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§ 43. The old bridge being a building of as much curiosity as in the kingdom, a minute description of it is here attempted; in aid of which I have been favored with a view of it, copied by the pencil of an antiquarian friend, partly from one which is on the side of Millard's map, and partly from a wooden print given by Mr. Barrett in p' 80. The latter is coarse and indistinct, but gives tolerably well the proportions of length and height, and thickness of the piers: Millard's is neater, but being confined to a small breadth, he has made the arches too narrow and the piers too thin. And that the difference between the accommodations of the 13th and the 18th centuries may be seen at one glance, I have added a View of the present bridge finished in 1768. In another Plate inserted in § 44 will be found a ground-plan or ichnography of the old bridge: wherein the darker shade denotes the piers and the solid part of the four-feet-wall: the lighter shade shews the arches: the strait lines are the timbers, on which the houses rest; and the projections eastward are two large buttresses. On the same plate is delineated a bird's eye view of the bridge and it's vicinity, copied from Millard's map; the original is coarsely engraven, but gives a sufficient representation of the place: the present copy is enlarged and amended. And for the purpose of filling up the plate I have added two views copied from the side of the same map; one, the large and famous house, belonging to the Rogers's, at the corner of Redcliffe-street and the bridge, taken down by the bridge-commissioners; the other is St Vincent's Rock, with the Hotwell spring, as it appeared about A' D' 1700.

§ 43. b. The old bridge was built with three piers on four arches "10 fathoms high," according to (d) W' W'; but it must have been about the same height, as the present building. He gives different lengths in several parts of his book, as 72 yards; 184, 140, 120, and 94 paces: which difference must have arisen from the different places of beginning the measurement: sometimes he reckoned the whole distance from St Nicholas gate to the corner of Redcliffe or Tucker-street's; at other times he endeavored to give the length of the actual bridge. The present breadth of water, i' e' the space from the inside of one abutment

(d) P' 175.

to the inside of the other is (e) 153 feet; the breadth of water at the old bridge was greater, but by the excessive thickness of the piers the actual water-way was (ƒ) reduced to 100 feet, which gives 25 feet for each of the four arches; and reckoning the center pier at 25 feet, and the two others at 20, the whole breadth of the water at the old bridge will be 165 feet; which cannot be far from the exact space. The narrowness of the water-way being, as mentioned above, only 100 feet, caused a dangerous waterfall here, as in London: so it is represented in Millard's map, and there is no reason to doubt it.

§ 44. Will' Worcester (g) makes the breadth of the bridge to be only five yards, and in another place he makes it nine paces, i' e' about 17 or 18 feet; but Mr. Barrett calls it 19 feet: probably 15 and 19 are both right: one is the distance between the fronts of the houses, the other was measured at the gate in the middle, were a wall on each side would reduce the breadth to 15 feet. These 19 feet were intended only for the highway, sufficient for the use of those who erected it, and for any increase of communication, which they could reasonably foresee: but their plan was after the example of London to build houses on each side, to make it a street as well as a bridge. For this purpose they built a wall about four feet thick on each side of the bridge, parallel with it, and about 16 or perhaps 18 feet distant from it, resting on the same starlings, and pierced with the same arches as the bridge itself: and it must be presumed, although there is no certain authority, that strong cross walls were built from each pier of the bridge to each pier of the walls, tying the two structures together as firmly as if they had been one. Large beams were then thrown across from the bridge to the parallel walls, and on them the houses were built. Certainly it would have been better and safer to have filled up the whole interval between the bridge and the walls with masonry, in other words to have made the bridge itself wider; but probably they were in want of pecuniary means.

§ 45. On the subject of these walls, a question of some curiosity has arisen, whether they, and the houses which rested on them, were

(e) Measured on Mr. Barrett's elevation.

(f) Barrett, p' 77.

(g) Will' Worc', pp' 166, 209.

built at the same time with the bridge, or afterward by a second thought. I will state to the reader, what has been said on each side. Mr. Barrett was of the second opinion, and he gives as a reason, that the bridge was built with semicircular arches, but the walls on the outside with pointed or Gothic. But old Mr. Allen, the Architect, who knew the bridge perfectly well, having been employed in working on it and overlooking repairs, assured me that all the arches were Gothic, those of the bridge being so much in the dark, that their form might easily be mistaken : and at the same time he expressed his decided opinion, that the whole work was erected at one and the same time. I think that he was mistaken in this opinion; but in defence of it, he might have said, if the walls were added afterward, the starlings must have been lengthened; for the builders would not have made them at first 50 feet long and more, for a bridge only 19 feet wide. Such an elongation must have been a work of greater magnitude and difficulty than the first foundation, and we have no account of any such a work. For this reason therefore Mr. Allen might have said, the starlings were made at first of their full length, and the whole fabric finished at once.

§ 46. On the other hand it may be contended, that the starlings might have been lengthened, and yet the memorial of that operation might not have reached modern times; or that the workmen of that age through excess of caution and doubting the strength of their own work, made at first the piers thicker and the starlings longer than was necessary; and then finding their work stronger and more secure than they expected, after some years they boldly raised those arched walls on the old starlings, and on those walls they built the houses. See more on this subject below, § 51. But be the date what it may, the fact is, that these arched walls were built on the same starlings as the bridge itself, and beams were laid from one to the other. The bridge in consequence became a dark and narrow street, from which the first step into a shop was on the timbers, where the floor alone was between your feet and the water; through the crevices of which the wind blew up in a manner, which would be intolerable to our warm modern shopkeepers: the ink has sometimes frozen in the pen of my informant in the counting room behind the shop.--