Above: The packhorse bridge was already showing signs of damage when this photo was taken in July 1960.
Many thanks to John Bingham on the Goyt Valley Facebook Group for posting a couple of press clippings he discovered in Derbyshire Record Office. They reveal that the ancient packhorse bridge that once spanned Wildmorestone Brook in the heart of Goyt’s Bridge was very nearly lost due to an administrative error.
The first article was from the Stockport Express and dated 27th August 1964…
Officials were saving the wrong bridge in Goyt Valley mix-up
There’s bad news this week from the Goyt Valley, where Stockport’s new reservoir is being built: The old packsaddle bridge, with its picturesque parapets and lovely archway, has been victim of a mix-up which will shock all those who have been striving to preserve it.
Stockport Water Board had agreed that it would be dismantled stone by stone, and eventually reassembled elsewhere in the valley. But there are two bridges and a misunderstanding arose; officials got the impression that a more modern bridge, only 50 yards lower down the valley, was the structure intended for preservation.
Before the mistake could be brought to the notice of the Water Board vandals got busy and the old packsaddle is now almost destroyed.
Parapets gone
Both parapets have gone. All that remains is the archway. In spite of that a meeting is to be arranged between the board and the Council for the Preservation of Rural England to find out whether it will be possible to rebuild the bridge.
Mr Yale, egnineer to the Water Board, is very keen to help in any way. He said he had received applications from organisations who wished to take down the bridge and rebuild it elsewhere than in the valley. One came from Macclesfield Boys’ Club, but it was felt that if the structure is to be preserved it should remain somewhere in the valley.
Question of cost
Another suggestion is that it be rebuilt into the landscape near to where the new footpath will be when the reservoir is completed.
Mr Cliff Rathbone of Macclesfield, who is a member of the C.P.R.E and keenly interested in preserving the bridge, said: “This would, of course, cost money, and the Water Board might have to think twice about whether the cost should be their responsibility. Many people will be prepared to subscribe to a fund for the preservation of what is left of the old bridge, for so many happy memories are associated with it.”
Above: The picturesque packhorse bridge featured on many postcards from the early 1900s. This illustration appears on the cover of Gerald Hancock’s wonderful little book, ‘Goyt valley Romance’ which was very much the inspiration for my interest in the area. (Click here to read it in full.)
The second article John discovered was dated the following year in 1965 and reports that it had been decided to move the bridge to its present site in Goytsclough. There’s lots of information and photos of the bridge on this website. Click the tag at the bottom of the page to view them.
Bridge to be saved
The old packhorse bridge in the Goyt Valley, threatened by the new Errwood Reservoir being built there by Stockport and District Water Board, is to be taken down and rebuilt by the board, at a cost of £2,940, downstream of Berry Clough.
When the water in the new reservoir begins to creep up the valley sides in two to three years’ time, however, another valley bridge and local beauty spot, Goyt’s Bridge, will be submerged for ever.
The board engineer and surveyor, Mr W. D. Yale, told the “Advertiser”: “There did not seem to be any suitable part of the valley where we could rebuild a bridge of this size. Our landscape experts said, and I agree, that it would look incongruous over a smaller stream.”
