Packhorse bridge

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Mellor Bridge, a packhorse bridge in Marsden, West Yorkshire

Essex Bridge, a packhorse bridge across the River Trent

Medieval packhorse bridge crossing the Almofrei at Cotobade, Galicia

A packhorse bridge is a bridge intended to carry packhorses (horses loaded with sidebags or panniers) across a river or stream. Typically a packhorse bridge consists of one or more narrow (one horse wide) masonry arches, and has low parapets so as not to interfere with the horse's panniers.^[1]

Packhorse bridges were often built on the trade routes (often called packhorse routes) that formed major transport arteries across Europe and Great Britain until the coming of the turnpike roads and canals in the eighteenth century.^[1] Before the road-building efforts of Napoleon, all crossings of the Alps were on packhorse trails;^[2] travellers' carriages were dismantled and transported over the mountain passes by ponies and mule trains.

1 Surviving packhorse bridges
2 References

[edit] Surviving packhorse bridges

Examples of surviving packhorse bridges can be found in the following places.

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b Packhorse Cargo. cottontown.org. Retrieved on January 9, 2007.
^ Maxwell G. Lay, Ways of the World: A History of the World's Roads (Rutgers University Press) 1992:23-25; 96.