Exeter Bridge is a bridge in the centre of
Derby
Derby ( ) is a city and unitary authority area in Derbyshire, England. It lies on the banks of the River Derwent in the south of Derbyshire, which is in the East Midlands Region. It was traditionally the county town of Derbyshire. Derby g ...
spanning the
River Derwent 200 metres south of the more modern
Cathedral Green Footbridge.
History
Derby's original Exeter Bridge started life as a timber footbridge built by the Binghams of
Exeter House
Exeter House was an early 17th-century brick-built mansion, which stood in Full Street, Derby until demolished in 1854. Named for the Earls of Exeter, whose family owned the property until 1757, the house was notable for the stay of Charles ...
, in order to access their gardens on the other side of the River Derwent. Exeter House was eventually demolished because of cost and to allow improvements to the bridge to be made.
The old Exeter Bridge was demolished in 1929 and replaced by a single-span concrete bridge designed by
Charles Herbert Aslin
Charles Herbert Aslin (15 December 1893 – 18 April 1959) was a British architect.
He was born in Ecclesfield, Sheffield, the son of steelworker Arthur William and Louisa Aslin and educated at Sheffield Central Technical School, Sheffield Cent ...
of the City Architect's Department, who was also responsible for Derby's now demolished
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
-style bus station. During construction a test was carried out to see if it would hold the weight of the traffic. Civil engineers ran a procession of traction engines, steam rollers and heavy lorries across the bridge to check it could take the strain. It was officially opened by the minister of transport,
Herbert Morrison
Herbert Stanley Morrison, Baron Morrison of Lambeth, (3 January 1888 – 6 March 1965) was a British politician who held a variety of senior positions in the UK Cabinet as member of the Labour Party. During the inter-war period, he was Minis ...
on 13 March 1931.
Exeter Bridge features ''
bas relief'' sculptures of:
*
John Lombe
John Lombe (1693 in Norwich – November 20, 1722 in Derby) was a silk spinner in the 18th century Derby, England.
Biography
Lombe was born in Norwich in approximately 1693, the son of a worsted weaver. He was a younger half-brother of Thoma ...
, founder of the
Silk Mill Museum, one of England's first modern factories, now a
World Heritage
A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for ...
site.
*
William Hutton, who worked at the Silk Mill as a child before becoming a bookseller and writing the first published history of Derby in 1791.
*
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, psychologist, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism. Spencer originated the expression " survival of the fi ...
, born in Exeter Street, best known for coining the concept "
survival of the fittest", which he did in ''Principles of Biology'' (1864), after reading
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...
's ''
On the Origin of Species
''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life''),The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by Me ...
''.
*
Erasmus Darwin, physician, botanist and poet; Darwin lived in Derby for the last 20 years of his life, dying at Breadsall Priory. Like Hutton he was a radical thinker, supporting the
American Revolution
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...
.
See also
*
List of crossings of the River Derwent, Derbyshire
This is a list of crossings of the Derbyshire Derwent, the principal river of Derbyshire in the Midlands of England.
Listed in the table are those crossings that have been identified from the first formal crossing at the packhorse bridge at Sli ...
References
{{reflist
Bridges completed in 1931
Bridges in Derby
Bridges across the River Derwent, Derbyshire