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Description: Ragby Bridge

Address: Ragby Bridge Ramsden Lane Walsden Todmorden West Yorkshire

Grade: II

Group detail: Off Ramsden Lane

Full description:
Accommodation bridge. Probably early C18. Rubble brought to course with roughly dressed grit-stone voussoirs. Single-span packhorse bridge over the Ramsden Clough. Arch springs from boulder plinth with stone setted foot-bed under arch. Slightly swept abutments; formerly had low single-stone parapet recorded in 1966, now missing; dislodged before 1988, reported to have been washed away in a flash flood in 1983. The bridge carried an ancient packhorse route called "The Walsden Highway" being part of the "Ramsden Long Causeway", which was the highway from Rochdale and Wardle to Walsden and Todmorden prior to the construction of the Steanor Bottom Turnpike Road through the Walsden valley in 1764. See Steanor Bottom Toll House, Rochdale Road, item no. 8/258. A good example of a small packhorse bridge set in a typical rural moorland setting. It was the only bridged river crossing in Walsden prior to the building of the Rochdale Canal in 1800, when New Bridge was constructed in the valley bottom. J. Crowther, Walsden: A century of Change 1780-1880, Todmorden Antiquarian Society, p.4. S.Hogg, 1991, Naze Road and Ramsden Long Causeway via Ragby Bridge to Rochdale boundary, South Pennine Packhorse Information Sheet.