Farndon Bridge

Farndon Bridge crosses the River Dee and the England-Wales border between the villages of Farndon, Cheshire, England and Holt, Wales (grid reference SJ412544). It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building, and is a scheduled monument. In the early 1990s the bridge was restored and renovated and at the same time an archaeological survey was carried out.

The bridge was built in 1339 by Monks from St Werburgh's Abbey Chester. It originally had ten arches with a large gate tower on the fifth arch. In 1770 the tower was demolished and at some time two of the arches on the Welsh side were lost. The bridge is a narrow structure built of red sandstone with eight arches, of which five are over the river. On the Farndon side is one flood arch and two flood arches are on the Holt side.

During the English Civil war, a brief skirmish occurred near the bridge in 1643 when Parliamentarian forces advanced towards the Royalists holding Holt on the western side of the river.

The bridge is reputedly haunted by the ghosts of a Welsh prince's two murdered sons, who were drowned in the river.

John Warwick Smith (26 July 1749 – 22 March 1831) a British watercolour landscape painter and illustrator produced a fine painting of the bridge and the landscape around. It has been reproduced since for use on postcards.

Road traffic is single-lane and is controlled by traffic lights. Two narrow footpaths on either side of the road can be used by pedestrians. However, due to the bridge's age, it is closed intermittently for surveys to be conducted on its structure. In the summer 2018 the bridge was closed for significant repairs to be carried out.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Farndon Bridge" and modified on 23 July 2019 under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.