Shillingford Bridge - Background

Background

Shillingford Bridge occupies a romantic position, which strikes the eye more strongly from being unlike the rest of the country, which bears an open and dreary aspect.

In the Patent Rolls of 1301 the Earl of Cornwall is recorded as leasing a fishery "downstream of Shillingford Bridge" and in 1370 a bridge at Shillingford is mentioned again as a boundary of another fishery. This however is the last mention of a bridged crossing on the site until 1763. It is unusual for a bridge to completely disappear but the probable explanation is that the Governor of Wallingford Castle had a small wooden bridge built to give pedestrians and horsemen easy passage to Dorchester Abbey but later had it removed due to security concerns for the Royal Castle. There is no doubt that a bridge did exist as Gough's Camden (1789) records that piles and beams were dredged up at the site of Shillingford Ferry.

The medieval bridge had almost certainly been dismantled by 1379 when Shillingford Ferry was granted for life to Roger Hurst, Porter of Wallingford Castle. The ferry remained as a perquisite of the Castle's porters until 1530 when it was leased to Roger Hacheman for 33s 4d per annum. Hacheman also leased a small dwelling on what was then the Berkshire (south) bank in 1545, the dwelling, rebuilt and expanded several times, was known as the Swan Inn by 1608 and is now the Shillingford Bridge Hotel. Thomas Baskerville's travel journal of 1692 reports "At Shillingford a great barge to waft over carts, coaches, horse and man".