendeh Rud is converted from a petty stream into a foaming torrent. Then the good folk of Isfahan crowd the galleries and arcades of the bridge, and shout with delight as the water first rushes through the narrow sluices, then mounts to the level of the causeway and spills in a noisy cascade down each successive stairway or weir, and finally pours through the main arches, still splitting into a series of cataracts as it leaps the broken edges of thedam.”[86]

Such is the Pul-i-Khaju. Her architect’s name is unknown, but she dates from the time of Shah AbbasII, who reigned between the years 1641 and 1666. Even in photographs she is a bridge of enchantment where from time to time all the tired geniuses of the world should go for a romantic holiday; the pavilions certainly await the coming of worthy guests, who would save them from the vulgardecoration which has displaced the old paintings and enrichments. That vaulted arcade in the basement, running transversely through all the piers, and crossing the channels by huge stepping-stones (one of the earliest bridges copied by primitive man from Nature’s object-lessons), has a great historic interest, though in pictures and photographs it attracts very little attention. Was it suggested by a Roman model, or was it rediscovered by the originality of a great architect? I have searched long for an answer to these questions, but in vain.

Perhaps Old London Bridge at her best, after the building of None-such House, in 1576, may have been as entertaining to the eye as is the magic of the Pul-i-Khaju, though inferior to this masterpiece as a work of art. The earliest representation of Old London Bridge comes to us from the fifteenth century, in a miniature that graces the poems of Charles d’Orléans.[87]It shows five piers much broader than the adjacent voids, also a line of picturesque timber houses jutting out from the parapet, and a great chapel of apsidal form, with wrought pinnacles and two tiers of decorated windows. This Gothic church, dedicated toSt.Thomas à Becket, rises from water-level to a height exceeding that of the tallest house on the bridge.

In Howell’s “Londinopolis” (edition of 1657) it is said that during King John’s reign, 1199-1216, a mayor ofLondon, “being master workman of the bridge, builded from the foundation the large chappel on the bridge upon his own charges, which chappel was then endowed with two priests and four clerks, beside chantries.” It was put on the east side; there were two storeys, one with an entrance from the river, the other with a porch on the roadway. So boat-farers had their own place of worship on London Bridge, and they walked to their praying-stools over a pavement of black and white marble. Both storeys were brilliantly lighted; in the upper one there were eight windows.

The first architect of Old London Bridge, Peter Colechurch, “priest and chaplain,” died in 1205, and was buried in the Chapel ofSt.Thomas, just twenty-two years after Saint Bénézet was laid to rest in his bridge chapel at Avignon. Between 1176 and 1183 Colechurch may have had some correspondence with Bénézet, for both were heads of religious bodies engaged at the same time on similar work. “Their letters to one another would interest engineers,” remarks Professor Fleeming Jenkin, as if engineers alone were attracted by Old London Bridge.

In 1176, when Colechurch prepared his designs, everybody was excited about a great and very useful enterprise. The King, the clergy, the citizens of London, even country-folk, endowed the bridge with lands or sent money to hasten its completion. The Archbishop of Canterbury subscribed a thousand marks. During the sixteenth century the list of donors was still to be seen “in a table fair written for posterity,” treasured in the chapel on thebridge.[88]Stow makes no reference to the mayor who at his own expense built the chapel; he says only that Colechurch was buried “in the chapel builded on the same bridge in the year 1205.” Four years later the bridge was finished by three “worthy merchants of London—Serle Mercer, William Almaine, and Benedick Botewrite, principal masters of work.” Their director-in-chief was a Frenchman, brother Isembert by name, whose magnificent bridge at Saintes had delighted King John, and who was chosen to superintend the finishing of Old London Bridge a little while before the death of Colechurch.

In July, 1212, a terrific fire occurred on the bridge, beginning at the Southwark end, but spreading to the houses at the north end also; no fewer than 3000 persons lost their lives. Citizens gathered at the north end to watch the spectacle, and were overtaken by the swift-travelling flames and by panic also. Many jumped into the river and were drowned; others were killed by falling timbers, and many were scorched to death. Again and again, in after years, London Bridge and her chapel were ravaged by fire; as in 1300, in 1471, in 1632, in 1666, and in September, 1725.

Here is Stow’s picture of thehouses:—

“The building was of timber, very substantial and beautiful, for the houses were three stories high, besides the cellars, which were within and between the piers, and over the houses were stately platforms, leaded, with rails andballasters about them, very commodious and pleasant for walking and enjoying so fine a prospect up and down the river, and some had pretty little gardens with arbours.”

All this fine architecture was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, but a still better pile of buildings was put up, and now the houses were separated by a roadway twenty feet wide. In earlier times the passage between the houses ranged in width from twelve feet to fourteen. At last, in 1756, every house on the bridge was pulled down, but the chapel was granted a few years more of life. Guess why? Because some vandal or other was willing to use the chapel as a warehouse. At about the same time the chapel on Rotherham Bridge, Yorkshire, was a tobacco shop. As for the merchant who leased the Chapel ofSt.Thomas à Becket, he built a new ceiling with heavy beams that crossed each other; soon he tired of his warehouse, and then—then the historic old fane was destroyed. A city is like a board meeting—from time to time it has a conscience.

Two other historic facts find a place here. In March, 1782, the right of toll was discontinued, so that Londoners were separated from a direct personal interest in the welfare of their bridge, just as free education separates parents from their most sacred duties. Eight years earlier, in 1774, the waterworks of little windmills were destroyed by fire, after bickering for 192 years under the shadow of Old London Bridge.

The end was drawing near. New London Bridge was begun on March 15th, 1824. George Rennie made thedesigns after studying the Bridge of Augustus at Rimini, and his brother, Sir John Rennie, directed the workmen on a site 200 feet west of the Old Bridge; just as Peter Colechurch crossed the Thames a little west of the earliest known timber bridge built by Londoners.[89]It took only seven years to carry out the designs of Rennie, whereas Colechurch and his successor, the Frenchman Isembert, were busy for thirty-three years. On August 1st, 1831, New London Bridge was opened by WilliamIV, and by the second year of Victoria’s reign the old bridge was dead and gone. It had taken a long time to murder her, fragment by fragment, but yet she lived almost as long as the first Westminster Bridge, designed by M. Labelye, which lasted from 1750 to 1853.

Title or descriptionNEW LONDON BRIDGE, DESIGNED BY GEORGE RENNIE, AND CARRIED OUT BY HIS BROTHER, SIR JOHN RENNIE. OPENED TO THE PUBLIC IN 1831

NEW LONDON BRIDGE, DESIGNED BY GEORGE RENNIE, AND CARRIED OUT BY HIS BROTHER, SIR JOHN RENNIE. OPENED TO THE PUBLIC IN 1831

One purpose of Old London Bridge has been forgotten: she was an arcaded dam, and she deepened the water for shipping on the eastern side. According to Arber’s reprint of “Euphues and his England,” there were twenty arches in all, “whereof each one is made of excellent freestone squared, every one of them being three-score foote in height, and full twenty in distance one from an other.” This latter statement is incorrect. The arches ranged in width from 18 feet to 32 feet 6 inches, and the piers varied in breadth from 25 to 34 feet; they were raised on strong elm piles, covered with thick planks bolted together, and they occupied not less than two-thirds of the waterway.Yet modern engineers played the fool with this ancient breakwater. Several arches were thrown into one large span, so the Thames poured through the bridge with an increased and uneven force; the ground current developed a scour that dug deep holes under the piers, and into these holes tons of stuff were poured ineffectually, for the scour continued to undercut the foundations. Even Labelye’s bridge at Westminster was affected very much by this new devilry in the ground current of the Thames.

It was Euphues who described the old bridge as “a continuall streete, well replenyshed with large and stately houses on both sides.” To-day we have one bridge well replenished with houses (unless the vandalism of trade has made a recent feast of it), but its architecture is not large and stately. I refer to William Pulteney’s Bridge at Bath, an experiment of the eighteenth century, when amateurs trifled with architecture, and architects trifled with amateurs. The structure is sedately prim and dull, but yet it is admirable, for it has tried to renew in England a generative tradition that links every housed bridge to the earliest lake-villages.

So I am glad to say that the crippled old buildings on the High Bridge at Lincoln—a favourite subject of Peter de Wint—have been restored. This work was done, and done very well, thirteen years ago, under the direction of two architects, and a long account of the repairs, with a full-page illustration, was published in “The Builder,” March 21, 1903. The illustration shows the back view of thehouses with the bridge beneath and beyond. The restoration is conservative and excellent, but time alone can mellow it from a thorough newness into a ripe completeness. Even then it will be a poor little monument when compared with its Florentine superior the Ponte Vecchio, which history gives to Taddeo Gaddi and the fourteenth century.

The Ponte Vecchio has but one fault—the long and level roof, which has two parallel lines of a most unpliant straightness. Why should an architect put himself at odds with the curved witchery that Nature gives to her sky-lines and horizons? In other respects the Ponte Vecchio has a charming citizenship haunted by romance. Even the beaked piers are not too large, though they are said to date from the year 1355. Perhaps they were remodelled by Renaissance art; certainly they have a style not unlike that of the great Ammanati. As for the three arches, they are well balanced, their roadway has a gentle slope, and their shape goes about half-way between a cycloid and a surbased round arch. The cycloid form appears in the arches of another Florentine bridge, Ammanati’s masterpiece, the incomparable Ponte della Trinità. Some of the many-windowed tiny cots that project from the parapet of the Ponte Vecchio seem to be stuffy compromises between tombs and homes; they would be fit resting-places for the occasional ghosts that men of science welcome, after infinite hesitation unrelieved by humour.

But I regret always that from the Ponte Vecchio I canget 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 Imay 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 hisresearch.[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.

Title or descriptionTHREE-ARCHED BRIDGE AT VENICE, OVER THE CANAL OFST.GIOBBE. BRICK AND STONE. RENAISSANCE

THREE-ARCHED BRIDGE AT VENICE, OVER THE CANAL OFST.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 ofHenry the Eighth. As an example we can take the Chapel ofSt.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 ofSt.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 timesWakefield Bridge and its chapel were objects of charity. For example, in 1391, the fourteenth year of RichardII, William de Bayley, of Mitton in Craven, leftC 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 HenryVI, 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 inSt.Mary’s Chapel, thanks to the generosity of William Terry and Robert Heth, who obtained licences from RichardII“to give and assign to two chaplains celebrating divine service in the chapel ofSt.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, theother 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 heldthere.[93]

Leland, who returned from his antiquarian tour in 1542, collected in Wakefield a good many suppositions about the origin ofSt.Mary’s Chapel. He was happy there, because a right honest man fared well for “2 pens a meale.” Onthe 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 EdwardIV’s father, or else the Earl of Rutland, brother to EdwardIV, “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 inrei memoriam.”

Very often to-day, as in Leland’s time, the Chapel ofSt.Mary is supposed to have been founded later than 1460, partly to commemorate the battle of Sandal Castle Field, now called the battle of Wakefield, and partly as a monument to a boy of eighteen, poor Edmund Earl of Rutland, second son of the Duke of York, who was murdered by the “black Lord Clifford,” called the Butcher. Then a royal chantry seems to have been founded inSt.Mary’s Chapel, and endowed; but chantries were founded often in bridge chapels, as we have seen in the case of London Bridge (p.217); and so we must not suppose that “chantry” and “chapel” mean always the same thing. Moreover, in architectural character the chapel belongs to about the time of EdwardII, who died in 1327. Thiswas proved by Buckler, and in a charter of about 1358, dated at Wakefield, EdwardIIIsettled “£10 per annum on William Kaye and William Bull and their successors for ever to perform Divine Service in a chapel ofSt.Mary newly built on the bridge atWakefield.”[94]

Still, the precise date of the foundation is unimportant. Scatcherd ascribes it to a time earlier than 1357, and dwells upon a resemblance betweenSt.Mary’s Chapel at Wakefield and Prior Crawden’s Chapel at Ely, 1321-40; he is “almost persuaded” that they were built by the same great architect, Alan deWalsingham.[95]

I chose the story of this bridge chapel as an instance of the desecration thrust upon old English shrines after the Reformation had let loose the creed of self into sect-making zealotry. In the presence of fine art Puritans were often like starving dogs in the presence of raw meat. Though every mediæval bridge without exception was united to the Church by a Christian symbol, a cross or a crucifix, yet the Puritans were so thorough in their fanaticism that only a bridge here and there was allowed to keep even the stump of a smashed cross. Some broken crosses were handed on to Victoria’s time, but highway boards and their parapet repairs destroyed the stumps one by one, as in the case of Ashford Bridge, Derbyshire. A few years ago the stump of a cross had not yet been stripped from one Derbyshirebridge, the Derwent packhorse bridge, but I dare not say that it still remains. At any moment the vandalism of a “restoration” may remind us that our highway boards ought to be guided and disciplined by independent committees of architects and artists. Their work is far less intelligent than that of thePonts et Chausséesin France. And so, what with the ravaging hands of our roadway officials, and what with the destructive sanctity of Puritans, our old bridges and their religious adjuncts have suffered long and much and continually. Many bridge chapels have been destroyed, as at Cromford, Doncaster, Ludlow, Bideford, Richmond (Yorks), Leeds, Newcastle, Barnard Castle, Durham (on the Elvet Bridge), Catterick, Bridgenorth, Bristol, Wallingford, Bedford (St.Thomas’s Chapel, Bunyan’s gaol), and Droitwich, where the high road passed through the chapel, and separated the congregation from the reading-desk and from the pulpit! What a relic of old wayfaring life! Yet it was cleared away as hateful to progress.

A small oratory remains on the bridge at Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire. It is not quite on the same lines as the original structure, for in the seventeenth century its roofing was altered into a sort of dome built with stone. It is a “housing,” a tiny place for a passing prayer, not a chapel; and this class of bridge oratory has become so uncommon that I doubt whether another exists. As Mr. Emanuel Green has said, it “is now perhaps unique,” and “should be carefully preserved.”[96]In recent times neither reverencenor care has been bestowed on this oratory. After the Reformation it was profaned, as a matter of course. For a long time it was used as a “lock-up,” and in 1887 it was a powder magazine!

Its pyramidal roof is crowned with a tall finial, which in its turn carries a pretty wind vane; and in the wind vane we find the emblem ofSt.Nicholas—a gudgeon. The townsfolk used to be known as Bradford gudgeon, and those of them who had been shut up in the little prison on the bridge were said to have been “under the fish and over thewater.”[97]

AtSt.Ives, Huntingdonshire, called Slepe in “Domesday Book,” and Asleep to-day, there is another degraded oratory, a bigger one, with an apsidal termination eastward. Its original parapet has been torn down, and a brick house of two storeys adds greatly to its height. Derby also has a bridge chapel, whose history may be studied in the works of theRev.Dr. Cox; but I am more interested in the oratory on Rotherham Bridge, Yorkshire. Here, as at Wakefield, the chapel stands on a small island, the upper part is corbelled out on each side, and the end against the bridge is carried by a half-arch. The plan is a rectangle about 30ft.by 14ft., while at Wakefield the external width is 20ft.and the total length about 45ft.During many years Rotherham Chapel was almost as beautiful as the masterpiece at Wakefield; and even now, after infinite ill-usage, there is charm in the embattled parapet graced with pinnacles.

BARNARD CASTLEGOTHIC BRIDGE AT BARNARD CASTLE, YORKSHIRE

GOTHIC BRIDGE AT BARNARD CASTLE, YORKSHIRE

We hear of this chapel for the first time in the will of one John Bokyns, who in 1483 left three and fourpence “to the fabric of the chapel to be built on Rotherham Bridge.” There seems to have been no endowment, as this chapel was unnamed by the Commissioners of HenryVIII. In 1681 she was turned into an almshouse, she was a prison in 1778, and also in 1831; but at last she became more reputable as a warehouse. May we hope that her lost window tracery will be renewed, and will she ever be restored to the service of the Church? Her degradation has lasted far too long, certainly, but it is not easy to collect money for church restoration. If our golf fanatics took the matter in hand and made an appeal to the public, their popularity would bring in subscriptions.

From a standpoint of historic social life this irreverence to ancient bridge chapels cannot be anything less than horrible, because the earlier England owed all her best qualities to that faith which preceded Protestantism, and which passed without much injury through the terrible alembics of mediæval war and of social egotism. In Shakespeare himself we find a product of the spectacular display which the old Church had encouraged by her festivals; and it is certain also that Shakespeare could not have been a dramatic poet if the Puritanism of his time had been a leading motive-power of public life, and not merely a writer of unpopular books. No pontist should fail to read the early Puritan scribblers, who give in a frenzy of caricature much valuable social history, without a knowledge ofwhich the sixteenth century cannot be understood. Their language is graphic, and so violent that it takes one’s breath away; but in all reprints, as in those of the New Shakespeare Society, it is kept away from the general reader by the dismal pedantry which copies the freakish spelling of sixteenth-century books.

Let me give, with modernised spelling, an abridged extract from an Elizabethan Puritan, Phillip Stubbes, whose “Anatomy of Abuses” has come at last into the history of historians. My aim is to show three things: a spirit of fierce intolerance not yet popular enough to close the theatres of London, but foolish enough to wreck shrines and to take pride in a very bad system of supposed moral teaching. It was the earlier Cromwell who appointed Sir William Bassett, Knight, to the holy office of shrine destroyer and image breaker; and Bassett, whose humour was killed by zealotry, regarded as sinful things even the baths at Buxton, for he locked them up and sealed them, “that none shall enter to wash ... until your lordship’s pleasure be further known.” Into this novel sanctity Phillip Stubbes poured his abundant venom. Being at heart a thorough Puritan, it never occurred to him that it would be better to educate human nature than to take away from it the discipline of temptation. As in earlier times the better minds and characters had sneaked away from life into nunneries and monasteries, so Phillip Stubbes wished mankind to be a recluse, a hermit, separated by stern laws from everything that folly could abuse. Because minstrelsand mimics sang many a lewd song, as do fools to-day, Stubbes raged against all itinerant clowns, buffoons, and singers, and demanded that they should be put down; by no other means could men be taught to value a little decency and self-respect. His language runsthus:—

“Such drunken sockets and bawdy parasites range the country, rhyming and singing unclean, corrupt and filthy songs, in taverns, ale-houses, inns, and other public assemblies.... Every town, city, and country is full of these minstrels to pipe up a dance to the devil.... But some of them will reply, and say, ‘What, sir! we have licences from justices of the peace to pipe and use our minstrelsy to our best commodity.’ Cursed be those licences which license any man to get his living with the destruction of many thousands! But have you a licence from the archjustice of peace, Christ Jesus? If you have not ... then may you, as rogues, extravagants, and stragglers from the heavenly country, be arrested of the high justice of peace, Christ Jesus, and be punished with eternal death, notwithstanding your pretended licences from earthly men....”

Briefly, the people had degraded their singers, just as to-day they degrade those Sunday newspapers which have the widest circulation; yet Stubbes believed that the people could be saved from themselves if their victims were condemned to everlasting punishment by “the high justice of peace, Christ Jesus.” In like manner the people were to be improved somehow by the destruction of old votive shrines,or by the desecration of the bridge chapels in which for ages the pilgrims of England had solaced their long journeys. HenryVIIIhimself, in 1510, is said to have made a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham, barefooted, and carrying a rich necklace—a light but expensive gift that did not add to his fatigue. Erasmus visited the same great shrine and kissed the relics, and all at once the Virgin nodded at him, owing to the indiscretion of a priest who pulled some strings. In the fourteenth century thirty-eight shrines drew pilgrims to Norfolk; for illness rambled from place to place, feeding a superstitious piety, and praying for that relief which doctors in their wild ignorance could not give. The shrines of Europe were the only physicians that the sick dared to trust.

SHRINES AT ELCHEGOTHIC BRIDGE WITH SHRINES AT ELCHE IN SPAIN

GOTHIC BRIDGE WITH SHRINES AT ELCHE IN SPAIN

Many a pilgrim visited the PontSt.Bénézet at Avignon, and legend speaks also of miracles; the good friar was buried in his bridge chapel, and during his life he healed the sick and the maimed. I know not why legend should say these things, since Bénézet did quite enough good work by building his noble structure over the Rhône, a terrible river. A Roman bridge had occupied the same spot, so that Bénézet may have used some of the Roman foundations. His work, in any case, was done with unusual rapidity, being finished in eight years (1177-1185).[98]In Brangwyn’s glorious picture of the PontSt.Bénézet oneromantic feature is the friar-architect’s tomb, the venerable Chapel ofSt.Nicholas; and historians dwell upon the fact that never once has the chapel been injured by floods or by wars. All has been wrecked except the four arches dominated by the shrine ofSt.Bénézet. Pope ClementVI(1342-1352) had to rebuild four arches; in 1395, during a fierce attack on the palace of the Popes, the bridge was cut by the Catalans and Aragonese, who destroyed an arch; and this breach was not repaired with stone till the year 1418. The masonry was not good, for in 1602 the arch gave way and caused the loss of three others. Disaster followed disaster, two arches falling in 1633 and two in the winter of 1670. Turn to the Sieur Tassin’s“Plans et Profils des principales Villes et Lieux considérables de France,”issued in 1652, and you will find a view of Saint Bénézet’s Bridge, with two arches missing on Barthelasse Island, and three on the great arm of the Rhône. As a rule such gaps were bridged with timber, because a French bridge cut in war could not be repaired until permission had been gained from the foe who had done the damage. This curious fact in mediæval history I take from Viollet-le-Duc; and it may help to explain why the masterpiece ofSt.Bénézet was allowed to perish.

Bénézet constructed twenty-one[99]arches, and the line of his bridge made an elbow pointing upstream, beyond Barthelasse Island, on the Villeneuve branch of the Rhône.Two ideas governed this angular disposition: first, to thrust into the river a tremendous wedge of arcaded stonework to resist floods; next to thwart an attack by cavalry and infantry; since a bridge with a bend in it would be more difficult to storm than a level and straight footway. In Spain there are several bridges of this angular sort, notably a very long one over the Pisuerga at Torquemada; and in Corsica also there is a fine example, but in caricature, the bridge over the Tavignano being shaped like aZ. Bénézet made another concession to tactical defence: his bridge was only 4 metres 90 wide, including the thickness of the parapets, so it was very narrow in proportion to the nine hundred metres of its length. Just a few soldiers in a line could have walked along it from end to end; and wheeled traffic must have been hindered, for at one point—face to face with the chapel—the roadway dwindled to half its breadth. Even in times when carts and chariots were long and narrow, a journey across this bridge on a market day must have been an adventure.

This cramped road over the Rhône was the only permanent way connecting the Papal territory of Avignon and the French territory of Languedoc. Many troubles arose on this account, and France never rested till she had gained control over the Pont Saint-Bénézet and Avignon. A century after Bénézet’s death the King of France put up a bullying fortress on the right bank, and closed the Villeneuve entrance whenever he liked. For about fifty years Avignon took no steps to counterbalance this attack on her liberties;then a Bastille was built on her side of the river, and now the Pont Saint-Bénézet was nearly as martial as the Bridge of Saintes (p.300) or as the Pont d’Orléans, which from October 12, 1428, to the arrival of Jeanne d’Arc on April 29, 1429, aided Gaucour to baffle the earls of Salisbury and Suffolk. In the eighth year of the fifteenth century the contention between France and Avignon reached a crisis, not at all an infrequent thing in their history; but this crisis of 1408 unseated the Papacy at Avignon, and expelled BenedictXIII, bringing to an end a religious domination which had lasted in the city for ninety-nine years.

It is clear from this brief record of events that the PontSt.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 aquarter 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 100,000B.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 forbidpour toujoursa 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?

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