More information : Road Bridge. Site derived from Ordnance Survey 1st edition map (1)
Carleton Bridge crosses the River Aire at SD 9834 5008 south of Skipton. It lies at the junction of Carleton Lane coming south out of Skipton, with Limehouse Lane and Pale Lane immediately south of the bridge that run to Carleton-in-Craven and to Cononley/Lothersdale respectively. The bridge is heavily causewayed on both sides of the river over the meadows that form the flood plain of the Aire and several of its tributaries. The Aire and neighbouring becks appear all to have been re-engineered in this area: Carla Beck flows into the Aire just upstream of Carleton Bridge whilst Eller Beck, on its current course, now flows into the Aire just downstream from the bridge but used to join the river further upstream and the Aire itself used to loop considerably immediately upstream of the bridge.
Carleton Bridge is a complex structure, mostly dating to the rebuilding of 1825-7 (see below). At its heart is a single sandstone arch spanning the Aire, with an elegant, low, elliptical profile. Large blocks of finely-tooled ashlar with plain margins are used for the voussoirs, spandrels and the first set of buttresses, with the spandrel stonework appearing to rest on the top of the voussoirs to give the effect of channelled rustication. A smooth ashlar string course, chamfered out above the buttresses and spandrels, supports the parapet in the manner of Heslaker Bridge (NRHE 593618). As at Heslaker, the parapet of the bridge consists of 3 courses of massive gritstone blocks, horizontally grooved or channelled, with the top course finished to provide the coping. This course, then, is chamfered and flat-topped in contrast to the channelling on its sides, with the exception of vast curved blocks of coping over each buttress. The Aire, heavily engineered in this area, is channelled under the bridge by training walls of rusticated ashlar, sometimes terminated by squared piers.
To north, south and south-west, the bridge is approached on causeways with a sequence of flood arches beneath; battered and buttressed walling supports each embankment. To north and south of the main arch over the Aire, the causeways have rock-faced masonry walls, with a set of buttresses in the same material; the channelled parapet continues from the bridge but here it has a curved, channelled coping. There are two flood arches under the causeway to the south of the main bridge; a change in the masonry of the southernmost arch suggests that this junction with Limehouse Lane to Carleton has been realigned with the arch supporting it extended on the skew. To the north the causeway is much more extensive, with four further pairs of flood arches and two single arches. The arches are set within a square framework of coursed rubble; where they are paired, they have a stone drainage spout set above them and a bulbous stone pier between them.
There is a carefully planned gradation in the detailing of the walls and coping of the bridge and causeways, depending on how close each part is to the Aire. Textures in the stonework vary from finely tooled masonry with margins to each stone and the channelled coping on the main arch, through rock-faced masonry and curved, channelled coping on the first part of the causeway, to coursed rubble walling as the causeway returns to ground level. As the road splits into Limehouse and Pale Lanes south of the bridge, the walling is coursed rubble but continues the curved, channelled, coping to make it visually all of a piece; it is then terminated by large projections in the manner of the bridge’s buttresses with channelled coping and there are some matching channelled gate piers into adjacent fields.
This is an historic river crossing, mentioned in the West Riding Quarter Sessions as bridged as early as 1647 (2a). It is shown on the West Riding bridges map and accompanying book of reference of 1752 as number 136 in the list of bridges that were not then the responsibility of the county to maintain (2b), and Jefferys shows a bridge in this position on his map of 1771 (2c). The bridge is named as Carlton Bridge, published in Non-Antiquity Type (NAT), on 19th-century Ordnance Survey maps, including the 1st edition 6-inch (2d), but from the second edition 1:2500 (2e) onwards the published name has been corrected to Carleton Bridge (NAT) after the accepted spelling of the nearby settlement.
The current bridge is a well-documented rebuilding of an older structure: documents show that it was designed by Bernard Hartley senior and junior, West Riding joint surveyors of bridges, in 1825 (2f), and had therefore been adopted by the county since 1752. In the same year a temporary wooden bridge was erected for £227 while the piling and foundations for the new bridge went in, and the bulk of the new bridge was erected by Wade and Chippendale in 1826; by the end of 1827, the building of the new bridge and the construction and removal of the temporary bridge had cost the West Riding over £5000 (2g). The remains of what are probably some of the wooden piles of the temporary bridge can be seen downstream from the present bridge.
Hartley senior had been the mason at Ferrybridge (*******) in 1804 and the architect of Castleford Bridge (*******); he was then was joined by his son in the surveyorship in 1819. After the father’s death in February 1834, Hartley junior held the surveyorship to the West Riding alone until his death in 1855, after which the post in turn passed to his son, Bernard Hartley III (2h). Between them, they designed and built many significant bridges in the West Riding, including Castleford 1805-08 (*******) and Gargrave 1816-18 (NRHE 593755), both designated Grade II, as well as nearby Heslaker Bridge 1836-8 (NRHE 593618) and Holme Bridge, completed 1814 (NRHE 593760), both so far undesignated. Carleton Bridge fits well into the Hartleys’ design style of the 1810s, 1820s and 1830s, using massive stone blocks to maximum effect; the stonework of the bridges demonstrate varied styles of rustication and texture, but there is a particular use of channelled, or grooved, blocks for parapets and copings which gives a distinctive, striated effect. A variant design that was not adopted in 1825 for a 2-arched Carleton Bridge has the trademark Hartley radiating voussoirs (2f), as used on Gargrave and Crickle Bridges (*******) amongst others.
A panel on the inside of the bridge parapet states that it was rebuilt in 1907-08 by the West Riding County Council under T. C. Carpenter, West Riding Surveyor. There is no observable structural evidence of this reconstruction. However, historic photographs held by North Yorkshire County Council Bridge Section (the present bridge owner following local authority boundary changes in 1974) show the parapets of the main arch at one time comprised metal railings set into a basal ashlar course; the photographs are undated but are labeled ‘Carlton Bridge’ suggesting they pre-date 1909 (2i). It is therefore probable that the ‘rebuilding’ was actually limited to reconstructing the parapets entirely in stone. If so, the new work matches the old exactly. The wording on the panel has, however, led to confusion amongst subsequent commentators such as Maynard Lovell who refers to Carelton as ‘the last new bridge [?in the West Riding] of any size to be constructed entirely in masonry’ (2j). (2) |