History
The existing bridge is the third to be located on the site. William Ponsonby, a Member of Parliament for Poole, was responsible for building the first bridge in 1834. Ponsonby promoted his own Act of Parliament to build the wooden toll bridge. However, the bridge had a steep gradient that caused problems for horses and in 1885 it was replaced by an iron swing bridge with gentler approach gradients. It was privately owned and collected tolls up until 1926, when it was purchased by the Borough of Poole and replaced with the third and present bridge which opened in 1927. It has seven time-tabled lifts a day and another ten unscheduled lifts for commercial boats and it is estimated to lift over 6,000 times a year.
Read more about this topic: Poole Bridge
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)