Such was the importance of river crossings to so many of Britain’s villages, towns and cities that they gave these places their identity. A point on the Ouse where Saxons could wade or ride through led to the county town of Bedford gaining its name. Other Saxons laid timber or stone blocks on the bed of the River Granta, and so Grantabridge was coined (river and city were later renamed Cam and Cambridge).
In between these two big settlements, Sutton has both ford and bridge, and is named after neither. And yet even today these twin features are simultaneously irrelevant and dominant. A one-street, car-dependent village, its drivers are the 21st-century’s fast carts, ploughing through the brook on every journey east-west, while pedestrians mount the packhorse bridge, as their forebears did for 700 years.
Behind the wheel, we have always enjoyed the transgressive pleasure of the splash and wake – should a car really be allowed to go through a river? A slab of concrete slapped over the riverbed means it is never a deep ride, water barely lapping the tyres. Walking through in sandals, I feel uneasy, for the hard substrate underfoot makes me acutely aware of nature urbanised, history paved over. “Test your brakes,” warns the road sign on the other side. On the splash zone tarmac, I swivel round to take the other method of crossing.
The medieval, two-arched, one-horse bridge, built from local sandstone, is so narrow that only a single animal might pass over at a time. It is, nevertheless, the most memorable feature of the village.
Practical elements in the bridge’s design walk us into the middle ages. A gentle gradient eased a loaded horse up to the parapet, whose walls were kept low so that panniers did not knock against them. I can all but hear the clopping of hooves, accompanied by a low reassuring voice, calming an animal that stands a five-metre drop above running water. An equally gentle gradient lowers the beast of burden down to the opposite bank, and onwards. Thankfully, there are bridge crossings in the market town of Bedford now, so our goods will stay dry.
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