The breeze of autumn strikes the startled ear,
And fancy, pacing through the woodland shade,
Hears in the gust the requiem of the year.


KIRKE WHITE'S _Early Poems_.

The ARCH was an architectural wonder of the last century. It was built
in the year 1729, as a passage for the wagon-way, or rail-road for the
conveyance of coals from collieries in the vicinity of Tanfield, which
were the property of an association called "the Great Allies." It is a
magnificent stone structure, one hundred and thirty feet in the span,
springing from abutments nine feet high, to the height of sixty feet:
a dial is placed on the top with a suitable inscription. The expense
of its construction is stated to have amounted to 12,000_l._; the
masonry is reputed to be extremely good, and the arch itself is nearly
perfect, though it is now only known as a foot-way, the collieries for
the use of which it was built, being no longer worked: previously it was
but a private road-way. In Cooke's _Topography_ we find it stated,
(though it is not mentioned upon what authority,) that the architect
built a former arch which fell, and that the apprehension of the second
experiencing the same fate induced him to commit suicide.

Before the building of the New London Bridge, the arch at Tanfield is
said to have been the largest stone arch in existence. The span of the
central arch of the bridge is 152 feet; and that of the arches on each
side of the centre, 140 feet: the span of the arches of Waterloo Bridge
is 120 feet; so that the reader may form a tolerably correct estimate of
the arch at Tanfield.