bridge over untroubled water

I often wonder how it is possible to walk, cycle or otherwise pass by an interesting feature without even noticing it, but it happened to me again the other week. The village of Ivegill, which is located about 12 miles north of Penrith, lies on one of the first routes that I established when I started cycling, so I will have cycled through it dozens of times during the past two decades. According to Wikipedia, ‘It takes its name from the River Ive, which flows through the centre of the village’. This is not correct. The entire village lies east of the river along an unclassified road with no junctions. It has a church and a primary school, but no pub. I don’t know the origin of the river’s name but –gill, mistakenly spelled ‘ghyll’ by Victorian antiquarians (e.g., Dungeon Ghyll in Langdale), derives from the Old Norse word for ‘ravine’.

I’d never previously stopped hereabouts, but on our last ride through the village, Paula and I had been battling a vicious headwind for the past couple of miles, and I was on the lookout for somewhere to sit down and take a break. I spotted a convenient bench by the side of the road just as we were leaving the village, so we stopped. And that’s when I saw it:

I had absolutely no previous knowledge of its existence! The second photo was taken by Paula.

Although the text section of the Wikipedia entry for Ivegill contained no useful information, there is a photo of the bridge in the side panel, and from the caption I learned that it is a Grade II listed structure that is known as Wharton Bridge, Further research dated its construction to the early eighteenth century. It is described as a packhorse bridge, although it doesn’t appear to lead anywhere. In fact, the gate that you can see in the above photos was padlocked, and the far bank appeared to be heavily overgrown, possibly impenetrable.

This is a view of the downstream side of the bridge:

On the evidence of this photo, it’s hard to imagine how this watercourse achieved the designation ‘river’, although it has been a very dry summer.

And this photo, also taken by Paula, shows a gradient sign—unusual on unclassified roads—that appears to read ‘15%’, so it clearly has considerable erosive power if measured over centuries. The photo also shows the convenient bench, which we’re likely to make use of in future whenever we come this way:

I wonder how many other interesting sites I’ve cycled past over the past two decades without noticing them, although I will continue to keep my eyes on the road ahead.