A Prehistoric 'Salter's Way'

The main road dissects this small village so for years I simply saw it as a small dot on the road to or from Louth.    It wasn't until I decided to go and explore that I found this beautiful, very small bridge.

A village lane runs almost parallel with it and large ugly utilitarian railings have been installed to make sure than cars don't slip into the stream, so it is difficult to get a decent photograph.   Safety first, but surely there must be a better way for history and safety to coexist.

The bridge probably dates to the 1300's and was a packhorse bridge.     It is very narrow, perhaps three feet wide.    I hope those horses were sure-footed.

The track probably led out to the coast, to where that valuable commodity, salt, was harvested.   It runs back up to the Wolds and was known to be in use since prehistoric times as well as by the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes.

This beautiful photograph was found on lincs2thepast  and shows the bridge after some serious clearing and tidying has been done.  It looks huge, trust me, it is tiny.

This rather sweet old painting, courtesy of the lincstothepast.com team is by Karl Wood 1888-1954 and shows the bridge in earlier times.

A tiny bridge but countless feet and hooves have been across it, including mine.