Transcriber’s Note: In Memory of Chris Curnow (1937-2023) the Project Manager at Distributed Proofreaders who selected this book, and more than 2200 others, to be preserved as free digital transcriptions by Project Gutenberg. * * * * * A BOOK OF BRIDGES [Illustration: PONT ST. BÉNÉZET OVER THE RHÔNE AT AVIGNON, BUILT BETWEEN THE YEARS 1177 AND 1185] A BOOK OF BRIDGES BY FRANK BRANGWYN, A.R.A. AND WALTER SHAW SPARROW LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXV WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND [Illustration: HISTORIC VITRY-LE-FRANÇOIS, ON THE MARNE] PREFATORY NOTE Literary projects may be put in two classes. Some are like steamers that go in a regulated course direct to their destinations, while others tack here and there like sailing ships, governed by a zigzag progress. The subject of bridges belongs to this latter class. For five-and-twenty years I have tried to order it into a methodised hobby. As well try to teach a hive of honey-bees never to visit certain flowers in a garden, and never to fly beyond certain pathways and hedges. Yet a writer cannot help rebelling when his chosen theme declines to play in the game of authorship, and deviates from many careful plans which are made for its benefit. Every chapter in this book has been rewritten eight or ten times, yet my sailing ship has not become an Atlantic liner. My wish for a long time was to show the evolution of bridges in about seven hundred photographic illustrations, with eight lines of text under each print; and in preparation for this work I collected materials, and received invaluable help from other pontists, particularly from Mr. Frank Brangwyn, Mr. H. T. Crofton, Mr. C. S. Sargisson, Mr. Edgar Wigram, the Rev. O. M. Jackson, and the Church Missionary Society. Pontist after pontist sent me notes, photographs, sketches; and then Frank Brangwyn suggested that we should work in collaboration. Here was luck indeed! His pictures and drawings would be the book of art; and the rambling subject, if it passed over mere technique into the human drama, ought to interest the general reader who does generally read. For bridges have represented types of society, every change in their development having been brought about by changes in social needs.