When a packhorse bridge isn't a packhorse bridge.

The village of Little Langdale is very much a two road town. A tiny collection of cottages, one inn, a couple of farms, and one of the most famous bridges in the Lake District. Slaters Bridge spans the River Brathay close to Little Langdale Tarn. From its appearance it would not be unreasonable to believe that it is one of the best surviving pack horse bridges in the region. A monument to the days when trains of pack horses, laden with a wide range of goods from wool to cooking implements, precious metal to food, made their way through the mountain passes, linking tiny farming settlements like Little Langdale with the coast.

Slaters Bridge, Little Langdale

But as with much of the Lake District things are not all they seem. It is true that Slaters Bridge resembles a pack horse bridge in many respects. It is narrow. Pack horse bridges did not need to be any wider than the horse. It also has very low parapets, a key feature of the pack horse bridge. Having low parapets served two purposes. It allowed safe passage of the packs the horse was carrying, as very often the horse and pack combined was actually wider than the bridge; and it also prevented the bridge being washed away in times of flood. So far, so good.

It is when you consider the position  of the bridge in relation to the ancient roads and trackways that it becomes obvious that it was not built with pack horses in mind, at least, not the kind that ferried goods over the mountains. It is about a quarter of a mile upstream from the known pack horse route. And it crosses the river in an area that floods readily, making all year access to it difficult.

The clue to the true purpose of this bridge lies in its name, and its proximity to the slate quarries on the south side of the river. Slate quarrying in these parts dates back to the middle part of the 17th century, and the introduction of stone or clay tiles as a roofing material. The events that triggered the growth of the quarries occurred some two to three hundred miles away, in towns and cities like London, Northampton and Warwick.

Most  people have heard of the Great Fire of London, but the capital was not the only centre of population to suffer the fate of total destruction by burning. Overcrowding, poor waste removal and early industry combined to turn the wooden houses of many towns into potential tinderboxes. The introduction of stone built buildings, with slate or tile being used as the roofing material, did not stop individual properties from catching fire, but it did prevent the fire spreading out of control and the whole town from being engulfed.

In the latter part of the 17th century the quarries thrived, and Slaters Bridge came into being. In keeping with local tradition it was built in the same style as a pack horse bridge. There was no other requirement. It needed to be no wider than the width of one horse, nor did it need to have parapets. It served just two purposes. The first was to enable the men working the quarries access to their working environment, and the second was to allow the carriage of the horse drawn sleds that were used to convey the slate to the dressing sheds in Little Langdale.

It says much for the durability of the basic design, as well as the materials with which is was constructed, that over 300 years later it is still as sturdy as the day it was built, and although the traffic it is required to carry is less demanding, it remains a well loved, and more importantly, well used relic of the Lake District's industrial past.