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John Carr as a Bridgemaster

John Carr is reputed to have designed at least sixty bridges, mostly in the North Riding, a total greater than that of any other Georgian architect until the arrival of Thomas Telford and John Rennie. Bridge-building in the early 18th century was still conducted very much on medieval lines by bridge-building families’.(Georgian London p. 96) The Carr family were to become a significant part of that Northern tradition.

They lived at a time when the economic life of Yorkshire was undergoing rapid change from a society initially dominated by the trade of the locality, toward one of national and international importance. There was also a substantial development of tourism toward the close of the eighteenth century, in part because during the twenty years Britain was at war with France (1793-1815), travelling for pleasure to Continental Europe became virtually impossible. It fell to the Carrs to facilitate the necessary road works.

There were many facets to the tourist trade from the well established interest in historic cities such as York, to abbeys and gardens such as Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, while many owners of country houses were willing to allow a limited viewing of their mansions, both old and new. Then came the surge of interest in spas, and by the 1780s, in sea bathing, and following the outbreak of war with Revolutionary France in 1793, the Lake District came to act as another new magnet. Until then, the road links between Yorkshire and The Lakes were few and difficult, with many fords and packhorse bridges effectively limiting an increasingly important carriage trade. To a lesser extent this factor was also true for those wishing to visit rising destinations such as Scarborough or Whitby on the East Coast.

According to a succession of Highway Acts, the responsibilty for highway maintenance lay with the area through which the road passed, regardless of the ability of the particular community to organise and pay for the work. Hence much of the rural the network was in serious decay. A minority of the bridges of the locality had become the responsibility of the County Magistrates, others were in the charge of the parishes, or had been provided by charitable individuals or groups, and some of their builders of had acquired the right to charge tolls.

Into this chaos stepped the Turnpike Trust which were authorised by a succession of Private Acts of Parliament to modernise and maintain long stretches of the public highway, and to charge a toll to their users. As the intended improvements took hold, and the flow of traffic increased, there was constant pressure on the Magistrates to ‘improve’ the bridges in their care. It is clear that to do this the County could either use direct labour, or employ outside contractors under the supervision of their appointed Surveyors such as the Carrs'.

Modern road routes do not reflect those used in the 18th century. As a result Carr was to ‘improve’, widen or rebuild many of the county’s bridges in what are now considered out of the way places, but which in his day were of greater economic and social importance.

The Magistrates were appointed by the Crown, not by the electorate. They were invariably at least well to do, and formed a cohesive group, connected through family, friendship, and politics. Carr was well known as a supporter of the Whig party, and became the favoured architect for many of the Yorkshire nobility and gentry, numbers of whom had undergone The Grand Tour, and had seen the architecture of Antiquity for themselves, and so Carr’s choice of Roman Bridge,models for some of his bridges would have chimed well with such a background.

Bridges gallery

Possible Sources of Inspiration For Bridges

There are two quite different sources of inspiration. The existing building stock, and such publications as Carr sought out and studied. In particular Carr took careful note of the bridges illustrated by Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1555) and Andrea Palladio (1508-1580). Though the quite coarse woodcuts published by the former in his Fourth Book were imprecise in their summary detail of Roman Bridges, this gave Carr a freedom to experiment without losing the ‘feel’ of Antiquity. Thus Serlio’s view of the Ponte Sant'Angelo with its rounded pier fronts surmounted by narrower pilaster strips became a starting point for the elevation of Low Bourne bridge.

The Magistrates for the West Riding sought their professional advice from their two County Surveyors, of whom one was John Carr’s father Robert Carr (1697-1760), a practising stone mason and building contractor. John Carr succeeded his father in 1760, but resigned the West Riding post in 1772, to take up a sole Surveyorship in the North Riding, for whom he went on to design the majority of his bridges.The duties of the Surveyors included a responsibility for the maintainance and design all the County’s buildings, and specifically the conduct of an annual survey of all the county’s bridges. In 1752 the West Riding County Magistrates commissioned Robert Carr to prepare a Bridge Book containing an elevation and plan of each county bridge in order to forestall attempts to pass off a bridge as a property of the county. Since many of the resultant drawings are signed J.C. it is presumed that the survey was a joint work of the father and his son. Its preparation gave John Carr a unique opportunity to travel throughout the county, and to get to know something of its varied topography, geology, and the manner in which the stone masons of each locality had developed a style to suit the needs and raw materials of their area.

His great chance occurred when a huge rainstorm devastated much of the North East on 16 to 17th November 1771, necessitating either the restoration or the complete rebuilding of many bridges, a renewal which once completed, also made clear how many of the surviving bridges had become inadequate for the increasing traffic generated by Yorkshire’s trade and industry.

Carr was farseeing enough to realise that since this increase would lead to a demand for further improvement, it made sense to address the task now rather than more expensively later. (Here he differed from contemporary Yorkshire bridge builders such as the Gott family). As a result most, though not all, of Carr’s bridges have retained their original widths. A few such as Masham have been doubled in width, while the bridges of Crambeck, Ayton and Greta Bridge have had new bridges built alongside them. As a compromise, others such as the bridges of Topcliffe and Boroughbridge have been partially reconstructed, with new footpaths cantilevered out from the earlier structures.

With a handful of exceptions, Carr’s consistent policy was to build well, with a most careful attention to economy, but when sufficient money was available a little ornament might be placed on the side most clearly in public view, as at Aysgarth.

Conversely, the more decorative elevations of Greta or Blyth Bridge faced on to the respective landscaped parks of the Morritts or the Mellishes who were obliged paid for the additional ornament.The bridge at Ferrybridge is the only publicly financed one to have a decorative balustrade, which was inset into the exterior of the parapet to minimise the risk of vandalism. Even then his sense of economy was brought into play, for it was cheaper to turn a full baluster on a lathe, than conventionally to carve half of one on to a larger block of ston,.

As a matter of general practice Carr seems not to have kept office copies of his drawing, and so once the drawings had gone to the selected contractor, they were rarely returned. Therefore drawings that remain typically represent discarded schemes or superseded details. In sum, what remains is a small fraction of the whole. Thus when he came to compile his North Yorkshire Bridge Book c. 1803, some drawings do not accurately represent the structure as built.