The long view

To drive from St Augustine’s, Broxbourne, after Sunday service, to the Crown just over the river Lea, for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, you must take a 17-mile detour through the neighbouring county of Essex. That is how things will be until May, while they mend the bridge over the railway. The railway was built in 1840, the original pub 100 years earlier and the church 300 years earlier than that. People had grown used to things the way they were. A consoling detail in the disruption is that the location of the railway bridge is given in traditional miles and chains: 17mi 4ch from London. And the real obstacle to traffic is still the Lea, here joined by the New River, dug in 1613, and a canal cut in 1771. It all rightly suggests a settled country, which may complain at a four-month annoyance but can absorb the shock.