Albert Bridge

I loved you tippy-toeing round the pagoda in Battersea Park in your Issy Miyake jacket. You bought it instead of paying your gas bill in 1999 and wore a ski suit all that winter, indoors and out. You started dying your own hair the summer after: black or white or fire-engine red.

Albert Bridge watched over us. We’d cross sometimes to browse those stupidly expensive boutiques you loved. Or go to The Gaumont to see Spirited Away or My Mother Dreams the Satan’s Disciples in New York. We’d always see Bob Geldof shuffling round like a tramp. I loved you.

by Julie Batty

Julie says, “When I learned about the 26 Bridges project I was thinking about my friend, Linda Dobell, who was very dear to me and would have just turned 70 if she hadn’t died in 2009. She was the most vivid person I ever knew, and I spent some of the happiest days of my life with her. She lived in Battersea so we often walked along the Thames through Battersea Park and over the Albert Bridge to Chelsea, talking, laughing, talking some more.”

On Landing

A mate’s bridge. “Come over” his message read. “We’re building it.”

Four weeks gone. I was boarding over the space she had left slowly, plank by plank. My close friends were unspannably far. But these two? Barely friends, but walkably close. I took a deep breath and a hammer.

The bridge crossed a small ditch, two dads connecting school friends. Four hands needing two more to build it, maybe. Or just constructing a way to reach across. No one was great on the tools that day. Even worse on the words. But together on Landing, we built a mate’s bridge.

by Mark Easterbrook

Mark says, “My bridge is a small, poorly constructed footbridge on Landing Road, Titirangi, a short walk from my house. Several years ago, my wife left. Many of the people we knew locally were fellow school parents and, while she had grown close with many of the other mums, I was only really on friendly acquaintance terms with their husbands.

A month after she left, two of those guys invited me over to help them build their footbridge. I realised after a couple of hours what it really was — a clumsy but genuine attempt to support me at a rough time. The fact we were literally building a bridge stuck with me, and that’s how we got to this piece.”

The bridge at Aegen’s ford

An angel watches above the cutwater,
where stone cleaves chalk-borne flow through ashlar arches.
A figment angel, river-wrecked,
hand and water carved,
eroded by four hundred winter frosts
to leave the memory of a guardian.
In time beside the pebbled ford,
knapped flint and brick replace Tudor timber,
lichens spread rose, jade, sulphur on moss-creviced walls.
Packhorses, wagons, carts
become vans, lorries, cars that swirl the same dust
as they rumble between ragstone-capped parapets
pinioned by steel staples.
Once silver minnows slipped through my fingers in the shallows
where children still paddle
as an angel watches.

By Sue Young

"Beneath it all"

Beneath it all, wild jasmine, wisteria and convolvulus writhe in a tangle of time. 
An ominous construction of concrete and mesh, chassis and planks,
never not ever to be crossed alone, that was the cast iron rule. 
Within its mossy shadows hunkered rats, in the stream below furled eels divining their way home.
I know now that their DNA maps them to Tonga’s tepid waters. Back then I feared they’d swarm and smother me, under that flimsy bridge. 
If I could see beyond, would I have stayed on the safe side, 
where ducklings dawdle midst weedy shallows
beneath it all.

by Jane Berney

Twinned bridges

First we lay the foundations, compare practicalities, identify polarities.

Our meetings span a thirteen hour time gap, Jane sips cranberry juice to start her day while Sue winds hers down with wine. Autumn sunlight pours through one window, across the world the curtains are drawn against the night. Jane plants bulbs to wait out the winter, Sue brings early daffodils from the garden.

Exchanged words are our building bricks, Awa, the river, an angel above, the taniwha below.

We wonder about our bridges and what draws us to them. Is it the bridge’s structure, bound with memory, crossing the ebb and flow of our lives? Between our stories are decades and more than 18,000 kilometres yet we seem to be walking in step, along the same pathway, discovering separately but together. In the absence of Aotearoan crows, distance must be measured as the godwit flies, spanning the globe from south to north.

We create our bridges word by word. Sue, messily, ideas captured in fragments, sliced and rebuilt. Jane with full attention, carving out the space to write.

In the slipstream of our thinking, a transpontine cohesion of ideas: the holistic fragility of the Earth captured in Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, the need to protect the rivers that flow beneath our bridges. Jane tells of the Whanganui, the first river worldwide to be given legal personhood. The catalyst for similar conversations in England and around the world. We swap more book titles and grow our souls.

In Jane’s garden, a single daffodil breaks through the earth.

Sue & Jane

At the bridge

At the bridge you can listen to Opera.
Bat a hundred.
Catch the rowers row the catch.

At the bridge
You can walk
To the match
Across iron and stone
Spot a swan, maybe.
A boundary.
A gate to a new

Life
Her first one forgotten, Bonny Prince Charlie aside,
Brought back to now with a shy, blue plaque and padlocks as ties.
The flow of her stretches away to the Staffies 
Yet half the way impassible. 
Only this flow, flows North.
And who has lost themselves in this water?
Who paid the price for what’s under you, 
at the bridge?

by Kaye Brennan

Kaye says, “Trent Bridge has not only function. It has form. The river is almost a side note in the iconography of Trent’s bridge - in a way it doesn’t deserve; its history and topography is remarkable. With the pull of the current and the dank weedy river’s edge though I’m glad of the bridge for a different reason.”

Metal and Mathematics

Metal and mathematics
forge engineering miracles.
Bridges, for example: steel isthmuses
stitching place to place,
spanning distance and time,
each one a long, stately 
middle-finger to geology,
fit for purpose, postcards 
and thousand-piece puzzles.
But I prefer a different kind of bridge:
ugly and terrifying,
slung between spikes 
jutting from rock, cables
that sing in the wind,
steel webs spanning chasms, 
tightropes over rivers, rocks, ferns.
				Bridges that hold
				one person 
				MAXIMUM 
			and even then
		each step
 	  feels
   	as
     if
   it
m
i
 g
 h
   t
	go
	  ping—
		But then—solid ground, earth,
			the impassible made possible
			by metal and mathematics.

by Hayden Maskell

Hayden says, "My favourite bridges are in the Tararua Forest Park. The Department of Conservation website describes one of them thusly:
“…a high, narrow wire swing bridge with a one-person-at-a-time restriction. Some people may find it difficult.”
Note: that’s the beginner bridge. Trek further into the hills and you cross another that’s higher, longer, swingier, and permanently rain-slicked, often disappearing into the mist. 
For me, the swing bridge is the perfect bridge. Don’t get me wrong: I admire grand feats of engineering as much as the next man. But the swing bridge has a purity of purpose: its form is entirely dictated by function. And when you’re alone, suspended above a waterfall on a slippery steel isthmus swaying in the wind, you gain a very different appreciation for what a bridge makes possible.

by Vikki Heywood

My bridge is a causeway, which also forms a dam. Built by The Cawdor family in Pembrokeshire, this large-scale intervention in the natural river flow creates impressive ponds which are famously covered in flowering waterlilies each year.

Folly

With the flow, waiata drift,
hīnaki hang in trees,
wahine kōrero on whare steps,
watching tamariki splash in the sun.
In deep ravines,
lush with ponga and moss,
Mangapurua tumbles,
valley ghosts damp on her breath,
lost stories in every
drop.
From the landing,
returning soldiers trudge,
haversacks heavy with hope,
round perilous bluff, across impossible gorge,
dreams eclipsing doubt.
Hacking back-blocks, burning bush,
tilling temporary fields,
silent shells exploding
whisky-soaked nights,
it’s nature they fight this time.
Rose gardens, home hearths,
survived by concreted steel,
bridge’s elegant arch a lie.
Promise, gift,
taken, given?
Against,
not with,
the
flow.

by Jayne Workman

Now a tourist attraction for walkers, bikers and kayakers, this still remote bridge over the Mangapurua stream was completed in 1936. Connecting essential river transport with land ‘blocks’ offered to returning WW1 soldiers, it came too late to stem the flow of families leaving the settlement’s tough conditions.

A rare treat to collaborate in this way. Conversations about life as well as bridges and poetry enriched the creative process and were a genuine pleasure. Unexpectedly, in this random pairing, we discovered many shared themes, which we aimed to capture in the following ‘conversation’ across ten days, taking it in turns to write 26 words each to fulfil the 260-word brief. Vikki first.

Common Ground

An amusement: two rivers diverted, two Pembrokeshire valleys distorted, nature usurped, man-made. A blockage, doubling as a private nobleman’s causeway, born to inherit Ystad Ystagbwll. Meanwhile, Mangapurua’s remote acres of pristine bush-lavished gorge await their own colonial intervention as a distant war’s seeded - Aotearoa’s mirror story of folly and disrupted flow.

Wales and New Zealand have three languages – the shared one belongs to an invader; usurper of lands, voices: bipolar cultures.

Bilingual/ddwyieithog/reorua:

English/Welsh/Te Reo.

Respect.

Learn.

Taking what’s not given, giving what’s taken.

So we span the world; connecting, separating, building, destroying. In concrete and leaf, words and actions, such pride’s reflected.

Rise. Fall.

Forever – when measured in the hope of a generation – is fleeting. Our best and worst overcome by nature’s determination to reverse mankind’s status quo. Like returning soldiers, far upriver, hearts lifted by a promise, growing farms, families, friendships, flowers in isolation’s harsh soil. Nature a storm away from reclaiming it.

Clutching knapsacks, rods, sun hats and thermoses, they trek from the carpark, over the stone causeway, to penrhyn and tywyn. Public pathways following once private footsteps. So too in stripped river valleys where slips block roads, funds, futures. Ngahere, tangata, te awa reciprocate, restoring intricate, ancient harmonies. Somewhere for its nowhere bridge.

Mirrored countries: unmatched twins.

Time passing ahead or behind irrelevant. 

Words spoken are vital, earth’s inhabitants an interdependent ecosystem. Commonality is existence – interconnectivity stretches to eternity.

Above clouds, the sky is clear;

beyond words, no us and them;

in this circle, no lines or sides;

here, now, no two just one.

Vikki and Jayne

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Choice and necessity

It was necessary

for market women and fishermen to

hoist themselves

across

a gap-toothed pass that emerges from lagoon-sand

like a broken

spine.

It’s luxury for expat teens to satiate boredom by

choosing hopscotching over rushing waters,

(and glass shards unsheathed below)

over playing Xbox.

They’ll slice their soles

and ankles

and fight hightides

and squash mangrove mosquitos,

then emerge on the beach

panting, sweating and laughing.

Time will decommission this bridge.

Market woman

Fisherman

And teenager

Will see instead where

They danced with death

every day

to eat or feel alive,

Because it was necessary

by Lloyd Harry-Davis

(Lloyd says, “I grew up moving countries quite a lot and I lived in Ghana from 10 to 16 years old. Near one of my friends’ places, in Beach Road, there was a footbridge that crossed a lagoon. The footbridge was quite literally poles with slats of wood over them, and looking back it was really dangerous. Over time, the slats fell off one by one, until we hopped from slat to slat, or even sometimes just the single pole of a bridge. Once a couple friends got swept off and they had to make a chain to grab on to each other. And yet we kept going back, completely oblivious to how reckless and dangerous it was. There’s barely nothing left of the bridge now that would let you cross, but the poles holding up the slats are still there.”)

Aramaramara, Mission Bay

It looks like something Māori built

across the narrow stream that flows

into the widest ocean in the world

It’s where their waka beached

after daring to set out from Hawaiki

Where warriors set foot, women

and children tagging along

They had no choice

The joggers aren’t aware of that

nor the mums with buggies

or those weaving in and out on e-scooters

It’s just quicker now than going through

the car park by the Mission House

that gives this place its name today

Uneven metal stakes resemble the pallisades

protecting every pā

But who cares what it looks like?

by Paul White

[waka = a Māori canoe; pã = Māori village or settlement]

Our Renga Poem

We composed a Renga poem inspired by thoughts of bridges. Renga is an ancient Japanese form of linked poem traditionally written by any number of collaborating poets. To create a renga, one poet writes the first stanza, the next poet adds the second stanza, and so on until a designated end point. Responding to the Twinned Bridges brief, we devised a modern version of Renga consisting of ten 26-word stanzas, to make a complete Renga of 260 words.

Every day, there are places to go

Walk over that bridge

Ride over this bridge

Drive over that bridge

Lean over this bridge

Rivers, valleys, railways,

Troubled waters

Over and over and over

Where are you always going?

Do troubled waters follow

Wherever you go?

Does the crossing ever stop

Or are we always

In transitory states

And places?

Stop. Stand on the bridge

See how it reaches out

From two opposing sides

The bridge is traveling

From there to there

And back again

Unmoved

Never moving,

Yet always arriving.

Like standing on Time’s palms,

Who makes your nows past

and your tomorrows today.

A conveyor belt on which

you rest.

Today we build the bridge

Between

Yesterday and tomorrow

Half-open, our eyes at dawn

Peer into the distance

Where the drooping lids of night

Wait anxiously

The sky blinks

Every time Sun and Moon swap places,

Watching stars collapse, cells evolve,

And you;

Your daily rhythm —

Sustained by promises of

Shores beyond

Still the bridge keeps its promise

To cross over

To rise above

Close the space between

Its two sides

As if settling an argument

About destination

You extend

the unending path,

that your spawn may walk

and continue the chain of destiny:

Prophecies of destinations

our steps will reach,

but never stay.

Find the way

Take just one step

Off the bridge

Either end will do

Crossing it becomes no more

Than something fading gradually

A sepia photograph

The bridge emerges when

You decide the course,

Collapsing the space between kilometres

And distant longings

Into mere steps

Gathered now

Here

Trodden beneath your feet

Lloyd and Paul

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The bridge of tides

Hiraeth calls me…

A first girlfriend spun tales

of secret seamen meetings below deck.

Romance ebbs and flows.

Father’s roving eye delivered a half-brother

born to the German au pair.

Another ship passing in the night,

heading later for harbour overseas.

Mother died in Covid times, her memory

still awake to evacuation to Wales in wartime.

So on Sully Island reached by causeway,

revealed by receding tide,

we scattered her ashes,

carried home across the invisible bridge.

Those grey ashes burnt embers of memory,

that sunken bridge beneath the tide of time,

borne to my Welsh mother.

Hiraeth calls me.

by Paul Murphy

(Sully Island (Welsh: Ynys Sili) is a small, uninhabited, tidal island of 14.5 acres (5.9 ha), located 400 m (440 yd) off the northern coast of the Bristol Channel, midway between the towns of Penarth and Barry. Source: Wikipedia)

Abridged

Time is sliding so slowly. It’s excruciating.

Four hot bodies in a car that has not moved for 37 minutes.

Two of the hot bodies are in car seats.

Small and restless. Sweaty and cherubic.

The smallest travellers are excited for whatever comes next.

The adults are cursing the one-way bridge that is keeping them

from the beach, the ocean,

the chance to make memories.

The wait seems endless.

When will it be over?

And then, suddenly, it is.

The one-way bridge is replaced by a double-lane bridge.

The sweaty, cherubic travellers have grown up.

It’s excruciating. Time is sliding.

by Melanie Cooper

(Kopu Bridge spans the width of the Waihou River. This narrow, one-way bridge is New Zealand’s only surviving road bridge of the swing span type. No longer in use, these days it is viewed as a piece of history.)

Time and tide

Things can be flowing along, then life intervenes. Mel and Paul were randomly paired for this project, and they began exchanging thoughts. Then a serious kidney illness meant Paul could not complete his writing task in full; the centena here was completed from his notes by John Simmons. Extracts from the emails between Mel and Paul follow.

Mel:

Each summer, the journey to the Coromandel began not with the sea, but with a wait. The historic Kopu Bridge across the Waihou River was a narrow, one-way bridge requiring patience under testing conditions. Sometimes you had to wait an hour to cross, sometimes longer, the threshold of our holidays. First as backdrop to our university romance; then a feature in our summer holidays as a young family. Babies in car seats, toddlers with sticky fingers, each summer we queued, inching forward, impatience giving way to anticipation. Across we’d go, into the golden days. Years passed. The bridge, like our children, grew older; then came the new two-lane bridge. The old bridge lies quietly to the side, a relic of memory, a reminder of how fast and slow time moves.

Paul:

I was busy planning a family ceremony, five years on from my mother’s death. She’d been 92, it was Covid time and I was with her, shielding and looking after her, listening to her memories. Aged 12, she’d been evacuated in wartime from London to Wales, a village on the coast. Twice every day if the tides were right, she would skip over to Sully Island, a small abandoned treasure trove 400 yards offshore. When the tide was out, a secret causeway revealed itself and you could cross to the island. My mum wanted her ashes to be scattered there. My mum was very Welsh and the Welsh have a word that has no match in English. Hiraeth means home but also the deep longing for home when far away.

Devil’s Backbone

I used to come here and watch the trains –
wheels locked to ice-cold rails,
rattling past,

unstoppable.

The steady pulse of the passenger train,
the ratatat speed of the freight that shakes
the bridge and makes the children
(perched in expectation)
gawp and giggle as it cuts by.

I used to come and watch the lake –
watch the waters ripple and the ripples whisper,
and the whispers fade to stillness.

I came in winter – hand in hand –
and came in spring and summer too,
and still, when I need to pause,
listen,
remember,

I come here like I used to.

by Max Parfitt

Wainui Falls Bridge

She used to cling to my hand every crossing
Today she runs ahead
Feet light on the swaying bridge
A thread of steel strung high
Above river and rock
I pause
Breath held
She turns, calling
Cushioned by the insect-clamour of the bush
The rush and roar of water below
I cannot hear her
There’s wildness in her eyes
She does not need me
Yet waves me forward
I step unsteady
She jumps and I stumble
The bridge rolling beneath me
There’s a bellbird’s laughter
As she returns to me
And I cling to her hand like she used to.

by Kat Mason

Kat and Max wrote reflective, poetic epistles to each other

Kat:

Who knew that writing about bridges
Would take me on a journey that spans
Countries and continents,
Seasons and decades.

I am so cushioned here,
Surrounded by intensity –
The joyous youth of the country I now live in
Reflected in riotous birdsong,
Saturated colour,
Sunshine.

I have forgotten the subtlety of the English winter.
Breath in clouds,
Blending with the mist that rises
From colour-leached fields.

Now, in the rush and tumble
Of this unstable, shaking land,
I find myself dreaming of your bridge:
That spine across the still lake.

I walk steady in the cold air,
Feet sturdy on frosted concrete.
Imagine skipping a stone,
Across its mirror surface –

Awakening the lady.
Her hand rising from the depths
Sword in hand.

****

Max:

You take me to a place I do not know –
show me rocks and rivers.
A thread of steel stitched across an unknown world.

I am lost in the clamour of insects and bellbirds
I have never heard;
in a moment I can never hear
between mother and daughter, half a world away.

But I know that touch.

The bond between hand held and hand holder.

Remember when I used to run
and jump and fall and dash ahead.
Remember when, chocolate-grinning,
I splashed in puddles,
swung on streetlamps,
danced between kerbs –

your hand constant at my back.

When I pause it seems I ran here in a daze.

But I feel you, still, behind me.

Murmuration

Over Albert Bridge, over the Lagan river,

over and over, wing beats murmur

under the veil of a bleached out sky,

over Albert Bridge they gather and shimmer

like clouds of black mesh, like shoals of sky fish,

like unravelled stories, like flurries of charcoal snow;

gliding high, swooping low, squealing and cheeping,

they drown out traffic’s over-flow,

dazzle workers walking home;

then erased to a sentence in the middle distance

they come swelling, swirling, they burst into full crescendo

until diminuendoed,

batches descend and fall under Albert’s green arches

before settling to roost,

a door opens over Albert Bridge.

Thérèse Kieran

(Albert Bridge was built across the River Lagan in 1890. It is one of eight bridges in Belfast city joining the County Antrim and County Down banks of the river. Source: https://wikishire.co.uk/wiki/Albert_Bridge,_Belfast)

Red bridge I

It goes nowhere and no water runs under it.

Faded red, it arcs its small stiff back against the indifferent gnomes

fishing in a paint-flaking pond, ignores the sullen stares of stone rabbits.

Petunias flop and lean over bald tyres, eavesdrop while dry shells

lament far off beaches, lie about the sea.

She sits in her plastic chair, a crocheted blanket

of lurid squares across her lap, in feeble winter sunlight.

She dreams in sepia of swollen rivers with kissing bridges.

The red bridge sighs.

No beak-nosed troll demands a robber’s fee

to reach the other side.

It goes nowhere.

Red bridge II

They catch nothing, the gnomes, ostensibly

fishing. Washed out, stick-legged flamingos avoid

eye contact. Snails trail a silver ball.

The seal feigns a hopeless readiness.

A concrete cat has no comment.

The red bridge sighs.

In the kitchen, kids on a duty visit lounge

around the Formica table, hopeful inheritors,

snorting unsuppressed laughter.

She once caught the eye of the great train robber, Ronnie Biggs.

He kissed her bold reds lips on London Bridge while spring rain fell.

Bright baby blues, Brylcreem dreams.

They bring her tea with sugary contempt.

She can’t reach them. They don’t listen.

They catch nothing.

Sue Heggie

(The red bridge was a small red bridge, faded, sort of pseudo-Japanese style and it just sat there in Sue’s garden, no small stream, no point to it as it didn’t go anywhere…)

A bridge between Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand and Belfast, Northern Island

A wish in one hand, shit in another (or maybe just Penpals) … or dog day afternoons or stranger friends discussing so much more than weather.

This project feels like finding a penpal, thank you for getting this antipodean ball rolling.

We do have blue skies but coupled with high humidity, sleepless nights and whirring fans. The sky isn’t always bluer.

It had a small red bridge, faded, sort of pseudo-Japanese style and it just sat there in the garden, no small stream, no point to it as it didn’t go anywhere…

We’ve got a good spell here for the next week or so, which is very welcome.

I managed to get down to Albert Bridge yesterday to see the starling murmuration - it was wonderful watching them circle and then fall in batches to roost under the bridge for the night.

“Murmuration” is delicious. A bit like Tennyson’s “murmuring of innumerable bees”.

The sun is finally out here so I’m also going to get my dog out now before the rain returns.

For this week’s class, we read Diane Seuss’s “frank: sonnets” which I think is my favourite so far if only for the brilliant line, “a wish in one hand, shit in another.”

The sun is finally out here so I’m also going to get my dog out now before the rain returns.

Diane Seuss is keeping me awake at night, in a good way.

The sun is shining here today so I must get out with my dog soon.

Daylight saving today so it feels very dark and absurdly early. Winter on its way.

I have to get our dog to bed, so I’ll sign off.

Slán go foil, Thérèse x

Arohanui, Sue x

Note: Arohanui is a Māori phrase that can be used to express deep affection, or much love, often used in signing off letters with friends.

Slán go foil is ‘bye for now’ in Irish.

(Sue - bold, Thérèse- italics)

Hewenden Viaduct

A long drop

as I hover bird-like

between colossus columns

built for the Alpine Railway

to connect textile towns

across Pennine foothills.

Soaring above, stonework

cements stories of travellers

through time, engineers,

bricklayers, masons,

mill workers, farmers,

holiday makers, cyclists,

walkers, trainee cavers.

Hanging halfway between

track and ground, no

means of communication

to above or below I slowly

rotate, head pulled

ever closer to the figure of eight

entwined with captured hair.

Rope held tightly, one hand

plucking, scalping, until

my freed head lifts

into the wind, a relaxed hand

slips me down my first abseil,

a long drop.

by Irene Lofthouse

My name is Eel under this bridge I wait

Do not seek me. I will find you. I await your coming. I am Eel Oro the God of war of blood. I am a thousand years old. under this bridge. I move with care. I see all. I can never die. I hold the secret of eternal life. I have eaten flesh. Now little. Each night I venture out to behold the great Celestial Arch pointing to the great Trench. I will soon join the Long Tide North, leave this Bridge to journey ..die and yes return.

Do not seek me, do not seek me.

Bob Harvey

Sharing Stories

Sharing stories of bridges and ourselves, we found common ground from the outset. Bob’s Eel B ride chimed with my familial ancestry in Ireland. Of midnight raids of rivers, of the byre full of wriggling eels, of young Millie (Mam) having to kill and cook them. Of a river that no longer exists, drained for agriculture, memories of those eels’ fantastic journeys across continents lost forever. My bridge stands, but the migrants who made it have gone, the rails have gone – though travellers come to the ‘Alpine Railway’, some annually like Bob’s eels.

As Mayor of Waitākere for twenty years, I conceived a dream project: for fifteen years a chosen artist, poet or writer picked a local creek or river and designed a crossing. One special bridge on the West Coast was the Eel Bridge at Piha, an ancient link with the Maori Past, the roaring Surf of The Tasman Sea of battles. Into my life came a writing stranger and distant soul traveller with whom I could share my bridge. Her writing set my mind into England: my first days of school where first books were English textbooks; houses and streets; policemen and tidy gardens. A landscape so different from out the window. Like a video I saw her river, the wharves and fishing boats, a land of sea fog and cold. An adventure in a mind’s eye…

Spookily, we have my home town of Bradford in common: Bob’s Grandmother left there about 1901; Mam arrived mid-1950s: both of us from migrant stock in our respective homes.

Stuart Delves

Hertford Bridge, better known as the Bridge of Sighs, is a famous bridge in Oxford. With its striking design, it has become a landmark in this city of architectural wonders. Crossing New College Lane, it acts as a link between two Hertford College buildings. Hertford bridge was given its more common name as it was falsely believed to be a replica of the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. In fact, the bridge more closely resembles the Rialto Bridge.

Before going up to Oxford in 1974 I had been on an art appreciation course in Venice, where I had seen the original Bridge of Sighs, as well as the Rialto Bridge. Both these cities hold a special place in my heart as they helped form my aesthetic, and Hertford Bridge, which I often passed on my way to the Radcliffe Camera (a round library that held an extensive collection of Theology books) acted as a reminder and a bridge between the two.

The 1865 Tāmaki River Bridge – Wai o Taiki, Te Tauoma Panmure

Sara-Francesca O’Brien

The Tāmaki River Bridge, completed in 1865, provided access between the fencible (retired soldier) settlements of Panmure, Pakuranga and Howick, in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland and was the first bridge to connect the Auckland isthmus to the surrounding areas. The eastern end connected to what is now Pakuranga Road, while the western end connected with the remains of Mokoia Pā (a fortified settlement) and what is known today as Bridge Street, Panmure. The bridge had 18 fixed spans and a 12-metre, hand-operated swing span, which opened for ships to pass through during favourable tides. The bridge was opened by Robert Graham, Superintendent of the Auckland Province, on 20 October 1865 with speeches and toasts followed by dancing on the kauri deck of the bridge. At this time, the Tāmaki River was one of the busiest waterways in the country.

Historically, the Tāmaki River was also a key transport route for Māori, with waka portages, such as the 200 metre Te Tō Waka at Ōtahuhu, providing access between the two main harbours. The Panmure Basin (Te Kai a Hiku – the food bowl of Hiku) was the den of the tāniwha Mokoiki-hiku-waru – an eight-tailed serpent fish who accompanied the Tainui migratory waka to Aotearoa. The waterways and surrounding fertile land of this area were important - strategically, culturally and spiritually, with thriving Ngāti Pāoa communities located at Mokoia Pā and Mauināina. These communities were devastated during the Musket Wars of the 1820s and were not resettled.

Despite attempts to extend the life of the bridge by tarring its surface in 1900, the swing became difficult to operate, and the bridge was demolished in 1916. The swing-span mechanism and stone abutment are all that remain.

Harmony and Counterpoint

Sara-Francesca ~ river

Stuart ~ bridge

A bridge roll

A bridge roll! 

It always draws a crowd. 

Cody Dock, East London. A haven nobody knows – until they do. Here, a rolling bridge, designed on a square wheel principle (which makes me love it even more) to let boats into the restored coal dock. 

Hand cranked, it turns on curvy rails.

Reeling in (in relay), 

Reeling out. 

Heft and haul.

Cheery shouts back and forth. Stewards watch for little fingers. 

One… last… turn…

We’re there! Spontaneous applause. Happy humans. The band strikes up.

I sketch an unimpressed whippet, eyes only for the bakery stall. 

A bridge roll!

by Lydia Thornley

James Alex Western

James Alex Western
Deep sea diver, kisser of women.
He was putting together the Auckland Harbour Bridge. It would move a city over an ocean. Amongst sparks and steel he fused the lands together for the first time in 20,000 years.
His own wedding shimmered up ahead. 
They’d been to the church where the Minister had said ‘marriage is a load bearing thing’
The foreman shouted Kick away the struts boys! 
But the crane lashed back
Fate flicked him
his tool belt 	a cruel stone
down 	
into the depths of his first 
and final love 
the ocean 
James Alex Western

by Claris Harvey

(James Alex Western, the subject of my centena, was a steel erector. He accidentally fell to his death whilst building the bridge - a few months before opening day.)

Building a bridge over time

The River Lea is tidal. Part of the Cody Dock restoration project is to let boats back into the dock. That’s also why the bridge exists: boats free to move one way; people on foot and bike another. Cody Dock’s history and present are the hard work of industry and of turning the site to new uses. I wondered about the ebb and flow of people.

The name Waitemata translates to “sparkling waters” and it is in to this Auckland harbour that James Western, a young steel erector fell, plummeting to his death almost 70 years ago.

Dock workers

Brick restorers

Women working Prussian blue

Artists teaching cyanotypes

I walked via a bridge across time, to 1950’s Auckland into the life of James Alex Western. His new car, his stripey cat, his parents, his love of fencing, beautiful girls and his job , building The Auckland Harbour Bridge.

Shipbuilders

Boat builders

Housebuilders

Factory owners

James help build the bridge that made Auckland or Tāmaki Makaurau (the land with 100 lovers) a proper city.

Cody Dock is a bridge between urban and nature for people seeking sanctuary from the always-on.

What makes bridges?

The ebb and flow of people

He aha te mea nui? He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata.

What is the most important thing? It is people, it is people, it is people.

Lydia and Claris