Trekelland Bridge

A road bridge of late C15 or early C16 date with later alterations.

MATERIALS: granite ashlar with later stone rubble parapets and abutments.

DESCRIPTION: the bridge is of two main arches and a smaller span flood arch at the south-west end. The arches are four-centred and in the Perpendicular style. The two main arches have a span of 5.8m each while the floodwater arch is 2.6m wide. Each arch has a single arch-ring with granite voussoirs. In the main arches these are slightly recessed below a hollow-chamfered granite string-course but in the floodwater arch they are flush with the bridge sides with no string course. A further and similar string-course highlights the line, called the impost, where each arch springs from the piers and abutments. Both piers have pointed cutwaters at each end. The arch vaults, piers, sides and abutments of the bridge are faced almost entirely by neatly dressed ashlar granite slabs. By contrast, the causeway sides are faced by local metamorphic stone, indicating a likely later date for the facing. Another granite string-course extends 20.75m from abutment to abutment, above the arches and across the piers but not carried onto the causeways. This string-course emphasises the divide between the mostly granite-faced bridge below and the parapets above which are of local stone, like the causeways, but with chamfered granite coping, parts of which retain their iron cramps.

The piers' cutwaters are triangular and carried up into the parapets as refuges on each side, and also of local stone but with granite quoins along part or all of each apex. The bridge's parapets above the string-course and carriageway level have undergone various episodes of post-medieval to modern rebuild using slate rubble and reused chamfered granite coping.