THE WATERWAYS HERITAGE SPOTTER: SPLIT BRIDGES

摘要

As a six-year-old or thereabouts, I found the lock tail bridges on the Trent & Mersey Canal in Middlewich a little terrifying. This was the 1960s, and my family would be breaking our car journey to visit relatives in Chester by stopping for fish and chips from a nearby chip shop (invariably served in a copy of the Middlewich Guardian) - which depending on the weather would be eaten either in the car in a nearby street or sitting by the canal, watching any boats passing through the locks. So what was so scary about the bridges? Well, partly it was that they consisted simply of narrow, flat wooden decks with no handrails at all to protect you from falling some distance (these are deep locks) into the water. But far worse than that (to a small child) was that they didn't even reach all the way across! Each 'bridge' wasn't actually a span at all, but two halves (each supported by a pair of rather spindly looking wrought iron brackets), almost but not quite meeting in the middle, leaving a gap. No, it wasn't anything like wide enough for even a very young future waterways journalist to fall down - there was barely an inch of space - but it frightened me.