Pooley Bridge was an historic stone road bridge that crossed the

River Eamont The River Eamont is a river in Cumbria, England and one of the major tributaries of the River Eden. The name of the river is from Old English (ēa-gemōt) and is a back formation from Eamont Bridge which means the ''junction of streams.'' T ...

in the village of

Pooley Bridge Pooley Bridge is a village in the Westmorland and Furness of the northwestern English county of Cumbria, within the traditional borders of Westmorland. The village takes its name from a bridge over the River Eamont at the northern end of Ul ...

near the northern end of

Ullswater Ullswater is a glacial lake in Cumbria, England and part of the Lake District National Park. It is the second largest lake in the region by both area and volume, after Windermere. The lake is about long, wide, and has a maximum depth of . I ...

. It connected two

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

es,

Barton and Pooley Bridge Barton and Pooley Bridge is a civil parish in Westmorland and Furness, Cumbria, England. The parish is on the edge of the Lake District National Park, and had a population of 232 according to the 2001 census, increasing slightly to 238 at the 2 ...

and Dacre, and was

grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

in January 1991. The bridge, erected in 1764 and replacing an earlier bridge from the 16th century, was washed away on 6 December 2015 when Cumbria was hit by heavy flooding during

Storm Desmond Storm Desmond was an extratropical cyclone and fourth named storm of the 2015–16 UK and Ireland windstorm season, notable for directing a plume of moist air, known as an atmospheric river, which brought record amounts of orographic rainfall ...

, after storm waters eroded the riverbed around the base of the bridge supports. A parapet stone was inscribed "JS & IR 1764".

New bridge

A temporary replacement footbridge was opened on 20 March 2016, and a new stainless steel clear span road bridge was lifted into place in January 2020. It was opened to the public in October 2020, with some detailing still to be finished. While a clear span bridge would normally have deep pile foundations on the banks, rock was not found even 15 m deep, so the new bridge was built as a

tied arch bridge A tied-arch bridge is an arch bridge in which the outward-directed horizontal forces of the arch(es) are borne as tension by a chord tying the arch ends rather than by the ground or the bridge foundations. This strengthened chord may be the deck ...

with the arch above the deck, designed with the slimmest profile possible without obstructing the view.

References

{{Reflist Bridges completed in 1764 1764 establishments in England Former bridges in the United Kingdom Dacre, Cumbria Grade II listed bridges in Cumbria