Qualla: Wadebridge

Wadebridge: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0. Before the bridge, there were chapels on both sides of the river. People prayed for safe passage at one, waded across the tidal Camel, and gave thanks at the other if they made it. Then the Reverend Thomas Lovibond, vicar of Egloshayle, grew tired of counting the dead - humans and animals lost to the crossing - and built a stone bridge. It was begun in 1468 and completed by 1485 depending on whose chronicle you believe, and the place renamed itself accordingly. Wade became Wadebridge. The bridge is still here, widened twice, refurbished in 1991, and so famously sat that John Leland, riding through Cornwall in the early 1500s, claimed it rested on packs of wool. It actually rests on bedrock. But "the Bridge on Wool" is the kind of detail that survives because it sounds better than the truth.

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Image: Derek Harper | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wadebridge: Cromwell at the Crossing

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Larrylobster, CC BY-SA 3.0. By 1646, the bridge had been a strategic asset for nearly two centuries, and Oliver Cromwell wanted it. He arrived with five hundred dragoons and a thousand horsemen, took the crossing for Parliament, and moved on. The English Civil War left Cornwall heavily contested - the count...

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Image: Larrylobster | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wadebridge: The Locomotive Named Elephant

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Bodmin and Wadebridge Railway opened on 30 September 1834, one of the first lines in Britain to carry passengers. It cost £35,000 to build, following a study commissioned in 1831 by Sir William Molesworth of Pencarrow. The opening day, the locomotive Camel pulled four hundred...

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Image: Derek Harper | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wadebridge: The Port That Was

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0. Until the railway took over, Wadebridge was the highest navigable point on the River Camel. Coasters brought goods from Bristol, coal from South Wales, timber from the Baltic, and carried stone and tin and copper back out. The quays handled five-vessel docks by 1843. By 1880, bot...

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Image: David Smith | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wadebridge: The Pedestrian Street

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Benjamin Evans, Public domain. For most of the twentieth century, Wadebridge was a traffic problem. The A39, Cornwall's main north-coast road, ran straight through the centre of town along Molesworth Street, where shoppers and lorries fought for the same narrow corridor. In 1991 the bypass opened. The traffic ...

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Image: Benjamin Evans | Public domain

Wadebridge: Festivals and Faces

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Olaf Tausch, CC BY 3.0. August Bank Holiday brings the Cornwall Folk Festival, one of the UK's longest-running, founded in 1972. Its patrons are the Lakeman brothers - Sam, Sean, and Seth - and the festival features contemporary folk, bluegrass, Americana, Celtic music, and acoustic acts in venues all o...

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Image: Olaf Tausch | CC BY 3.0