When rebuilding had to be done people generally did not care to remove what remained of the old monument, for which reason, when a bridge has broken down in our time, it has been often found that it was made of an accumulation of superimposed bridges. Of this the bridge over the Teign, between Newton Abbot and Teignmouth, rebuilt in 1815, is an example. It became, in this case, apparent that four successive bridges at least had been at various times erected with or over the remains of previous constructions. Mr. P. T. Taylor, who investigated the matter at that time, gave as his opinion “that the last or upper work was done in the sixteenth century, and that the red bridge had been built on the salt marsh in the thirteenth century; since which time there has been an accumulation of soil to the depth of ten feet. He supposes the wooden bridge to be as old {69} as the Conquest, and the white stone bridge to have been a Roman work.”[54] [Illustration 11. THE CHAPEL ON THE BRIDGE AT WAKEFIELD. (_Fourteenth Century; present state_)] Given these circumstances, it is rather a matter of surprise than otherwise to find that a good number of mediæval bridges still subsist in England; the more so as the nineteenth century has been a great destroyer of bridges. The enormous increase of population and the proportionate want of means of communication during that period has proved fatal to many bridges, and especially to the more famous and important ones which had been built in the more largely populated districts. Owing to such necessities London Bridge itself has disappeared, and even the recollection of the long years, during which it had been, so to say, a factor in English history and associated with the life of the nation, could not save it. Many others had the same fate, or were, at least, as at Norwich, Durham, Chester, Wakefield, Monmouth, and elsewhere, partly rebuilt or enlarged, not always in such a way as to retain much of their pristine appearance. For all that, however, enough of them remain to give an accurate idea of what they were, without having recourse merely to descriptions or drawings in contemporary manuscripts. None, it is true, can for elegance and completeness compete with such bridges as are still to be found in France; for example, with the magnificent thirteenth-century bridge of _Valentré_ at Cahors, of which a picture has been given above (p. 37). Those that remain are sufficient, nevertheless, to testify to the skill of old English architects in that branch of their art. As might have been expected, these bridges abound chiefly in those parts of the country where the increase of traffic and population has been the least conspicuous, on roads little more frequented to-day than in the Middle Ages, which then led to strong castles or flourishing monasteries, and only lead now to {70} ivy-clad ruins. For this reason they are more numerous in some parts of Wales than anywhere in England.