A packhorse bridge is a bridge intended to carry packhorses (horses loaded with sidebags or panniers) across a river or stream. Typically a packhorse bridge consists of one or more narrow (one horse wide) masonry arches, and has low parapets so as not to interfere with the horse's panniers.[1]
Packhorse bridges were often built on the trade routes (often called packhorse routes) that formed major transport arteries across Europe and Great Britain until the coming of the turnpike roads and canals in the eighteenth century.[1] Before the road-building efforts of Napoleon, all crossings of the Alps were on packhorse trails;[2] travellers' carriages were dismantled and transported over the mountain passes by ponies and mule trains.
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Surviving packhorse bridges
Examples of surviving packhorse bridges can be found in the following places.
England
- Anstey, Leicestershire
- Ashford-in-the-Water, Derbyshire
- Barrowford, Lancashire
- Burford bridge , Oxfordshire.
- Bingley, West Yorkshire
- Chew Stoke, Somerset
- Clun, Shropshire
- Dunster, Somerset
- Essex Bridge, Great Haywood, Staffordshire
- Hayfield, Derbyshire
- Horner, Somerset
- King's Tree, Howden Reservoir, Derbyshire
- Marsden, West Yorkshire; Mellor Bridge and Close Gate Bridge
- Membury, Devon
- Moulton, Suffolk
- Seathwaite, Borrowdale, Cumbria; Stockley Bridge
- Sidford, Devon
- Stoneclough, Greater Manchester
- Sutton, Bedfordshire
- Tamworth, Staffordshire
- Wellow, Somerset
- Goyt Valley, Derbyshire (relocated from original site)
- Yorkshire Bridge, Derbyshire
Scotland
Wales
Isle of Man
- Ballasalla, Isle of Man; Monks' Bridge
References
- ^ a b "Packhorse Cargo". cottontown.org. http://www.cottontown.org/page.cfm?pageid=698&language=eng. Retrieved January 9, 2007.
- ^ Maxwell G. Lay, Ways of the World: A History of the World's Roads (Rutgers University Press) 1992:23-25; 96.
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