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Click on images for larger view
Many people stand on Anchor Bridge to look at the river, perhaps unaware
of the long and interesting history which lies beneath their feet. The
bridge we see today is the third one on this site. It was built in the
late 1950s and replaced an earlier “hump backed” brick bridge which was
built in 1775. This in turn had replaced a wooden bridge built in the
fifteenth century by John Abell, a wealthy clothmaker who lived in
Nayland at that time.
John Abell died in 1524. As well as leaving money to the church and the
poor, in his will he provided for the maintenance of the bridge in
perpetuity from the proceeds of his farm and land at Layer Breton, near
Colchester. For nearly two hundred years the trustees satisfactorily
carried out John Abell’s wishes but in the early eighteenth century the
county authorities began to take an interest because the bridge was
becoming unsafe. One of the problems was the bridge was half in Essex
and half in Suffolk. Today we still have difficulties where the two
counties do not always seem to liaise, so it is no surprise that while
the trustees of the bridge were coping neither county wanted to know,
but when the income from the farm was no longer sufficient to keep the
bridge in good repair action had to be taken.
In 1714 the trust was taken out of the hands of the surviving trustees
and the two counties eventually carried out major repairs to the bridge.
They continued to keep it in repair until 1774 but then because of the
increasing volume and weight of traffic passing through Nayland
(remember there was no bypass until two centuries later) it was decided
to demolish the old wooden bridge and to replace it with one constructed
of brick [see photographs above]. Interestingly, a suggestion was made in the nineteenth century
to replace the brick bridge with one of cast iron but this did not
happen.
The three bridges have had many names over the years: the wooden bridge
in John Abell’s time was called Plod Bridge. Other names over the years
have been Poole, Nayland, Horkesley, Bell, County and Anchor Bridge.
It is not known for certain how the keystones on each side, showing a
bell surrounded by a letter A, came to be incorporated into the two
brick bridges. It has been said that the stones were taken from a bridge
demolished in Fen Street where John Abell lived and inserted in his
memory in the first brick bridge and then in the later bridge. Whatever
the truth these stones provide a link with the benefactor of the first
old bridge.
During the Siege of Colchester in 1648 the bridge was occupied by
Suffolk men in support of the besieging army because this could have
been a possible means of escape for the Royalists. Another interesting
tale about the bridge is that when the current bridge was built in the
1950s, dynamite was found underneath the old bridge by the builders. It
had been left by the army during the war in case of a German invasion
and had obviously been forgotten. Nayland residents had been blissfully
unaware of its presence as they travelled over the bridge!
The River Stour through Nayland had always been the boundary between
Essex and Suffolk until 1989 when the Parish Council instigated a change
to a section of it. The floodstream running alongside Horkesley Road
became the new boundary instead of the loop of the river on the south
side of Bear Street. This meant that Anchor Bridge, the two houses on
the west side of the bridge and Nayland Lock Cottage could finally claim
to be officially part of Nayland! How much easier the problems of the
maintenance of the bridge would have been for the highway authorities in
the eighteenth century if the bridge had been in Suffolk at that time. |
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