Andrew Grant

“The bridge dates from 1160...”

The tour guide’s authoritative voice cut across my meandering thoughts. It was a crisp August morning, the words alighting on the breeze as I crossed Elvet bridge. I caught a few of them but I was already zoning out. Surely, I was thinking, there is a better way.

It feels like every tour guide everywhere tells the same cold facts in that same dry manner. Interpretation boards catalogue them like a Pear’s Encyclopaedia. Construction date and commissioner, reigning monarch and generous donor. And leading heritage funds expect museum displays to relate these weary facts in picture-book English. It’s no wonder that history students are vanishing in droves.⁰

But history matters. It’s not some cracked dry tome to gather dust on a shelf. Nor is it a chronology of dates, Kings, battles, divorced and decapitated wives. History is the story of humanity as we struggled against nature, against tyrants, and against injustice to create our modern world. From the optimistic striving of the early Christian Church amidst the waning of imperial Rome to the splendour of the Renaissance in art and science set against the gluttony of the narrow-minded cardinals. From bomb-scarred Britain, isolated and defiant in the face of the jubilant Third Reich, to the united Allied Forces airdropping supplies into a starved and powerless Communist-controlled Eastern Berlin. These time-worn tales may reveal much of our modern day circumstances. From Henry VIII’s monarchical ambitions and petulant break from the Church in Rome, may be seen glimmers of Britain’s later Brexit from Brussels and the go-it-alone spirit of English pride, the mantras of “take back control”, and the subsequent decades of political and economic turmoil. The last century of the Roman Republic and the short-lived Athenian democracy were dominated by persuasive speakers appealing to the disempowered and underrepresented, saw political rivals ostracised from society (or simply bludgeoned to death), and riots in the capitol; events none too unfamiliar to today’s troubled democracies.

History is the tale of our ancestors and how we came to be where we are today — like it or not. History too is a mirror to today’s foibles — except played out to their full conclusions of victory or self-destruction. As our societies become divided, it’s all the more important that we keep sight of our past and learn from it, and therefore, simply, we must enjoy engaging with it.

Back to the bridge. What does the construction year mean? Why should we care? Is it a game of guess the King before the tour guide moves onto Fun Fact #2?

No? Then perhaps instead we can capture a feeling for the period...

1160. A hundred years after the Norman conquest, the new monarchy is well established - but far from at ease.

The country is just recovering from the violent civil war known as “The Anarchy” where King Stephen fought Empress Maud over the succession. Now, the new King, Henry II, is in conflict with the church over who has supreme power, a squabble that has put him at odds with his old friend, Thomas Beckett. These were difficult times for ordinary people to go about their humble lives, to work and trade undisturbed.

When the bridge was eventually built, a century later, towers and gateways guarded its passage, and a chapel stood at either end where travellers could pray for the King’s health and peace with the troublesome Scots.

A century later? Can we imagine what such a vast construction project, unfathomable in the days of 5-year skyscrapers, looked like...

If you had strolled down into Durham in 1170 you would have found a hive of activity. A new suburb of houses had grown along the riverside at Elvet and was now being joined to the peninsular by a new bridge.

Between the wooded banks, wooden stakes were driven deep into the riverbed, sealed and packed out by earth, creating a series of watertight rings. Out of these, the river water was drained, bucket by bucket, as the workers keep an anxious eye on the passing water level, fearful of spring floods. When the riverbed is in sight, they can start to lay the foundations of the dozen or so stone piers, cranes heaving great blocks of stone into place. It was a long process fraught with danger, from the rickety cranes to the fluctuating water levels.

Almost a century later, the people of Durham were still granted indulgences — a means of penance for sin — for their contributions to “the building of the new bridge at Elvet” (in 1225 and 12280

Jervoise, E. (1931) The Ancient Bridges of the North of England. Vol II. Westminster: The Architectural Press for the SPAB. pp. 40-43.

).

We could think of our moment in history as a photograph. Anyone can take a serviceable image, freezing forever a moment in time, the facts caught in a 6"x4" frame. The student sat in the library, bent over the desk; the walkers climbing the snowy mountain. But true photography goes further: the ruddy sunset drawing long shadows across the student’s desk suggests she’s burning the evening oil, or perhaps its the blueish glow illuminating her shadowed face that shows she’s scrolling her smartphone, not labouring industriously after all. On the mountains, a slight underexposure, a cool colour temperature, perhaps a filter to enhance the haze, all dramatises the harsh winter of the day and sends a shiver down our spines.

We engage people by telling stories — our ancestors understood this when they sang around campfires of how battles between gods brought about creation itself. By situating the raw fact in its historical context — or by painting a picture of daily life around the construction, these dry facts have a chance to come alive. History becomes a tale we can see and relate to — and what we engage with and enjoy, we remember.

And our history must be remembered, or we will never learn.