MSO10639 - Exford Bridge (Building)

Road bridge over River Exe. Rebuilt 1930 on medieval site. Local stone random rubble facing T-beam, saddleback coping. Three arch span, semi-circular headed arches with 2 cutwater buttresses on each side. [1] English Heritage Listed Building Number: 265419. First Listed on 6 April 1959. [2] Reinforced concrete slab bridge built in 1930 and designed by Edward Stead, County Surveyor. Bridge has no stringcourse and vertically curved coping. The bridge is 14 feet in span. [3] Stone, Random rubble walls. [4] The building was visited in March 2012 as part of the rapid condition survey of Exmoor's Listed Buildings 2012-13. It received a BAR score of 6. [5] Exford Bridge was widened in 1930. A photograph taken during the works by Somerset County Council shows that the road is carried by three spans of flat concrete beam and slab pieces, on stone piers. The ends were then faced with masonry, shaped to the original arch profiles. [6] The Tithe Map for Exford [7] shows that the bridge crossing of the Exe River at that time was further east (upstream, at SS 8522 3836), near the original ford. The bridge was moved to its present location between the surveying of this map and c.1889 - 1890, when the 25 inch 1st Edition Ordnance Survey map [8] was produced. It is therefore uncertain that the modern bridge is sited in the location of the medieval bridge. [7-9]