Again, when you remember that Warkworth Bridge belongs to the fourteenth century, do you not expect to find in it the pointed vault, whose lighter grace is among the most beautiful things both in Eastern and in mediæval architecture? Yet the two ribbed arches are segments of circles. For many a generation Northern England has been famed for three things--a long-headed thrift, a discontent that is said to be a Radical in politics, and a stubborn hatred for any new knowledge that attacks the dull mimicry of customs. It is to Lancashire, for instance, that you must go if you wish to study in old packhorse bridges the retention of Romanesque forms. A considerable number are described popularly as Roman bridges, probably because they are found on the old pilgrim ways, which, after the Reformation, were scorned as Roman Catholic. For some reason or other Northern England welcomed in bridges the bluff economy of ribbed arches, while neglecting the more gracious thrift of Early English or pointed vaults. These are easier to build because they need lighter centres or arched scaffolds, and their thrust being less powerful than that of round-headed arches, they require less bulk in the piers. Some writers say that pointed arches interfere with sailing-boats, but this depends on the size of their spans. At Montauban there is room enough for ordinary boat traffic under the Pont des Consuls. The Pont Valentré at Cahors has ogivale arches, and in one fine drawing Brangwyn studies the technique of their construction. For instance, the embattled piers are triangular, and each of them is pierced transversely by a bay or passage, which is put on a level with the springing of every arch. Below this bay are three holes; and another line of holes runs across the under surface of the arch beneath the springing.[113] Now, these holes and the bays have a great technical interest, they remind us how the Pont Valentré was built in the thirteenth century. With their help simple scaffolds were erected. The first step was to thrust fir saplings through the holes in a pier till they jutted out on each side; then they were covered with planks and used as footbridges by the workmen, and also as resting-places for barrow-loads of dressed stone, which were lifted up by movable cranes. The service of the masons was effected through the bay in a pier, and the centring of every arch was fixed in those other holes which Brangwyn has represented in his vivacious water-colour.