which had fallen into decay. The cost of repairing it was estimated at
200 marks. There is a building on the bridge corbelled out on a
specially built pier of the bridge, the use of which is not at first
sight evident. Some people call it the watch-house, and it has been
used as a lock-up; but Miss Dryden tells us that it was a chapel,
similar to those which we have seen on many other medieval bridges. It
belonged to the Hospital of St. Margaret, which stood at the southern
end of the bridge, where the Great Western Railway crosses the road.
This chapel retains little of its original work, and was rebuilt when
the bridge was widened in the time of James I. Formerly there was a
niche for a figure looking up the stream, but this has gone with much
else during the drastic restoration. That a bridge-chapel existed here
is proved by Aubrey, who mentions "the chapel for masse in the middest
of the bridge" at Bradford.

[Illustration: The Crane Bridge, Salisbury]

Sometimes bridges owe their origin to curious circumstances. There was
an old bridge at Olney, Buckinghamshire, of which Cowper wrote when he
sang:--

That with its wearisome but needful length
Bestrides the flood.

The present bridge that spans the Ouse with three arches and a
causeway has taken the place of the long bridge of Cowper's time. This
long bridge was built in the days of Queen Anne by two squires, Sir
Robert Throckmorton of Weston Underwood and William Lowndes of Astwood
Manor. These two gentlemen were sometimes prevented from paying visits
to one another by floods, as they lived on opposite sides of the Ouse.