OLD TOWN BRIDGEAN OLD TOWN BRIDGE IN PERUGIA, ITALY, TO ILLUSTRATE A POINTED ARCH WHICH HAS IN ITS CURVE A SORT OF LINGERING SENTIMENT FOR THE ROUND ARCH OF THE ROMANSIV
OLD TOWN BRIDGEAN OLD TOWN BRIDGE IN PERUGIA, ITALY, TO ILLUSTRATE A POINTED ARCH WHICH HAS IN ITS CURVE A SORT OF LINGERING SENTIMENT FOR THE ROUND ARCH OF THE ROMANS
AN OLD TOWN BRIDGE IN PERUGIA, ITALY, TO ILLUSTRATE A POINTED ARCH WHICH HAS IN ITS CURVE A SORT OF LINGERING SENTIMENT FOR THE ROUND ARCH OF THE ROMANS
CONTROVERSIES
Studentsare tested and judged by their attitude to controversies. Common sense should keep them from partisanship; and when they feel tempted to look on as mere spectators, they should remember that crowds at boxing matches are very apt to form wrong opinions. It is better by far to laugh at both sides by caricaturing the weak points of a discussion. In a few days a student will learn which side is the more difficult tocaricature, and this knowledge will help him to sift all rubbish from a controversy and to form a judgment of his own on facts and on inferences. As Sir Thomas Browne said, a man should be something that all men are not, and individual in somewhat beside his person and his name.
The bridges at Albi and Espalion have caused some men to break old friendships over a simple question, namely: “When were pointed arches used for the first time in French bridges? At what date were they brought from the East?” As the pointed arch was copied by Europeans, not invented by them, the precise date of the mimicry ought not to excite a pontist; it is a thing for antiquaries to be flurried about. If the question ran in another form: “Was the pointed arch in French bridges an independent discovery?” then a battle and some exploded reputations would be worth while. But no such hypothesis has been put forward by either side in a warm dispute. One party declares that as early as the time of Charlemagne, towards the end of the eighth century, or the beginning of the ninth (768-814), a French builder seems to have played the part of the sedulous ape to Eastern architecture, cribbing the pointed arch, and using it without much skill in the bridge of Espalion, whose construction (as documents prove incontestably) was ordered by Charlemagne himself. In this bald statement there is no challenge, no provocation; it is nothing more than a conjecture supported by a documented fact.
If Charlemagne had been a weak ruler, like Louis the Indolent, it would be fair to suppose that his commandswere neglected more often than obeyed; then we could not accept his character as a fact of greater value in a controversy than a command of his mentioned in authentic documents. Let us say that the Black Prince or his father ordered a bridge to be built at a given place; we have documents to prove this, and at the place named in the documents a very old bridge is extant. Should we not read these documents by the light of the reputation won by the Black Prince or by his father? Myself, I should say at once, “His orders were obeyed.” And so, too, in the case of Charlemagne. I accept his character as a guarantee that he was obeyed at Espalion; and in this I am supported by Charlemagne’s general attitude to roads and bridges. It was he who made many an effort to keep the highways in repair, trying to rescue them from the great disorder into which their administration had been thrown by the decline and fall of the Romans. He created the right to exact tolls, and sanctioned on the roads the use of statute labour and of fatigue duty done by soldiers. During his reign of forty-six years he restored much Roman work and set in movement a system that did not overtax the poor finances of his Empire; but after his death the Empire was divided and continual wars put an end to civil advancement.
As Charlemagne needed a bridge at Espalion we may believe that a bridge was built there between the years 768 and 814. Does the bridge still exist, or was it rebuilt in the twelfth century, or later? There is no evidence on these points; hence the controversy. Those who think itpossible, if not probable, that the bridge as it is now, apart from periodical repairs, belongs to Charlemagne’s reign, draw arguments from the uncouth workmanship; and even their opponents admit that the bridge is “une œuvre barbare n’offrant absolument aucun intérêt: a barbaric work without any interest at all”[23](as architecture). Why, then, should any Frenchman wish to assign this barbaric bridge to a much later century than the eighth? Ah! Here we touch once again the influence of conventions. A belief current among antiquaries has connected the pointed arch with the first Crusade, and so with the last decade of the eleventh century (1095) and the first years of the twelfth. Godfrey of Bouillon, on July 15, 1099, was made King of Jerusalem, and before this date many Crusaders had returned home. M. Degrand says: “At this time, about the year 1100, Crusaders returned to France after their stay in the East, notably at Antioch, where monuments of Persian origin must have been numerous; and without doubt they brought home with them sufficient knowledge to introduce the pointed vault into the national architecture. Thus it is easy to understand why the twelfth century has been chosen as the date for the earliest work done in France with the pointed style. We conjecture, then, that the bridges at Espalion and Albi, in their present state, have not the antiquity which supposition has given to them; and that they must have been rebuilt (ils ont dû être reconstruits) after the periods from which their first construction dates.”
BRIDGE AT ESPALIONFAMOUS BRIDGE AT ESPALION IN FRANCESAID TO DATE FROM THE EIGHTH CENTURY
FAMOUS BRIDGE AT ESPALION IN FRANCESAID TO DATE FROM THE EIGHTH CENTURY
This argument has a tongue and no legs. Even Nature in the Pont d’Arc at Ardèche had given a pointed arch to France;[24]and how can we dare to suppose that no traveller from the East in the time of Charlemagne could have brought with him to Espalion any knowledge of pointed arches? Was this knowledge guarded so carefully that nothing less than a Crusade could bring it to France? Intelligent soldiers would certainly note the details of Eastern architecture, and when they returned home their talk and their tales would be listened to with eagerness by French craftsmen. More than this we have no right to believe. It is mere hollow claptrap to argue that no French architect or builder could have received earlier news of the pointed arches. But claptrap—is it not the drum of controversy? It makes a great noise, and gives men heart to fight for poor beliefs.
So irrational has this controversy become that even M. Degrand, a most thoughtful pontist as a rule, includes the bridge at Albi in his defective argument, though it cannot be older than the year 1035, because at this date its construction was arranged at a great public meeting held by the Seigneur of Albi and the clergy. Not even then was it possible for a Frenchman to know that pointed arches were common in the East! M. Degrand accepts thedate 1035, and thinks it probable that the building was “begun” then or a few years later; “but,” he adds, “we have no proof that the bridge existed before 1178, in which year, according to a contemporary document, a body of troops used it to cross the Tarn.” If M. Degrand were able to prove that Albi Bridge was new in the year 1178, then we should forget his conventional belief in the first Crusade; a fact would be very welcome after his parade of idle suppositions. Further, the meeting of 1035 must guide us until we know that its decision wasnotcarried into action. It is a policy of evasion to argue as follows: “In the Middle Ages building projects were often delayed, as in the case of the noble brick bridge at Montauban;[25]so we cannot attach any importance to the meeting of 1035 at Albi. Though the desire to have a bridge was approved then by the Seigneur, by the clergy and by the people, yet a hundred and one things may have intervened between the project and its realisation. In 1178 a bridge at Albi was strong enough to be used without risk by troops, but why connect it with the meeting of 1035? To do so would be rash indeed, since our aim is to add a pointed arch to the cross worn by the Crusaders.”
So we turn to the evidence of workmanship; and here again we can shoot at M. Degrand with his own bullets. To show that Albi Bridge is a clumsy structure without art is to prove it unworthy of the year 1178, when the PontistFriars were active in France, and when at Avignon the genius of Saint Bénézet was planning a wonderful achievement. The more just fault we can find with Albi Bridge as a piece of building, the more fit we make it for the year 1035. Yet M. Degrand, passing from wayward controversy into art-criticism, gives himself away in an excess of fault-finding. He forgets that the bridge, a bad model as architecture, is uncommonly picturesque, and he writes as follows: “There are seven pointed arches, and their spans vary—without order or regulation—from 9 m. 75 c. to 16 m.; the piers in bulk are variable also, some of them being 6 m. 50 c. thick, that is to say, two-thirds of the adjacent voids; they are badly aligned and the spandrils belong almost all to different planes. The breakwaters jut out too far, and meet the current with angles of even less than forty-five degrees; while the buttresses behind, on the down-stream side, are rectangular and almost without projection. Last of all, there is no ornament to dress the nude spandrils and to set them apart from the parapets.C’est là, en fait, une œuvre barbare....”
Let us conjecture, then, that this barbaric bridge at Albi, with its seven pointed arches, may belong, not to the time of Saint Bénézet, but to the year 1035, or thereabouts. Nearly a century ago, in 1822, it was considerably enlarged, but the arches were not rebuilt. The bridge must have been restored many times, but there is no proof that it was reconstructed in the thirteenth century or in the twelfth. Besides, sportsmen in a controversy should be fair. Yet agood many books of reference say: “The Pont du Tarn at Albi, whose first construction goes back to the year 1035 or 1040, is thirteenth-century work”—a calumny on a very beautiful period in the evolution of Gothic architecture. We should have far too much admiration for the Valentré Bridge at Cahors to give the Pont du Tarn to the thirteenth century; and several other bridges in France do ample justice to the successors of Saint Bénézet. For example, there is the PontSt.Esprit, a masterpiece of the Pontist Friars, and a work so vast in length that Brangwyn is never tired of recalling his first impressions of its magnitude.[26]If, again, we wish to study work that comes to us from the twelfth century, then we turn to the famous bridges at Béziers and Carcassonne.
PONT DU TARNPONT DU TARN AT ALBI IN FRANCE. SAID TO DATE FROM ABOUT THE YEARS 1035-40
PONT DU TARN AT ALBI IN FRANCE. SAID TO DATE FROM ABOUT THE YEARS 1035-40
As to the bridge at Espalion, it has four unequal arches, and three of them are pointed, more or less. Their form is experimental, and seems to mark a first experiment in pointed Gothic. One arch, indeed, when looked at from underneath, might be an ill-planned Roman arch, so poor is its “ogival” or pointed shape; but yet the bridge, as the Brangwyn sketch bears witness, shows how an effort was made to free craftsmen from the convention of semicircular vaults. If we connect it with the age of Charlemagne we may argue thus: “Perhaps the masons were among those who at times restored a neglected Roman bridge; and perhaps the bridgemaster had gained some knowledge of Eastern arches, either at first-hand or from travellers orfrom drawings. East and West were united then as they were in much earlier times, so that information from each must have been conveyed to the other.” On the other hand, if we guess that the first bridge at Espalion was rebuilt in the twelfth century or in the thirteenth, then we must say also that the town of Espalion was too lazy even to seek advice from the Pontist Friars. Larousse has set forth the position very well: “The most ancient of the extant bridges, constructed in mediæval France, appears to be the one at Espalion (A.D.780); its date is contested because we find it associated with the pointed arch; but this arch already had been used for two centuries in theEast.”[27]
So we may conclude, in a conjecture perhaps strong enough to be called a hypothesis, that the pointed style in architecture may have been brought to France on three occasions: in the reign of Charlemagne, then in the first half of the eleventh century, and then after the first Crusade. There is no need to set much store by the second presumed inspiration, since the idea for Albi Bridge may have been taken from the Pont du Tarn at Espalion.
England as well as France has a controversy over arches; and I mention the fact because of Brangwyn’s masterly pen-drawing of the Monnow Bridge at Monmouth—a fortified work of the Middle Ages. In this bridge the arches are ribbed, like those in the bridges at Kirkby Lonsdale, and Warkworth, and Rotherham, at Baslow andBakewell, in Eamont Bridge at Penrith, at Ross in Herefordshire (Elizabethan), and elsewhere. When was the ribbed arch first used in bridges?
The use of ribbed vaulting in English churches dates from the twelfth century; it came to England from France. Yet Scotland, the historic friend of France, used it very rarely in bridges; perhaps only once, in the famous Old Bridge of Dee near Aberdeen, which dates from the beginning of the sixteenth century. Mr. G. M. Fraser, a Scotch pontist, tells me that he has looked in vain throughout Scotland for another example. Old Stirling Bridge, and the Brig o’ Doon, and the Auld Brig o’ Ayr, and Devorgilla’s Bridge at Dumfries, all finely historic and various, have plain arches. On the other hand, ribbed arches are fairly common in North English bridges. One of the best examples architecturally is the graceful single arch that Sir Walter Scott loved in Twizel Bridge, that enabled Lord Surrey to outflank the Scotch before the battle of Flodden Field.[28]Why the frugal Scotch were unattracted by a new and thrifty way of building I cannot explain, unless by supposing that they loved convention even more than a hard economy. Viollet-le-Duc estimates that inarcs-doubleaux, or ribbed arches, builders use a third less of tooled and clavated masonry; hence a great saving not of cost only, but of dead weight also.
And there were other economies. Anarc-doubleauis the simplest form of ribbed vaulting: at given intervals in the building of a vault a concentric arch is supposited, or the vault itself at intervals is made much thicker than at others. In Poitou, where ribbed bridges were studied by Viollet-le-Duc, the intervals between the ribs are filled in with flagging under the roadway; and with this material—or with ashlar—the spandrils above the ribs are packed. When flagstones are used, and rain-water filters down from the roadway, no harm is done; the wet trickles away through the joints of the flagstones, without causing the haunches of an arch to throw out saltpetre: a mishap that occurs often when arches are unribbed. I am writing here with the mind of Viollet-le-Duc, who makes two other valuable statements: first, that ribbed bridges are notable in Poitou; next, that they seem to belong to the beginning of the thirteenth century, or perhaps even to the end of the twelfth.
Now it was in 1214 that King John invaded Poitou without success; fifteen years later HenryIIImisconducted an expedition to the same province; and again in 1242 he landed in Poitou to be thrashed at Taillebourg. His aim, like that of John, was to win back the Empire of HenryII. May we then suppose that ribbed bridges came to us from Poitou? Certainly the mind of England during the first half of the thirteenth century was drawn towards the seaward provinces of France.
Still, it was the Cistercians of the twelfth century whointroduced ribbed vaulting into English churches,[29]and why not into bridges as a development therefrom? At a time when bridges were united to the Church in many ways, new methods in sacred architecture would be passed on to bridge-building. Not only were bridges protected by the Church (p.40), many were built by the lay clergy and by the monastic orders; and when a bridge had neither a chapel nor a little place for prayer, it was sanctified by a shrine, or—and this was usual—by a cross or crucifix raised up from the parapet above the middle arch. It marked the centre of the bridge, and I dare say peasants believed that it prevented evil spirits from passing above running water. Altogether, it is very probable that the first ribbed bridges were built in the twelfth century, though I have no quite conclusive evidence to offer from extant examples.
PONT DE VERNAYLE PONT DE VERNAY, AIRVAULT, DEUX-SÈVRES. A FAMOUS BRIDGE WITH RIBBED ARCHES, FRENCH ROMANESQUE PERIOD,XIICENTURY
LE PONT DE VERNAY, AIRVAULT, DEUX-SÈVRES. A FAMOUS BRIDGE WITH RIBBED ARCHES, FRENCH ROMANESQUE PERIOD,XIICENTURY
The six pointed arches in New Bridge on Thames, near Kingston, are very well ribbed, but they are Early English, not Norman; they belong to the early part of the thirteenth century. At Fountains Abbey, Yorkshire, are two small bridges, one Norman, the other Early English; both were built by Cistercian monks, yet neither has ribbed arches, so that I supply you with a fact that runs counter to my hypothesis. At Durham there are two bridges reputed to be of Norman origin, and one of them has two ribbed arches with a span of ninety feet. It is the Framwellgate Bridge at the north end of the city. According to the eleventhedition of the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” Framwellgate Bridge was “built in the thirteenth century and rebuilt in the fifteenth,” but no authorities are given, and counter evidence may be accepted as more probable. For example, William Hutchinson[30]says without hesitation, giving references, that Framwellgate Bridge was built by Bishop Flambard who died in 1128, after holding the See of Durham for 29 years 3 months and 7 days. Flambard “fortified the castle with a moat, and strengthened the banks of the river, over which he built an arched bridge of stone, at the foot of the castle, now called Framwellgate Bridge.” In the fifteenth century the bridge was restored by the famous Bishop Fox, who began his reign at Durham in 1494, and died in 1502. There is no evidence to show that the restoration was a rebuilding, and the character of the arches does not belong to the time of Bishop Fox. Even Parker, in his “Glossary of Architecture,” 1850, is not surprised that the Framwellgate Bridge should be given to the Norman period, for he mentions this attribution and describes the ribbed arches as perfect. The parapet is scorned as “modern.” For many years—I know not how long—a large gateway-tower stood at one end of this bridge, but in 1760 it was taken down.
One of the most famous Norman bridges in Old England was the one that crossed the Lea at Stratford-at-Bow. It was founded and endowed by Queen Mathilda, wife of HenryI. In 1831, eight years before its demolition,a print was issued of Bow Bridge, and ribs can be seen under two of the three arches. The central arch is represented in a direct front view, so the vaulting cannot be studied; but Lewis, who in 1831 published his “Topographical Dictionary of England,” found ribs in the three arches. So a very important question arises here: Was Bow Bridge ever rebuilt? M. J. J. Jusserand shall answer this question; he has read all the evidence, he makes no reference to ribbed arches, he is unbiassed, and his pictures arelively:—
“Whether Queen Mathilda (twelfth century) got wetted or not, as is supposed, on passing the ford of the river at Stratford-atte-Bow—that same village where afterwards the French was spoken which amused Chaucer—it is certain that she thought she did a meritorious work in constructing two bridges there. Several times repaired, Bow Bridge was still standing in 1839. The Queen endowed her foundation, granting land and a water-mill to the Abbess of Barking with a perpetual charge thereon for the maintenance of the bridge and the neighbouring roadway. When the Queen died, an abbey for men was founded at the same Stratford close to the bridges, and the Abbess hastened to transfer to the new monastery the property in the mill and the charge of the reparations. The Abbot did them at first, then he wearied of it, and ended by delegating the looking after them to one Godfrey Pratt. He had built this man a house on the causeway beside the bridge, and made him a yearly grant. For a long time Pratt carried out the contract, ‘getting assistance,’ says an inquiry of EdwardI(1272-1307),‘from some passers-by, but without often having recourse to their aid.’ Also he received the charity of travellers, and his affairs prospered. They prospered so well that the Abbot thought he might withdraw the pension; Pratt indemnified himself in the best way he could. He set up iron bars across the bridge and made all pay who passed over,[31]except the rich, for he made prudent exception ‘for the nobility; he feared them and let them pass without molesting them.’ The dispute terminated only in the time of EdwardII, when the Abbot recognised his fault, took back the charge of the bridge, and put down the iron bars, the toll, and Godfrey Pratt himself.“This bridge, over which no doubt Chaucer himself passed, was of stone, the arches were narrow and the piers thick; strong angular buttresses supported them and broke the force of the current; these formed at the upper part a triangle or siding which served as a refuge for foot-passengers, for the roadway was so narrow that a carriage sufficed to fill the way. When it was pulled down in 1839, it was found that the method of construction had been very simple. To ground the piers in the bed of the river the masons had simply thrown down stones and mortar till the level of the water had been reached. It was remarked also that the ill-will of Pratt or the Abbot or of their successors must have rendered the bridge almost as dangerous at certain moments as the primitive ford had been. Thewheels of vehicles had hollowed such deep ruts in the stone and the horses’ shoes had so worn the pavement that an arch had been at one time piercedthrough.”[32]
“Whether Queen Mathilda (twelfth century) got wetted or not, as is supposed, on passing the ford of the river at Stratford-atte-Bow—that same village where afterwards the French was spoken which amused Chaucer—it is certain that she thought she did a meritorious work in constructing two bridges there. Several times repaired, Bow Bridge was still standing in 1839. The Queen endowed her foundation, granting land and a water-mill to the Abbess of Barking with a perpetual charge thereon for the maintenance of the bridge and the neighbouring roadway. When the Queen died, an abbey for men was founded at the same Stratford close to the bridges, and the Abbess hastened to transfer to the new monastery the property in the mill and the charge of the reparations. The Abbot did them at first, then he wearied of it, and ended by delegating the looking after them to one Godfrey Pratt. He had built this man a house on the causeway beside the bridge, and made him a yearly grant. For a long time Pratt carried out the contract, ‘getting assistance,’ says an inquiry of EdwardI(1272-1307),‘from some passers-by, but without often having recourse to their aid.’ Also he received the charity of travellers, and his affairs prospered. They prospered so well that the Abbot thought he might withdraw the pension; Pratt indemnified himself in the best way he could. He set up iron bars across the bridge and made all pay who passed over,[31]except the rich, for he made prudent exception ‘for the nobility; he feared them and let them pass without molesting them.’ The dispute terminated only in the time of EdwardII, when the Abbot recognised his fault, took back the charge of the bridge, and put down the iron bars, the toll, and Godfrey Pratt himself.
“This bridge, over which no doubt Chaucer himself passed, was of stone, the arches were narrow and the piers thick; strong angular buttresses supported them and broke the force of the current; these formed at the upper part a triangle or siding which served as a refuge for foot-passengers, for the roadway was so narrow that a carriage sufficed to fill the way. When it was pulled down in 1839, it was found that the method of construction had been very simple. To ground the piers in the bed of the river the masons had simply thrown down stones and mortar till the level of the water had been reached. It was remarked also that the ill-will of Pratt or the Abbot or of their successors must have rendered the bridge almost as dangerous at certain moments as the primitive ford had been. Thewheels of vehicles had hollowed such deep ruts in the stone and the horses’ shoes had so worn the pavement that an arch had been at one time piercedthrough.”[32]
This perforated arch proves pretty conclusively that Bow Bridge was never rebuilt; but I look upon doubt as an excellent thing in one’s attitude to matters of this kind, partly because fresh evidence may be discovered, and partly because facts are woefully elusive even when they are tackled by judges, and barristers, and juries.
There is one more controversy to be considered: it centres around the famous bridges on Dartmoor, and I will try to put all the main points both clearly and fairly. In this dispute architects contend against antiquaries, and their arguments hold the field. Let me sum themup:—
The “clapper” bridges over Dartmoor rivers are not difficult to study; their construction resembles that of cromlechs and Stonehenges. Their piers were evolved from menhirs, and their table slabs from the mass of rock forming the horizontal member of a cromlech. Nor is it difficult to suggest the evolution through which the clapper bridges have passed, for on Dartmoor itself the evolution is plainly suggested by the rude bridge at Okery and by the single slab at Walla Brook. Any primitive farmer of the Bronze Age had sense enough not merely to put a ledge of granite across the Walla Brook, but to span wider rivers by using menhirs to support large blocks ofgranite. Timber would not be used, since trees were very scarce on Dartmoor, while granite was so abundant that it must have been very troublesome to farmers.
Now the pastoral life of the Bronze Age was very active in the Dartmoor settlements; all antiquaries make much ado over this fact, yet they fail to see that the circulation of this farm life, the movement here and there of flocks and herds, required bridges, for the rivers then were not less wayward than they are now. Without bridges the farms would have stagnated. And another thing also needed the help of bridges: many domestic fires burnt a great deal of peat and wood, and wood had to be imported from neighbouring districts, probably in exchange for live stock. So, to visualise the farm life is to make it dependent on a ceaseless movement to and fro over very freakish rivers, which after rains and thaws were exceedingly turbulent and perilous. Deep gorges have been worn in the rocks through which the rivers flow; this alone is enough to prove that such wild rivers could not be forded by the tiny sheep and the small cattle of the Bronze Age. Even in mediæval times, as Thorold Rogers has proved, sheep were about as big as Mary’s little lamb; they were bred because their wool was the wealth—the Golden Fleece—that made England prosperous; and yet their cultivation failed to add to their national value by increasing their size. Sheep of the Bronze Age were probably smaller still; and how were they to cross the Dartmoor rivers unless bridges were built? Could sheep in those days swim like ducks, or did they float asnaturally as logs? And since bridges must have been made here and there in order to keep the farming life from ruin, are we to suppose that the abundant granite blocks would not be used for piers and table stones? Are we to forget the instinctive delight in rude stonework shown everywhere by the dusky, short-statured race which for convenience we call Iberian?
The research of antiquaries may be good or bad. What has it done for the life of these clapper bridges? Has it proved that the present ones are probably younger than the Middle Ages, but that they had many predecessors going back to pre-Roman times? On the other hand, have antiquaries proved that in the Middle Ages a primitive phase of building was revived in Dartmoor, partly because it was good enough for the traffic, partly because it was inexpensive? The absence of lime on Dartmoor would influence the mediæval settlers and govern their building work. But in this discussion it matters not whether the present bridges be old or young; in either case they represent primeval methods. Between the Bronze Period and the Middle Ages all the earliest slab bridges may have disappeared; if so, then settlers on Dartmoor brought with them knowledge enough of cromlechs to recall the Iberian stonecraft, just as in modern times architects have revived phases of Gothic and phases of Classic. Every possibility is entertaining, but why is it that antiquaries in their remarks on the clapper bridges try to be elusive as well as dogmatic? For example, Mr. William Crossing is of opinionthat the larger clapper bridges have had their age overestimated probably because their rough and massive appearance makes them very striking. Why “probably”? He adds that they are mostly in the line of pack-horse tracks, and were probably built by farm settlers. “Probably” again! Yet he gives no evidence. Even Mr. Baring-Gould is equally dogmatic in devious assertions that have no value to any architect. Like Mr. Crossing, he attributes the “clappers” to the period of pack-horses, and sees nothing in them to indicate a great antiquity. What next? Is primitive stonework insufficiently antique whatever its age may be? And who is to estimate the age of rude granite blocks?
I have summed up with fairness the views of architects, and they ought to hold the field in the judgment of all pontists. The antiquarian talk about pack-horse tracks has no cogency, for the prehistoric tracks over Dartmoor are the first pathways along which the controversy must ramble. A pontist, then, when visiting Dartmoor, has to do four things.
1. To visualise the farm life of the Bronze Age;2. To reconnect it with the rivers and with the necessary trade in wood for household fires and for tool handles;3. Then he will realise that bridges were essential, and that they would be made with the granite blocks which Nature had provided.4. Then, too, he will see that the larger clapper bridges are merely flat cromlechs built over water, and that it matters not when the present ones were put up, since their main interest is their descent from those rude monuments of stone in which the Iberian people commemorated their cult of ancestors, their reverence for the sacred dead.
1. To visualise the farm life of the Bronze Age;
2. To reconnect it with the rivers and with the necessary trade in wood for household fires and for tool handles;
3. Then he will realise that bridges were essential, and that they would be made with the granite blocks which Nature had provided.
4. Then, too, he will see that the larger clapper bridges are merely flat cromlechs built over water, and that it matters not when the present ones were put up, since their main interest is their descent from those rude monuments of stone in which the Iberian people commemorated their cult of ancestors, their reverence for the sacred dead.
Near Postbridge, over the East Dart, there is a very bold clapper with three heavy table slabs, each of which is about 15ft.long and 6ft.wide. Two piers rise out of the water; each is a pile of granite menhirs that lie flat in the river with their ends looking up-stream and downstream. The abutments also are layers of granite, and in one abutment the stones are long enough to support on land a very large cromlech. Samuel Smiles believed that this bridge had “withstood the fury of the Dart for full twenty centuries,” but there was no need to challenge antiquaries by making a rash statement. For the rest, we must bracket these Dartmoor structures with two other kinds of slab-bridges—those in the valley of Wycollar (p.60), and those in Spain, at Fuentes de Oñoro. My friend Mr. Edgar Wigram writes to me as follows about the Spanishvariety:—
BRIDGE OVER THE AUDETHE OLD BRIDGE OVER THE AUDE AT CARCASSONNE IN FRANCE
THE OLD BRIDGE OVER THE AUDE AT CARCASSONNE IN FRANCE
“I include this very rough sketch because it does give some idea of one of the ‘Clapper’ slab-bridges at Fuentes de Oñoro. The bigger stone would be about 8ft.long. As to the more important slab-bridge over the Dos Casas rivulet, it stands in a glen where large slabs lie handy. Ican speak of it from recollection only, but think it has four spans, about 3ft.6ins.high, or perhaps 4ft.; the lintel-stones perhaps 7ft.or 8ft.long, centre to centre of piers, and the piers of single stones planted in the river bed, with the longer axes up- and down-stream. A causeway led up to the bridge at each end. Even at the time the solidity of the structure aroused in me a suspicion that itmightbe very old. On the other hand, it may be a recent work of convenience, not of necessity, for the stream in summer is often dry, and in winter it would not be unfordable (except for children) till it had submerged the bridge.”
“I include this very rough sketch because it does give some idea of one of the ‘Clapper’ slab-bridges at Fuentes de Oñoro. The bigger stone would be about 8ft.long. As to the more important slab-bridge over the Dos Casas rivulet, it stands in a glen where large slabs lie handy. Ican speak of it from recollection only, but think it has four spans, about 3ft.6ins.high, or perhaps 4ft.; the lintel-stones perhaps 7ft.or 8ft.long, centre to centre of piers, and the piers of single stones planted in the river bed, with the longer axes up- and down-stream. A causeway led up to the bridge at each end. Even at the time the solidity of the structure aroused in me a suspicion that itmightbe very old. On the other hand, it may be a recent work of convenience, not of necessity, for the stream in summer is often dry, and in winter it would not be unfordable (except for children) till it had submerged the bridge.”
Still, a primitive piece of work, whether done yesterday or 500,000 years ago, comes from a dark mind and a hand without skill; and the younger it is the more tragic is the meaning of it in sociology. Europeans of the twentieth centuryA.D.ought to be as far removed from rough slab-bridges as they are from ancestor-worship. Education and personal pride should make them ashamed to use anything that does not represent in its own way the very best that to-day’s genius can achieve. For a survival of primitive conventions in a civilized country is a proof that in certain districts the people have feeble minds incapable of prolonged attention, and therefore glad to find in mimicry a refuge from the pain of thinking. To me, then, primitive bridges are always sinister things; even when they belong to savages they degrade mankind by showing how mother-wit in men often ceases to be fertile. Between a low degree of intelligence and a fondness for unchanging custom thereis at least some relation, for “persons who are slightly imbecile tend to act in everything by routine or habit; and they are rendered much happier if this is encouraged.”[33]
In the next chapter we shall try to follow from the earliest times the slow history of those gifts of the spirit whose growth very often has been arrested; and we shall see once more that weak minds have employed imitation as their scout and custom and convention as their fortified places.
[1]The Pont d’Arc at Ardèche, over the river Ardèche, has a total height of sixty-six metres. From water-level to the crown of the arch is a flight of thirty-four metres; and in a span of fifty-nine metres this great natural bridge puts a huge vault over the river. As to the shape of the arch, it is pointed in a rather waved outline, and quite possibly it suggested the pointed arch to French bridge-builders long before the introduction of “ogivale” arches from the East (p.88).
[2]“Notes on the Composition of Scientific Papers,” T. Clifford Allbutt, London, 1904,p.3.
[3]The earliest canal in history is the one that NechoIIbegan in 610B.C., to connect the Arabian Gulf with the Mediterranean Sea; and Herodotus relates that the work went on for a year and was then abandoned, after costing the lives of 120,000 men. Necho was uninspired by the spirit of industrialism which would have finished the work, while praising the beauty of peace.
[4]“Archaeology and False Antiquities,” by Robert Munro,M.A., M.D.,LL.D., F.R.S.E., F.S.A.SCOT., page 12.
[5]Some authors give various measurements. Legrand says that the biggest arch had a span of thirty-four metres, and that its greatest height, when intact, was thirty-two metres. I cannot do better than refer you to Choisy’s“Art de bâtir chez les Romains,”Paris, 1874. Several ancient writers—Claudian, Procopius, and Martial—guide Sir William Smith in his remarks on Narni Bridge, but he makes a mistake when he speaks of “three” arches.
[6]See “Northern Spain,” by Edgar Wigram, an excellent book. The gable-shaped bridges are mostly of mediæval date. Some fine examples: at Martorell (partly Roman), at Puente la Reina, and across the Gallego river between Jaca and Huesca. To-day these are seldom used because of their steep pitch and of their narrowness. The great one at Orense, over the Miño, is still in daily use.
[7]Gable bridges are uncommon in Great Britain, but a fine example crosses the river Taff not far from Cardiff. It is called the Pont-y-Prydd. Between its abutments the great arch measures 140 feet, and the footway is so very steep that laths of wood used to be fastened across it to keep horses from falling. Before industrialism murdered a beautiful countryside the Pont-y-Prydd was a rainbow of stone that shone all the year round. We owe this bridge to a self-educated country mason, William Edwards by name, who in 1750 brought his work to completion, after suffering defeat in two previous efforts. My photograph of the Pont-y-Prydd is disgraced by a very hideous commercial bridge that progress has put quite close to the Welsh masterpiece, but, happily, there are many old engravings and pictures that do full justice to William Edwards. Richard Wilson painted the Pont-y-Prydd—an excellent recommendation to a fine piece of handicraft.
[8]Mr. Wigram, in his finely illustrated book on Northern Spain, reminds us that the Puente Mayor at Orense played a various part in the Peninsula War. It was the pivot of the French operations when Soult led his troops from Coruña to renew the subjugation of Portugal. At first all went well, but “within two months his army was reeling back from Oporto, without hospital, baggage, or artillery, in a worse plight even than Moore’s. He had wrestled his first fall with the great antagonist who was destined to beat him from the Douro to Toulouse.”
[9]SeeAppendixI.
[10]SeeAppendixIIfor a description of this Roman bridge.
[11]This was written several months before the outbreak of the Great War, which England had invited by allowing her peace-fanatics to bill and coo in her foreign politics. Instead of reading the arrogant books on blood-lust that nourished the well-advertised aims of Germany, England played the fool with epicene triflers of all sorts and conditions, and turned her back on Lord Roberts, her truthful statesman. She babbled about peace until she received from the Prussian junkerdom proposals so abominable that they brought her to the fighting point of honour; and then she cried out for a million new soldiers. Yet British statesmen, even then, paid many compliments to their bad old habit of ingenuous pacifism. No political dove wanted the world to believe that there had been anything of the eagle in his attitude to German war-culture. As if this truism could be a consolation to heroic little Belgium, the Jeanne d’Arc of nations, whose safety England had guaranteed, and whose experiences in the hell of Teutonic savagery had left her scorched, mutilated, yet unconquered. Can anyone explain why the word “peace” has been hypnotic to Anglo-Celtic minds? Every phase of human enterprise must be a phase of war, because it claims a battle-toll of killed and wounded and maimed. Poverty alone is such a terrible phase of permanent war that pacifists ought to devote all their energy to its gradual betterment. Even the accidents of civilization—street and railway accidents, colliery explosions, sea tragedies, and so forth—equal in a century the casualties on stricken fields. If only our sentimentalists would try to think! Then they would learn that the occasional strife between armies never destroys in a century as many lives as the multiform continuous strife called peace. And we may be certain that all the human war of the future will not belong to “peace” alone. The birth of many a new era will be aided by the fierce midwifery of military and naval warfare. To-day is the 26th of September, 1914, and England in two months has nearly outgrown the routine claptrap of her effete idealism. To-day she is eager to bear any amount of self-sacrifice; two months ago her peace-mania was a crime against the Empire and against her treaty obligations to Belgium. She had no faith in National Service till Germany had passed from arrogant warnings to barbaric aggressions. Agadir was not enough to put common sense into her dreamful solicitude about international “peace.” “Peace” in her home affairs she never tried to get; she wanted peace to conquer the nations, not to cure industrial conflicts and the Irish Question. What a comic tragedy! And let us remember that our peace-fanatics, though silent to-day, are not dead. Their influence will become active again after the overthrow of Germany. New mischief will flow from their sentimentalism. To lose the flower of British youth, while keeping our peace-fanatics: here indeed is a sinister fact.
[12]See “English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages.” J. J. Jusserand. The chapter on roads and bridges.
[13]There has been much controversy over the position of the Pons Sublicius. (Seep.140.)
[14]See the most valuable book on Domestic Medicine by Lister’s little-known forerunner, Dr. William Buchan, of Edinburgh. The eighteenth edition was published in 1803, and its pictures of social life are most helpful to a pontist.
[15]I have two photographs of it, both taken by my friend Mr. C. S. Sargisson, a Lancashire pontist. At one end the lintel rests on a rocky bank and is broken across by long use; at the other end it rests on a slab projecting from the bank, just below a stile of unmortared flags set in a picturesque wall of loose stones. The footway is much worn; and in frosty weather even a temperance reformer might slide from it with his reputation.
[16]I am quoting this approximate date from Sir Ray Lankester.
[17]“The Mynach cataract consists of four leaps, making a total descent of 210 feet. The bridge has been thrown across a chasm 114 feet above the first fall and 324 feet above the bottom of the cataract.”
[18]What does this phrasing mean? I wonder. Is the living child to be reconstructed? in order that its body when buried under the new dam may be strong enough as a foundation?
[19]To-day, in some parts of China, a living pig is thrown into a river when a bridge is endangered by a flood. (Seep.248.)
[20]“The Cradle of Mankind.” By theRev.W. A. Wigram,D.D., and Edgar T. A. Wigram. London, 1914.
[21]Notes by theRev.W. A. Wigram,D.D.
[22]To-day only a ruin can be studied at Pont Ambroise: two isolated arches and the lower part of an abutment; but recent French writers draw attention to the technical structure of the arches. In the under surface of each vault four arcs or bands are placed side by side. SeeVol. III, PartII,p.294,“Géographie générale du Département de l’Hérault.”Published byLa Société Languedocienne, Montpellier, 1905.
[23]See a very helpful book,“Ponts en Maçonnerie,”by E. Degrand,Inspecteur Général des Ponts et Chaussées, and Jean Résal,Ingénieur des Ponts et Chaussées—Twovols., illustrated; Béranger, Paris; price 40 francs.
[24]See note onp.6.
[25]See the brilliant sketch by Frank Brangwyn, and the story of the bridge onp.254.
[26]See the picture onp.293.
[27]Much more: we shall see (pp.156,160) that a pointed vault was built in ancient Egypt. The Babylonians also built pointed arches and vaults.
[28]Twizel Bridge, over the Till, has a very beautiful arch which is slightly pointed; it has a span of 90ft.7ins., and a distance of 46ft.separates the parapet from water-level. Tradit ion says that a lady of the Selby family built this bridge, one of the most famous in England.
[29]Read the delightful monograph on Kirkstall Abbey by Sir W. H.St.John Hope and Mr. Bilson of Hull.
[30]“The History and Antiquities of Durham.” Newcastle,MDCCLXXXV.
[31]It is said that he charged eightpence for the passage of a dead Jew! A large sum in those days. A Jewish cemetery was just beyond the bridge.—W.S.S.
[32]“English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages,”pp.45 and 47. See also “Archæologia,”Vols. XXVII,p.77;XXIX, p.380. Also the histories of Essex.
[33]See Darwin’s “Descent of Man,” PartI, chapterIII.