[Illustration:  The Triangular Bridge Crowland]

All over the country we find beautiful old bridges, though the opening years of the present century, with the increase of heavy traction-engines, have seen many disappear.  At Coleshill, Warwickshire, there is a graceful old bridge leading to the town with its six arches and massive cutwaters.  Kent is a county of bridges, picturesque medieval structures which have survived the lapse of time and the storms and floods of centuries.  You can find several of these that span the Medway far from the busy railway lines and the great roads.  There is a fine medieval fifteenth-century bridge at Yalding across the Beult, long, fairly level, with deeply embayed cutwaters of rough ragstone.  Twyford Bridge belongs to the same period, and Lodingford Bridge, with its two arches and single-buttressed cutwater, is very picturesque.  Teston Bridge across the Medway has five arches of carefully wrought stonework and belongs to the fifteenth century, and East Farleigh is a fine example of the same period with four ribbed and pointed arches and four bold cutwaters of wrought stones, one of the best in the country.  Aylesford Bridge is a very graceful structure, though it has been altered by the insertion of a wide span arch in the centre for the improvement of river navigation.  Its existence has been long threatened, and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings has done its utmost to save the bridge from destruction.  Its efforts are at length crowned with success, and the Kent County Council has decided that there are not sufficient grounds to justify the demolition of the bridge and that it shall remain.  The attack upon this venerable structure will probably be renewed some day, and its friends will watch over it carefully and be prepared to defend it again when the next onslaught is made.  It is certainly one of the most beautiful bridges in Kent.  Little known and seldom seen by the world, and unappreciated even by the antiquary or the motorist, these Medway bridges continue their placid existence and proclaim the enduring work of the English masons of nearly five centuries ago.

Many of our bridges are of great antiquity.  The Eashing bridges over the Wey near Godalming date from the time of King John and are of singular charm and beauty.  Like many others they have been threatened, the Rural District Council having proposed to widen and strengthen them, and completely to alter their character and picturesqueness.  Happily the bridges were private property, and by the action of the Old Guildford Society and the National Trust they have been placed under the guardianship of the Trust, and are now secure from molestation.

[Illustration:  Huntingdon Bridge]