New Bridge, Tamar

New Bridge
Cornwall, Devon
New Bridge
Location
Carrying:	A390
Crossing:	River Tamar
Location
Grid reference:	SX433722
Location:	50°31’43"N, 4°12’43"W
Structure
History
	Built 1520
Information

New Bridge crosses the River Tamar from Devonshire on the east bank to Cornwall on the west, below Gunnislake, which is this the first town in Cornwall for many visitors. It carries the A390 between Tavistock and Gunnislake.

The bridge is today a Grade I listed structure.

The Tamar Valley is deep and steep here and the road loops precariously down the sides of the valley on each side, to where the bridge spans the river in 6 arches. Its construction is typical of its age: a series of round arches between solid pillars with cutwaters upstream and down, carrying a single-track road with triangular refuges on each pillar.

On the Devon side at the head of the bridge stands a toll house, now a private home.

History

This was the lowest bridge on the Tamar for about 350 years, until the construction of the Royal Albert Bridge at to carry the Great Western Railway over the Hamoaze at Plymouth and Saltash, and remained the lowest road bridge on the Tamar until 1962, when the Tamar Bridge was built. The New Bridge is still the lowest bridge on the non-tidal river.

As its name suggests, the New Bridge was a new-built crossing in its time, built in 1520 by Sir Piers Edgcumbe, the owner of Cotehele and Mount Edgcumbe: it provided a much-needed new route and relieve the Horse Bridge, a narrow, mediæval stone bridge (1437; the river's oldest extant bridge) several miles upstream at Horsebridge: until the New Bridge was built, there was no bridge on the river below Horsebridge.

The toll house and the bridge

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about New Bridge, Tamar)

• New Bridge on SABRE