The Swiss Bridge at

Cardiff Castle Cardiff Castle ( cy, Castell Caerdydd) is a medieval castle and Victorian Gothic revival mansion located in the city centre of Cardiff, Wales. The original motte and bailey castle was built in the late 11th century by Norman invaders on top ...

was built by the architect

William Burges William Burges (; 2 December 1827 – 20 April 1881) was an English architect and designer. Among the greatest of the Victorian art-architects, he sought in his work to escape from both nineteenth-century industrialisation and the Neocla ...

for

John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, (12 September 1847 – 9 October 1900) was a landed aristocrat, industrial magnate, antiquarian, scholar, philanthropist, and architectural patron. Succeeding to the marquisate at the age ...

in 1873. Modelled on the

Kapellbrücke The Kapellbrücke (literally, Chapel Bridge) is a covered wooden footbridge spanning the river Reuss diagonally in the city of Lucerne in central Switzerland. Named after the nearby St. Peter's Chapel, the bridge is unique in containing a num ...

in the Swiss city of

Lucerne Lucerne ( , ; High Alemannic: ''Lozärn'') or Luzern ()Other languages: gsw, Lozärn, label= Lucerne German; it, Lucerna ; rm, Lucerna . is a city in central Switzerland, in the German-speaking portion of the country. Lucerne is the capital o ...

, it provided a link from the castle into Bute's private gardens which now form

Bute Park Bute Park and Arboretum () is a park in Cardiff, Wales. It comprises of landscaped gardens and parkland that once formed the grounds of Cardiff Castle. The park is named after the 3rd Marquess of Bute, whose family owned the castle. History and ...

. By the 1960s, the bridge had become dilapidated and it was demolished in 1963.

History

Site of the Swiss Bridge, Cardiff Castle

John Crichton-Stuart inherited his title and estates at the age of six months, in 1848 on the death of his father the second Marquess. His father's shrewd investments in the development of the port and city of Cardiff, and the enormous revenues from coal, together with his wider patrimony, left the third marquess very considerable wealth and at the time of his coming of age he was claimed to be "the richest man in the world". In 1865, the Marquess met

and the two embarked on an architectural partnership, the results of which long outlasted Burges' own death in 1881. Bute's desires and money allied with Burges' fantastical imagination and skill led to the creation of two of the finest examples of the late

Victorian era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edward ...

Gothic Revival,

and

Castell Coch (; ) is a 19th-century Gothic Revival castle built above the village of in South Wales. The first castle on the site was built by the Normans after 1081 to protect the newly conquered town of Cardiff and control the route along the Taff Gor ...

. Until the 1850s, Bute Park, laid out on the site of five farms and known as Cooper's Fields, was open to the public. In 1858, Bute's mother gave

Sophia Gardens Sophia Gardens ( cy, Gerddi Sophia) is a public park in Riverside, Cardiff, Wales, on the west bank of the River Taff. International test cricket matches and county cricket matches are held in the Sophia Gardens cricket ground, the home of Gl ...

to the city and Bute Park was closed and transformed into the private gardens for the castle. Bute wanted an access point from the castle directly into the gardens and, in response, Burges gave him the Swiss Bridge. Construction began around 1873, although some sources give 1875 as the construction date. The timber bridge ran from a doorway opened up in the base of the Bute Tower across a

leat A leat (; also lete or leet, or millstream) is the name, common in the south and west of England and in Wales, for an artificial watercourse or aqueduct dug into the ground, especially one supplying water to a watermill or its mill pond. Ot ...

directly into the park. In the 1920s, Bute's son had J. P. Grant construct a new West Gate into the castle at the corner of Bute Park and moved the Swiss Bridge to a new location below Castle Mews. By the 1960s, the bridge was derelict, having suffered considerably from vandalism, and Cardiff City Council had it broken up.

Architecture and description

Burges modelled the bridge on the medieval

which he had seen on his European travels in the 1850s. Like the Kapellbrücke, the Swiss Bridge was built in timber, constructed on a framework of stilts built over the leat. It had over-large eaves on the roof, topped with weathervanes fashioned into the initial ''B''. The bridge concluded with a small summer-house on the Bute Park side. The bridge was constructed by Estcourts of Gloucester, prominent builders who worked for Burges on a number of projects and whose bill was £1,108. The architectural historian and Burges expert

Joseph Mordaunt Crook Joseph Mordaunt Crook, (born 27 February 1937), generally known as J. Mordaunt Crook, is an English architectural historian and specialist on the Georgian and Victorian periods. He is an authority on the life and work of the Victorian architect ...

called it a "''jeu d'esprit'', unique in this country".

Notes

Sources

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External links

Cardiff Parks - Images of the bridge
{{William Burges Bridges in Cardiff Demolished bridges in Wales Pedestrian bridges in Wales William Burges buildings

Castle A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified r ...