28 
bridge. Warner’s authority for his assertion, a piece of information 
it must be remembered not given by Rack, must presumably be 
John Wood. Wood says, vol. ii. p. 326, as printed in 1749 five 
years before the Bridge was destroyed, “St. Lawrence bridge 
consists of five arches. The top of the bridge is 11 feet 6 inches. 
broad over the arches, but much wider over the butments, and 
the buildings fronting it are the small chapel of St. Lawrence 
elevated over one of the piers and four dwelling houses erected 
on the banks of the river by the side of the butments of the 
bridge. The narrowness of this bridge is now become a public 
nuisance.” We have here all that either Rack or Warner knew 
of the subject although they do not acknowledge it, and it can be 
noted how Warner’s attempt to elaborate caused him to err, 
Wood wrote from personal knowledge, and in using the word 
butment he does not mean buttress or pier as Warner probably 
chose to read it, but the land wall on either shore on which the 
last arch of the bridge on either side rested. The greater width 
then over the butments means that the shore ends widened 
out, and the houses were, as indeed Wood plainly says, “on the 
banks of the river by the side of the butments.” The chapel, he 
says as plainly, was on one of the “piers.” Thus there is no 
intention to convey the idea that any houses were on the 
bridge ; indeed with a width of eleven feet six inches only there: 
could be none. 
By good fortune we have preserved for us in the British 
Museum, two drawings of the Bridge as made by Bernard Lens. 
in 1718. Bernard Lens, the son of Bernard, a Belgian, was. 
born in England and was the second of four who bore the same 
name. He died in 1725. His especial excellence was work in 
.Indian ink, the material used for these two exquisite sketches 
now reproduced. The views one from the east, the other: 
from the west, give us a complete idea of the structure almost as. 
fully as if it were before our eyes to-day. 
Warner says, but again Rack does not, that in 14 Edward ii, 
