Chapter THE FOURTH: Old Bridges, European, Persian and Chinese (4)

In brief, are you attracted by any phase of modern bridge-building that copies the decorations of civic architecture, displaying columns, pilasters, niches, balustrades, battlements, towers, turrets, pinnacles, or any other finery that serves no organic purpose in the life of a contemporary bridge? Myself, I hate such a strumpet of a bridge as the Hoogesluis at Amsterdam, with her ornate spandrils, and her embossed masonry, and her balustraded parapet surmounted by a row of obelisks around which lamps are bracketed. Also I hate such a suspension bridge as the one at Conway Castle, where the metal rods that support the roadway pass through a brace of turrets on each of the embattled gateways. The effect is not only comic but ludicrous. No engineer with any sense would have put a metal viaduct within a few yards of Conway Castle. Or, if a metal suspension had been forced upon him by his employers, he would have made in a modern style a very simple and stern design. Instead, we have two vulgar gateways rudely copied from Conway Castle, and then lacerated by five metal rods that cut through each of the four turrets. I am reminded of an absurd railway bridge at Cologne, whose parapets are--or were--flanked by small turrets, and whose gateway has--or had--two high towers formidably armed with make-believe battlements and machicolations. Such futile pretension is a public insult; it implies that laymen have no common sense at all in their attitude to “feats of engineering.”

But it is not the modern bridge alone that provokes criticism in this matter of decorative art. Some ancient and famous bridges are hard nuts to crack as soon as we pass from their structural fitness to their ornamentation. As an example I may choose the Ponte Sant’ Angelo at Rome, which has been copied feebly by the Schloss Brücke at Berlin. Originally the Sant’ Angelo was the Pons Ælius, built by Hadrian (A.D. 13) face to face with his mausoleum, to-day the castle of Saint Angelo. In the seventeenth century new parapets were added to the bridge, and ten colossal statues by Bernini were put up on pedestals along the parapets. Around these statues many a controversy has raged, and I am not surprised. In my photographs there is a small lamp-standard between each pair of huge figures; even the lights of Rome have to twinkle below the decorations. The bridge looks burdened rather than adorned; it is neither wide enough nor high enough to be used as a gallery for sculpture modelled on a large scale. That a great effort was made by an artist of power is evident, but the artist worked for his own ambition, and not for the Ponte Sant’ Angelo. He had no conception of the fact that the bridge and its environment were so good that they could not be improved by huge “embellishments.” Yet there are writers who say, “Yes, no doubt, Bernini’s bouncing figures are theatrical, but, after all, their general effect is grandiose.” The truth is, every great city needs a Parliament of Taste where questions of civic art could be debated publicly, with help from lantern slides. No writer can hope to do much in his defence of art. Indeed, books are studied so infrequently that they cannot draw public attention to the larger problems of architecture and decoration; whereas free debates in a Parliament of Taste, centring always around object-lessons, might restore to art the life of a great citizen.

In this matter we owe much to Hosking, the Victorian pontist, who cried out against the blunders made in the ornamentation of bridges. As early as 1842 he told the truth boldly, declaring that the most eminent civil engineers, in their efforts to take hints from street buildings, had failed to produce anything but meanness or absurdity, or a combination of both. Hosking had faith in three simple principles:--

1. That bridges, in the combination of their leading lines, should be bold and simple;

2. That their passage over dangerous places ought to be a secure highway; and,

3. That in stone bridges far too much money had been wasted on the high finish of exterior surfaces. In very ponderous language Hosking said:--

“It may be fairly questioned whether Waterloo and London
bridges would not have been finer objects had the masonry
of their external faces been merely rough-axed, or even
left scabbled, instead of being fair hammer-dressed; and
certainly many thousands of pounds might have been saved in
the execution of Waterloo Bridge, and a much better result
produced, by the omission of the coupled columns and their
immediate accessories, and by the use of a plain parapet of
a more reasonable height, instead of the high, the
enormously expensive, and absurdly ugly balustraded
enclosures which now aid the columns and their projected
entablatures to deform a splendid structure.”

This Puritan outlook appeals to me, for I believe that good bridges should be as sternly efficient as were the Ironsides of Cromwell’s army. Their beauty is a thing apart from any cavalier-like finery of dressing ornament. It shows that all the parts of a bridge are co-ordinated with fine judgment, and that each part is in nice accord with its own work and with the great office which the bridge as a whole has to fulfil daily.

When the railway viaduct at Ludgate Hill was finished, there was a public outcry because of its gaunt and shabby ugliness; but Londoners were appeased as soon as some “decorative” metalwork was nailed upon the parapets. This “ornament,” a trumpery makeshift, was supposed to have given merit to an imbecile design that disgraced the main road to St. Paul’s Cathedral. As things of this sort are allowed to happen in the heart of our great city, who can have confidence in civic authorities? What chance is there that new projects for bridges will be considered intelligently?

In 1815, when Rennie began his bridge over the Thames at Southwark, neither the Government nor the City of London employed him; it was a Company that approved his designs, and financed the undertaking. At an expense of £800,000, three bad arches of cast-iron were put up from “elegant” stone piers and abutments; yet London was charmed by “a great feat of engineering,” partly because 5780 tons of ironwork had been employed, and partly because the central arch had a span of 240 ft. From 1819 to November 8, 1864, the Company was a toll gatherer on their industrial bridge; then the toll was done away with, and the Company received from the City an industrial compensation. Here is a financial adventure which might have been undertaken to benefit a small township which had in its neighbourhood some new ironworks and collieries. Still more farcical was the public lottery that helped to collect money for the building of the first Westminster Bridge, between 1738 and 1750. Even now, after many lessons from past follies, London has made more than one muddle over the project of St. Paul’s Bridge. Not even the Tower Bridge, with all its blatant defects, has enabled the City to be alert and clever as a pontist.

A more absurd structure than the Tower Bridge was never thrown across a strategic river. What would be the use of those ornate towers if the suspended roadway connecting them to the banksides were cut by a shell or by a falling bomb? And what anachronism could be sillier than that which has united the principle of metal suspension to an architecture cribbed partly from the Middle Ages, and partly from the French Renaissance? The many small windows, the peaked roofing, the absurdly impudent little turrets, the biscuit-like aspect of the meretricious masonry, the desperate effort to be “artistic” at any cost: all this, you know, is at standing odds with the contemporary parts of the unhistoric bridge, parts huge in scale, but so commercial that there is not a vestige of military forethought anywhere. It is mere perishable bulk.

FOOTNOTES:

[82] See the Statute of Winchester, A.D. 1285, and Statute
2, Richard II, A.D. 1378; see also the Rolls of
Parliament. Among the most dangerous rogues were
many lawless barons and their retinues, against
whom the Law protested vainly. In A.D. 1138 we find
them mentioned by the “Gesta Stephani,” and till
late in the fifteenth century the partisans of
nobles were feared on the roads. But for them the
Wars of the Roses would have been less horrible,
and wayfaring life would have been less barbarously
at odds with those Christian virtues which were
proclaimed everywhere by great symbols of religion:
manor churches, hopeful cathedrals, vast monasteries,
wayside chapels and shrines, and quiet homes
whispering with the prayers of gentle nuns. Brutal
strife among Christians had made the world into a new
Garden of Gethsemane over which the Spirit of Christ
brooded and wept.

[83] There seems to be only one exception to this rule.
I refer to some Chinese bridges of the thirteenth
century, mentioned by Marco Polo in his account of
the city Sin-din-fu, now called Ching-tu-fu, situated
on the western side of the province of Se-chuen,
of which it is the capital. Marco Polo says: “The
city is watered by many considerable streams, which,
descending from the distant mountains, surround and
pass through it in a variety of directions. Some
of these rivers are half a mile in width, others
are two hundred paces, and very deep, over which
are built several large and handsome stone bridges,
eight paces in breadth, their length being greater
or less according to the size of the stream. From
one extremity to the other there is a row of marble
pillars on each side, which support the roof;
for here the bridges have very handsome roofs,
constructed of wood, ornamented with paintings of
a red colour, and covered with tiles. Throughout
the whole length also there are neat apartments
and shops, where all sorts of trades are carried
on. One of the buildings, larger than the rest, is
occupied by the officers who collect the duties upon
provisions and merchandise, and a toll from persons
who pass the bridge. In this way, it is said, his
Majesty receives daily the sum of a hundred besants
of gold.” According to the Latin editions of Marco
Polo, the booths or shops were set up in the morning
and removed from the bridge at night. If so, then
the width of these bridges, described by Marco as
“eight paces,” must have been more than twenty-four
feet, since booths would have obstructed such narrow
footways. Marco Polo’s great editor, Colonel Yule,
interpreting the description of another bridge,
proves that the “paces” must be geometric.

[84] Degrand, in his “Ponts en Maçonnerie,” gives a
reproduction of Palladio’s drawing, which represents
an imperial scheme, far and away better than Antonio
da Ponte’s.

[85] The Bridge of Ali Verdi Khan.

[86] Lord Curzon’s book on Persia.

[87] British Museum, the MS. 16 F. ii, Fol. 73. The little
picture is drawn from nature; a bad reproduction of
it appears in M. Jusserand’s good book on “English
Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages.”

[88] J. J. Jusserand, p. 49. See also in Stow.

[89] This was finished in 1014; in 1136 it was burnt
down, and in 1176 Colechurch started upon his brave
enterprise.

[90] Viollet-le-Duc writes as follows (vol. 6, p. 410):
“Dans les villes, on profitait souvent des arches
de pont pour établir des moulins, et même alors
les ponts et moulins, bâtis en bois, ne formaient
qu’une seule et même construction. Avant 1835, il
existait encore à Meaux, en Brie, un pont de ce genre
entièrement en bois ainsi que les moulins y attenant;
cet ensemble datait de la fin du xvᵉ siècle....”

[91] Alas! The Great War has done much harm to the Pont du
Marché at Meaux. To-day (September 26, 1914) I saw
a photograph of its crippled condition. One arch at
least is ruined, and mended roughly with timbering.

[92] See “The Builder,” November 22, 1890.

[93] There has been much disputation over the origin of
St. Mary’s Chapel, and I refer you to the following
books: 1. “Remarks on Wayside Chapels,” by two
architects, J. C. and C. Buckler, 8vo, Oxford, 1843.
This book was approved by Parker, an excellent
recommendation. 2. “A Dissertation on Ancient Bridges
and Bridge Chapels,” by Norrison Scatcherd, 1828. 3.
“The Chapel of King Edward III on Wakefield Bridge,”
by Norrison Scatcherd, 1843. In the earlier treatise
the chapel is attributed to the reign of Edward IV.
Scatcherd belongs to an old school of polemical
swashbucklers, but what he says is worth attention,
though difficult to follow. 4. “The Histories of
York.”

[94] Camden’s “Britannia,” Ed. Gough, Vol. III, London,
1789, pp. 38-9.

[95] St. Mary’s Chapel was illustrated by Toms, after
George Fleming, 1743; by Lodge, in Thoresby’s
“Ducatus”; by Cawthorne, about 1800; and by “The
Builder,” November 22, 1890.

[96] “Bath Old Bridge and the Chapel Thereon,” by
Emanuel Green, F.S.A., F.R.S.L., p. 143, British
Archæological Association.

[97] “The Builder,” August 20, 1887.

[98] These dates I take from the catalogue of historic
monuments issued by the Ministère de l’Instruction
Publique et des Beaux-Arts. Some writers give the
dates as 1178 and 1188.

[99] According to Degrand; some other writers say
nineteen. The largest spans were a little more than
thirty-three metres; but even in these the size
varied somewhat.

[100] See Allen’s “History of the County of York,” 1832.
P. Atkinson was the architect of the new bridge,
and his work went on till March, 1810. As for the
old Ouse Bridge, good views of it will be found
in the “Antiquarian Itinerary,” Vol. I, 1815; the
“Antiquarian Cabinet,” Vol. III, 1817; and the
“Encyclopædia Britannica,” ninth edition. Let us take
a glance at one of the pictures. On the west end of
the bridge is a tall building carried by two pointed
arches and crowned with a small steeple. It is the
great Council Chamber, with a prison for felons
beneath it, according to the “Antiquarian Cabinet.”
We cross the river and find at the other side the
gaol which was rebuilt in 1724. Two small arches on
this side of the bridge balance those that arcade
the Council Chamber, and in the middle is a graceful
pointed arch with a span of 81 feet. The spandrils
are relieved by a well-marked string-course, the
parapets are fringed with railings and graced in the
centre with two finials, which displace the mediæval
cross.

[101] See Mr. Kershaw’s article, “The Builder,” April 29,
1882, p. 531.

[102] In Vol. X of the “Archæologia Cantiana” an inventory
is given of the possessions of the chapel in the year
1549.

[103] The photograph belongs to the London Missionary
Society. The bridge itself has points of interest
quite apart from the idol. There is a single arch of
a horseshoe form with long and narrow archstones. The
shelving parapets are decorated with small knobs of
stone, and they do not rise to a gable point, like
those in the Spanish variety of gabled bridge; there
is a flat space at the summit, and below the middle
of it the small idol is placed.

[104] From information sent to me by the Rev. O. M.
Jackson, who for more than twenty years has worked as
a missionary in Western China.

[105] Take the dates of a few important bridges in
Lancashire. Time of King John, Lancaster Bridge;
1225, Preston; 1305, Warrington; 1365, Salford; 1372,
Stockport; and 1490, Garstang Bridge. The first
Lancashire bridges were but narrow structures for
foot and horse. Some had very high single arches,
and those with from four to six spans were steep and
lofty; they seemed to fly away from spates.

[106] On the other hand, there is a good social picture,
showing that workmen in those days fed very well,
though they could not afford to subscribe to the
building of a bridge:--

Wives went out to wite [know] how they wrought;
Five score in a flock, it was a fayre syght.
In broad clothes bright white bread they brought,
Cheese and chickens clerelych a dyght [prepared].

[107] Cofferdams are embankments which surround the site
so as to exclude water from it. “They are formed in
general by driving two rows of piles round the site
so as to enclose between them a watertight wall of
clay puddle; in depths of less than three or four
feet, where there is little current, a simple clay
dam may be used. In greater depths, the timber walls
consist of guide piles at intervals, with some form
of sheet piling between them; in extreme depths the
timber walls may be composed of stout piles driven in
side by side all round. The dam must be sufficiently
strong to bear the pressure of the water against
the outside when the space enclosed has been pumped
dry.... The ‘Cours de Ponts,’ at the School of the
Ponts et Chaussées, states that a cofferdam need
never be made of greater thickness than from four to
six feet, as the interior can always be sufficiently
stayed inside. This method of founding is now seldom
practised; it is costly and causes great obstruction
in the stream.”--Professor Fleeming Jenkin.

[108] A metre = 1·093633 yards, or 39·37079 inches; a
centimetre = 0·39371 inch.

[109] Professor Fleeming Jenkin, Ninth Edition of the
“Encyclopædia Britannica.”

[110] The centre arch has a span of 152 ft., and rises 29
ft. 6 in. above Trinity highwater mark; the arches
on each side of the centre have a span of 140 ft.,
and the abutment arches 130 ft. Total length, 1005
ft.; width from outside to outside, 56 ft.; height
above low water, 60 ft. Centre piers, 24 ft. thick.
Materials: the exterior stones are granite, the
interior, half Bramley Fall and half from Painshaw,
Derbyshire.

[111] For example, King John’s Bridge at Tewkesbury; Barden
Bridge and Burnsall Bridge in Wharfedale; the Old Dee
Bridge at Chester; Huntingdon, Bridgenorth, Baslow,
Froggall, Brecon, and Llangollen. There are many
others.

[112] This valuable reference was brought to my notice
by Mr. H. T. Crofton, an able pontist, who sent me
his notes on bridges, asking me to cull from them
whatever information my own research had missed. A
hobby is the only altruism.

[113] _Springing._ The plane of demarcation between the
ring and the abutment is called the “springing” of
an arch. A “ring” is the compressed arc of materials
known as archstones or voussoirs; and the “springing”
marks the place where a ring starts out on its upward
curve from a pier or from an abutment.

[114] The _haunches_ of an arch are those parts that lie
midway between the springing and the crown: the crown
being the summit of a ring.

[115] “The Builder,” November 19, 1892, p. 394.

[116] “The Builder,” November 19, 1892, p. 394.

[117] If Cæsar’s bones were found they would be sold at
Christie’s to a tradesman millionaire.

[118] Lord Curzon’s “Persia and the Persian Question,”
1892, Vol. II, pp. 45-6.

[119] According to some writers, the earliest known
arches of handicraft--pointed, and round, and even
elliptical--are Babylonian, but I do not care to
be so dogmatic. Dates very often are as elusive as
dreams. But the influence of Babylon was, doubtless,
very great on the traditions of the building arts;
perhaps we find it even in the elliptic vault of
Chosroes’ great hall at Selucia-Ctesiphon. This
vault, dating from the sixth century A.D., was a
forerunner of St. Bénézet’s elliptic arch (p. 81).

[120] Brangwyn has drawn for the édition de luxe the bridge
at Ronda, which dates from 1761. Its architect, José
Martin Aldeguela, was even more unfortunate than were
Peter Colechurch and the good Saint Bénézet; these
masters died before their work was complete, while
poor Aldeguela fell from his bridge and was dashed to
pieces. Two other bridges, one Moorish and one Roman,
cross the chasm at Ronda, but at the upper end where
the depth is less prodigious; so their architects had
easier problems to solve, and yet they did not equal
in any respect the heroic inspiration of Aldeguela.
Mr. Edgar Wigram has said that although Ronda
Bridge owes much of its effect to its extraordinary
site, yet an extraordinary piece of architecture is
necessary to command the site; it is the triumph of
genius over nature that we feel both at Ronda and in
the Pont Napoléon.

[121] The middle arch of 58 ft. span, 17 ft. rise, and 14
ft. in width across the soffit, has archstones which
are only 18 ins. deep, and they vary in thickness
from 5 to 16 ins.: many of them are 8 and 9 ins.
Sometimes there are two headers to answer a course
of common archstones; and sometimes two courses
of archstones answer one header. The piers are 10
ft. thick, and the middle arch springs about 3 ft.
above the river’s bed. A steep road over the bridge
diminishes the weight upon the side arches; but
Telford believed that if the spandrils had been
hollowed the road could have been made with an easy
gradient of 1 in 24. The workmanship is very light,
and it appears to be stable, though a shivering
bridge inspires no more confidence than a stammering
man. In 1803, owing to a defect in the foundation
of the western abutment, one of the side arches
fell, yet the others remained uninjured while the
broken one was being rebuilt. So the bridge in the
proportion of all its parts must have been very
well balanced, despite its quivering alertness and
lightness.

[122] Roman examples: the two bridges at Mérida, and the
bridge of Salamanca. Mediæval examples: Tudela,
Tordesillas, Talavera, Zaragoza, Castro Gonzalo, and
El Burgo, near Coruña, the scene of a good fight in
Drake’s expedition of 1589.

[123] “Gothic Architecture in Spain,” 1865, p. 211.

[124] See George Edmund Street, whose valuable book on
Spain ought to be studied side by side with those by
Ford and Edgar Wigram.

[125] I am reading my proof sheets on the 10th September,
1914, so it is necessary to add that the Pont des
Trous at Tournai has renewed its military value,
aiding the Belgians in their heroic efforts against
that avalanche of inhumanity, the German Army.

[126] The religious order of Pontist Brothers came to
France from Italy. It was called the order of
Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, and its chief resided at
Lucca. From about the year 1286 the French brothers
had a great hospice in Paris, built on the site now
occupied by the church of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas
and the deaf and dumb asylum. In the fourteenth
century the order confined its attention to the care
of pilgrims, and at last--in 1459--it was suppressed
by Pope Pius II.

[127] The triumphal arch of Germanicus, dating from the
time of Tiberius. It is extant at Saintes; but when
it was reconstructed after its removal from the
bridge it suffered much from a mixture of new stones
with the old. It is an arch with two passages 38 ft.
high.

[128] There are many old arches with two or three sets of
voussoirs. Over the Loire, at Brives-Charensac, there
is a Roman specimen with two rings, now a ruined
bridge. Some English examples: the Jolly Miller’s
Bridge over the Dee, Chester; Bradford-on-Avon,
Wilts, the round arches; Bideford, Devon, twenty
arches, built in the fourteenth century with help
from indulgences sanctioned by Grandison, Bishop of
Exeter; Lostwithiel, Llangollen, Fountains Abbey,
Bishop’s Bridge at Norwich, West Rasen, Lincolnshire;
Eamont Bridge, Penrith, a triple ring of archstones;
Higherford Bridge, near Colne, reputed to be Roman,
a wrong attribution, I believe; St. Neots, the most
important arch is very interesting; and the Abbot’s
Bridge at Bury St. Edmunds. This one is Early
English, and its three remarkable arches give us a
parallel to the ecclesiastical workmanship in the
arches at Crowland. The piers also and the buttresses
are unsecular.

[129] It may be remarked that in the Persian language the
words _pul-y-sangi_ signify the “stone bridge,”
and it is not improbable that the western people
in the service of the Emperor may have given this
appellation to the place where a bridge of great
celebrity was thrown over the river, which is here
applied to the river itself. It will be found to
occur in Elphinstone’s “Account of Caubul,” p. 429,
and in Ouseley’s “Ibn Haukul,” p. 277.--Colonel Yule.

[130] Ten horsemen could not draw up abreast in a space
less than thirty feet, and might probably require
forty when in motion. The paces here spoken of must
therefore be geometric; and upon this calculation
the bridge would be five hundred yards in
length.--Colonel Yule.

[131] By P. Magalhanes, who particularly notices this
description, our author is understood to speak here
of the perfect level of the surface, and not of the
straightness of the sides: “Aux deux extremités,”
he translates, “il est plus large qu’au haut de la
montée: mais quand on a achevé de monter, on le
trouve plat et de niveau comme s’il avoit esté tiré
à la linge” (“Nouv. Relat.,” p. 14). But the words,
“uguale per longo come se fosse tirato per linea,”
seem rather to refer to the general parallelism of
the sides, although at the ends they diverged, as is
the case with almost all bridges.--Colonel Yule.

[132] The ideas of the symbolic lion and of the tortoise
are borrowed by the Chinese from the _singa_ and the
_Kûrma_ of Hindu mythology.

[133] It is difficult to understand from the words of
the text ... the position of these larger columns
with regard to other parts of the bridge; but it
seems to be meant, that in the line of the parapet
or balustrade, which was formed of alternate slabs
of marble and pillars, there was in the middle (or
over the centre arch or pier) a column of a size
much larger than the rest, having a tortoise for its
base or pedestal; and it may be presumed, although
not so expressed, that there was a similar column
in the balustrade on the opposite side.... One of
the Jesuit missionaries who mentions a bridge which
he had crossed in this part of the province, says,
“Les gardefous en sont de marbre; on conte de chaque
côté cent quarante-huit poteaux avec des lionceaux
au-dessus ... et aux deux bouts du pont quatre
éléphans accroupis.”--Colonel Yule.

[134] Notwithstanding any partial difficulties in
the description, or seeming objections to the
credibility of the account given of this magnificent
bridge, there is unquestionable authority for the
existence of one similar to it in all the essential
circumstances, and as nearly about the situation
mentioned as can be ascertained from the conciseness
of the itinerary, so lately as the seventeenth
century. It may well, however, be supposed that in
the lapse of four hundred years material changes
must have taken place, in consequence of accidents,
repairs, and perhaps removals.--Colonel Yule.

[135] “Ponts en Maçonnerie.”