More information : (SU 22309904) St John's Brideg (NAT) (1)
St John's Bridge was built a few years after the foundation of the Hospital of St John the Baptist (2), (AD 1228 SU 29 NW 9). Its maintenance was a charge upon the Hospital, and grants of pontage was given to the prior in 1337, 1341 and 1388 (3). The bridge was re-built circa 1831, when the medieval arches were taken down, and was altered again in 1884 (4). (2-5)
The present St John's Bridge has no visible medieval features. (6)
The crossing of the Thames near its confluence with the River Leach probably gave Lechlade its name, and a piece of land at the crossing was known as `the Lade' in 1246. Saint John's bridge, built by 1228, carried the main road from mid-Gloucestershire to London. Later it comprised two large and two small arches and there was a long causeway of more than twenty arches crossing the meadows on the Buscot side of the river. A gateway to the bridge built in 1228 possibly survived as the building on it that was known as `Noah's Ark' in 1716. The lords of the manor of Lechlade claimed the right of taking toll from barges passing beneath the bridge, but in 1791 the Upper Thames navigation commissioners by-passed it with a new cut and a lock. (7)
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