Clapper bridges were simple constructions, comprising long slabs of stone resting on stone piers. Some are from the medieval period, while others might not be so old.
During the seventeenth and into the eighteenth centuries, before there was widespread investment in proper roads for wheeled vehicles, stone packhorse bridges were constructed to make beck-crossings easier for traders, known as jaggermen, and their trains of packhorses. They carried all kinds of goods along the most direct routes, uphill and down dale, over sometimes difficult terrains.
Improved tracks and roads permitted more widespread use of hauling freight by wheeled cart or waggon, which required wider bridges, sometimes known as waggon bridges.
Several styles of old bridges survive in the northern Yorkshire Dales and some have been recorded in the SWAAG database. Click the links below:
Clapper bridge:
Stone Structures category PDF – see records 440, 446.
Packhorse bridges:
Vernacular 1 category PDF – see records 43, 476.
Vernacular 2 category PDF – see record 701.
Waggon bridge:
Photographic category PDF – see record 766.
