Horse Bridge

Heritage listing

Details The monument includes Horse Bridge which crosses the River Tamar, where it forms the Cornwall and Devon boundary, at a point 6.5km north east of Callington in east Cornwall. The bridge, built in 1437, retains much original fabric and includes stone brackets which have been associated with a medieval fishery on the river. Horse Bridge is also a Listed Building Grade I. The bridge crosses the River Tamar in dissected terrain where the fairly steep valley sides drop down to a broad floodplain 200m wide. Here the river keeps to the east of that floodplain and is spanned east-west by the bridge's six main arches linked by five piers. From the bridge abutments, masonry-faced causeways with parapets carry the road over the adjacent riverbanks. The eastern causeway is short but the western is much longer and incorporates a floodwater arch. From the end of its western causeway, a low embankment with modern facing and railed fences takes the road beyond the scheduling. Each of the six main arches is approximately 6m in span; the western main arch is very slightly pointed but the others are rounded. The floodwater arch in the western causeway is pointed with a span of 4.7m. All of the arches have double rings of slate voussoirs, the innermost recessed from the outer along a chamfered moulding. A projecting moulding also marks the line, called the impost, along the sides of the piers from which the arches spring. The five piers have pointed cutwaters at each end, slightly longer upstream than downstream. Where sufficiently exposed, the piers are seen to rise from a low bedding plinth resting on bedrock. The bridge's western abutment also has a low upstream cutwater which returns to a substantial plinth along the western causeway's lower northern face, crossing and raising t

From the Historic England List Entry under OGL v3.