The structure of Walk Bridge changed several times to accommodate the needs of the nearby Gloucester ship canal.
This bridge takes its name from nearby Walk Farm, remembering the walkers (fullers) who once helped to produce woollen cloth at nearby Whitminster Mill.
The original brick bridge had to be rebuilt when this pound was raised to suit the intersection with the Gloucester ship canal, and the illustration shows how this widened the pound, which then had a depth of 10 feet in the centre.
As road traffic increased, concern grew about the gradients on either side of the bridge, and the estate owner eventually agreed to pay for replacing the hump with a swing bridge.
The first swing bridge was installed in 1855, but the story of design changes continued. To save costs, the new bridge had a restricted span of 17ft 2 in, compared with around 20 ft for most other bridges. This was fine for barges to pass through, but when there was a need to use the Gloucester company's steam dredger to remove mud from this length of canal in 1869, the bridge was changed again to provide a span of 20ft. The bridge illustrated was installed in 1926.
In the 1950s, the need to strengthen canal bridges carrying county roads was a major factor in promoting the closure of the canal, and soon after the Act of closure was passed in 1954, the local highways authority replaced the swing bridge with the current low-level fixed concrete structure. The present restoration project is planning to replace this.
The pound through Walk Bridge is notably wide, having higher embankments built on either side of the original canal in the 1820s when the water level needed to be raised to form the junction with the Gloucester ship canal.
As traffic on the Stroudwater Canal died out in the mid twentieth century, the pound became a useful mooring site for leisure craft that were primarily using the ship canal. This practice continued after the Stroudwater was formally closed in 1954, as the pound was purchased and maintained by British Waterways (now Canal & River Trust) because it is an important water feeder to their ship canal.
For details about Walk Bridge, search this site for 'walk'.
For the benefit of using a steam dredger, see D2460/4/4/1 Mar 1870.
