THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE MONK’S BRIDGE. 35 
line. The Saxons seem to have carefully preserved the 
bridges they found, though they probably built few them- 
selves. St. Swithun, Bishop of Winchester, 856-863, built 
a bridge on the east side of that city. We may say, most 
of the bridges in this country at the time of the Norman 
Conquest were Roman, and the preservation of these ancient 
bridges was considered so important, that the charge was 
often thrown upon the hundred or county. At Cambridge, 
the county was bound to see to and keep in repair the 
bridge, which we learn from the Hundred Rolls, was said 
in the 13th century to be in a ruinous condition, so that 
peoples carts used to fall over into the river. I think, this 
again, was the ancient Roman bridge of Camboricum, and 
it was the timber roadway that had failed. 
At Newcastle Bridge, the expense of repairs had to be 
borne by the Town and the Bishop of Durham, who, as 
Count Palatine, was responsible for the building and repair of 
a third of it. The repair of this bridge was so important, it 
being the main road to Scotland, that we find it almost a 
national undertaking, the Archbishop of York, Sewall de 
Bovile in 1257, grants an indulgence of 30 days to every- 
one who bestows anything towards the building of Tyne 
Bridge; Walter Merton, Bishop of Rochester, Archibald, 
Bishop of Caithness, and Stephen Fulburn, Bishop of 
Waterford in 1277, all grant indulgences for the same 
object. 
What a lot of bridges failed in the 13th century. We have 
seen Newcastle was burnt, Cambridge became ruinous, and 
now, in the 13th century we meet with Monk’s Bridge and 
get our first documentary evidence from the Annales de 
Burton, rolls series, p. 372, where there is this entry 
‘“DE PONTE DE EGENTONA.” 
I give you a translation of what follows—“ Be it noted that 
a certain Prior of this Monastery of Burton named John de 
Strettone because he was born at Strettone, a man of great 
