The Daily Telegraph

Great bridges possess the man-made power to unite any divide

- READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion DAN CRUICKSHAN­K

Bridges occupy a very special place in the world of man-made structures. While much modern architectu­re is tainted by associatio­n with corporate greed, environmen­tal profligacy and insensitiv­ity to history, bridges remain heroic. They are the most absolute evocations of the beauty achieved when a design and means of constructi­on are supremely practical, functional and fit for purpose.

The greatest bridges in this country – such as the Forth Rail Bridge of 1882-90 – are raw and ruthless leaps of the imaginatio­n that pioneer, or at least perfect, structural ideas and materials, and that appear minimal when set against the elemental power of nature that they seek to tame. Indeed great bridges possess the power of nature and, in an almost magical sense, become part of nature. Rather than damage their setting, they enhance it.

For these reasons bridges capture the imaginatio­n, as would any future bridge across the English Channel. They represent the indomitabl­e human spirit, the love of daring and of challenge, the power of invention and of human ingenuity when faced with the daunting yet sublime power of nature.

But of course bridges also stand for things beyond the physical. They have been seen as links between this world and the next, as expression­s of transition and as metaphors for the journey of the soul to the afterlife, the means of crossing the great divide. In Europe during the Middle Ages, bridge constructi­on was seen as such an audacious challenge to God’s creation that it could only be undertaken as sacred exercise, with a prayer for forgivenes­s and with the support of the Church. Typically the first masonry-built London Bridge, started in 1173, was overseen by a priest named Peter de Colechurch who headed the “Fraternity of the Brethren of the Bridge”. A key move to placate God’s potential wrath was to include a handsome chapel, dedicated to the new English saint Thomas Becket as the gathering place for pilgrims on their way to his shrine in Canterbury. Thus London Bridge became woven into the fabric of English culture.

And then there is the power of connection. Bridges can make places by forging mutually beneficial links between two once very separate locations. The poet Philip Larkin, a man suspicious of change and perhaps not the most obvious champion of heroically engineered constructi­on, realised this potential. He was a great admirer of the Humber Bridge. He pondered the way it promised new life to the communitie­s on either side of the watery divide and even, in a way, gave a new meaning to history. As he wrote, “lost centuries of local lives that rose… seem now to reassemble… all resurrecte­d in the single span”.

Larkin recognised the act of bridging as a supreme symbol of human existence, of the transition from the perhaps benighted past to a brighter future. “Always,” he observed, “it is by bridges that we live.” So true.

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