sperity having flowed elsewhere. Though nominally a market-town, it
is only a village, with little more than the ruins of its former
splendour remaining, when the great abbey attracted to it crowds of
the nobles and gentry of England, and employed vast numbers of
labourers, masons, and craftsmen on the works of the abbey and in the
supply of its needs.

[Illustration: The Triangular Bridge Crowland]

All over the country we find beautiful old bridges, though the opening
years of the present century, with the increase of heavy
traction-engines, have seen many disappear. At Coleshill,
Warwickshire, there is a graceful old bridge leading to the town with
its six arches and massive cutwaters. Kent is a county of bridges,
picturesque medieval structures which have survived the lapse of time
and the storms and floods of centuries. You can find several of these
that span the Medway far from the busy railway lines and the great
roads. There is a fine medieval fifteenth-century bridge at Yalding
across the Beult, long, fairly level, with deeply embayed cutwaters of
rough ragstone. Twyford Bridge belongs to the same period, and
Lodingford Bridge, with its two arches and single-buttressed cutwater,
is very picturesque. Teston Bridge across the Medway has five arches
of carefully wrought stonework and belongs to the fifteenth century,
and East Farleigh is a fine example of the same period with four
ribbed and pointed arches and four bold cutwaters of wrought stones,
one of the best in the country. Aylesford Bridge is a very graceful
structure, though it has been altered by the insertion of a wide span
arch in the centre for the improvement of river navigation. Its
existence has been long threatened, and the Society for the Protection
of Ancient Buildings has done its utmost to save the bridge from
destruction. Its efforts are at length crowned with success, and the
Kent County Council has decided that there are not sufficient grounds
to justify the demolition of the bridge and that it shall remain. The
attack upon this venerable structure will probably be renewed some
day, and its friends will watch over it carefully and be prepared to
defend it again when the next onslaught is made. It is certainly one
of the most beautiful bridges in Kent. Little known and seldom seen
by the world, and unappreciated even by the antiquary or the motorist,
these Medway bridges continue their placid existence and proclaim the
enduring work of the