Holt Bridge was built, it is thought, in about 1338 - at least the Holt Bridge that you can visit, and cross today. There may have been an earlier bridge here, given that the Romans had their tilery on the banks of the Dee a little distance along the river, but it's impossible to tell now. There was once a ferry of course, and you can still walk down to where it berthed, a little to to east of the bridge on the Welsh side.
What is tremendously exciting about Holt is that in its splendid pomp, it had both a drawbridge and a tower near its centre, I jest not. You can still see the extra support required to carry the tower in an extra 'strainer' added to the arch. As far as I know, there is only one bridge in these Islands that retains its gatehouse upon the bridge itself - the Monnow Bridge in Monmouth, which gives a good idea as to how Holt Bridge would have looked. A painting by Richard Wilson from 1760 gives a view of the battered remains of the gate tower.
You'd expect a bridge of Holt's age to have been banged about some, and it has, not least on this day in 1643, when Parliamentarian forces stormed the bridge, in order to 'open a doore into Wales'. In a letter to the Speaker of the House, William Lenthall, dated from two days after the action, Brereton decribes taking,
‘the opprtunitye to make a desperate attempt upon the bridge by placeinge ladders to the toppe of the drawbridge and cuttinge the ropes. Which binge done and the bridg falling downe wee had accesse to the gates and casting over some hand granadoes amongst the Welsh men - who there had remayned - which strucke such a terror into them as that they all run away and could not be obtained to return.’
If one pops along to St Chad's a little distance from the bridge, you can see how the battle continued in the musket holes in the walls of the nave. A short, sharp, brutal bit of business.
The Bridge is a wonder, linking Holt with Farndon, Wrexham BC with Cheshire, Wales with England. Who doesn't like an ancient bridge?
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