Qualla: St Ives Bridge

St Ives Bridge: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. There are only six medieval bridges in England with chapels still standing on them, and the bridge at St Ives is one of them. The others are at Bradford-on-Avon, Rotherham, Wakefield, Derby, and Rochester. Walk across the St Ives Bridge today and you cross six stone arches over the River Great Ouse, with a tiny rectangular chapel jutting out from the third pier - a structure built in 1426 so that travellers could pause halfway across, give thanks for a safe crossing, and possibly drop a coin in for the upkeep. The chapel has been a private house, a public house, a two-storey tenement, and a place of worship. It has had its top two floors added and then chopped off again. It has survived a civil war that demolished half the bridge it sits on. It is small. It is improbable. It is still here.

Read more: St Ives Bridge on Qualla

Image: Public domain

St Ives Bridge: Limestone from Barnack

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NotFromUtrecht, CC BY-SA 3.0. Before the stone bridge there was a wooden one, put up in 1107 by the monks of Ramsey Abbey - a Benedictine house twelve miles north that had founded the priory of St Ivo in St Ives a century earlier. Before the wooden bridge there was a ford, probably in use for over a thousand ...

Read more: St Ives Bridge on Qualla

Image: NotFromUtrecht | CC BY-SA 3.0

St Ives Bridge: Cromwell's Roundheads Blow It Up

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Baker, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1645, deep into the English Civil War, Cavalier forces loyal to King Charles I were gathering in Bedfordshire. The Parliamentary commander Oliver Cromwell needed to defend Cambridge. The Roundheads chose a brutal solution: demolish the bridges across the Great Ouse at St Ives,...

Read more: St Ives Bridge on Qualla

Image: John Baker | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Ives Bridge: The Chapel as Pub, House, and Survivor

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Shreeve, CC BY-SA 2.0. The chapel was deconsecrated in 1539 during the dissolution of the monasteries, the same wave that destroyed Ramsey Abbey and stripped its founding institutions. It became a private dwelling, then a public house. In 1736 two additional brick storeys were piled on top - a tenement...

Read more: St Ives Bridge on Qualla

Image: Paul Shreeve | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Ives Bridge: Still Carrying Traffic After Six Hundred Years

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Poliphilo, CC0. The bridge kept carrying the main London Road from St Ives - the B1040 - until 1980, when the Harrison Way bypass curved around the east of the built-up area and finally took the heavy lorries off the medieval span. Before that, buses and trucks rumbled across a roadway just twel...

Read more: St Ives Bridge on Qualla

Image: Poliphilo | CC0