Posted by Jock on December 30, 2011 at 04:39:28 user Jock.
In Reply to: Re: Cruising the Broads posted by John Nichols on December 28, 2011 at 08:59:01:
I suspect that the people who wanted the bridge really did not care that much about boat traffic on the river as it would have been of limited size.
The Norfolk and Suffolk rivers have been carrying passengers and freight since before written history. With so much damp boggy ground near the rivers road vehicles would have had a hard time in many places.
So the original 1385 arch would have been built to clear the 'loading gauge' of the river traffic. Some things have changed since 1385:
The Gothic central arch of the bridge (which may have given greater clearance to river traffic) was replaced with the present round arch in the 15th century;
The bridge foundations have sunk down;
Water levels have steadily being going up.
Oh yes, and at some stage the River Thurne changed direction, but I'm not sure whether this was before or after 1385 :-)