bathdailyphoto2
061216.087.Somset.Bath
Seen from the Dolmeads section of Bath, here is the frequently posted North Parade Bridge, which extended the North Parade, the elegant and exclusive street that faced the Lower Assembly Rooms (demolished) in the Bowling Green and architect John Wood the Elder’s North Parade Houses.
The bridge was constructed between 1835-1836 by engineer W. Tierney Clark, and its original structure was “cast iron with ashlar piers, one enclosing a staircase to the riverside, another formerly a toll collector’s residence. F. R. Sisson, City Engineer, clad the span in ashlar in 1936-7. The bridge continues as a viaduct to the east, with two lodges, 1835-6, in Jacobean style with well-preserved strapwork.” (1)
Built to give connection between city and Widcombe, with an original halfpenny toll charge. It was also “a respectable, safe, and ornamental approach, which is at present attainable by circuitous route over the Old Bridge (at all times ineligible for female pedestrians of respectability), or by endeavoring to avoid Scylla falling on Charybdis and wading through that reproach to the neighborhood, the filthy and odious Dolmeads” (2)
1: Michael Forsyth, Bath (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 109.
2: John Ede, Special Walks (Bath: Department of Leisure and Tourist Services, Bath City Council, 1984), 19.
061216.087.Somset.Bath
Seen from the Dolmeads section of Bath, here is the frequently posted North Parade Bridge, which extended the North Parade, the elegant and exclusive street that faced the Lower Assembly Rooms (demolished) in the Bowling Green and architect John Wood the Elder’s North Parade Houses.
The bridge was constructed between 1835-1836 by engineer W. Tierney Clark, and its original structure was “cast iron with ashlar piers, one enclosing a staircase to the riverside, another formerly a toll collector’s residence. F. R. Sisson, City Engineer, clad the span in ashlar in 1936-7. The bridge continues as a viaduct to the east, with two lodges, 1835-6, in Jacobean style with well-preserved strapwork.” (1)
Built to give connection between city and Widcombe, with an original halfpenny toll charge. It was also “a respectable, safe, and ornamental approach, which is at present attainable by circuitous route over the Old Bridge (at all times ineligible for female pedestrians of respectability), or by endeavoring to avoid Scylla falling on Charybdis and wading through that reproach to the neighborhood, the filthy and odious Dolmeads” (2)
1: Michael Forsyth, Bath (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 109.
2: John Ede, Special Walks (Bath: Department of Leisure and Tourist Services, Bath City Council, 1984), 19.