TQ1050 : Meadow Plat Bridge
taken 2 years ago, 3 km from Effingham, Surrey, England
William King, 1st Earl of Lovelace, was owner of the East Horsley Estate in the 19th Century. The estate included an extensive forested area, and in order to assist the movement of timber using horse drawn carts to his sawmill on the Epsom Road, in the 1860s he developed a network of tracks with embankments where needed to reduce gradients, with bridges constructed where these tracks crossed an existing road or track. The bridges, now known as the Lovelace Bridges, were built out of brick and flint, a style he adopted for all structures and buildings on the estate, including the main seat, Horsley Towers. There were 15 bridges in all, of which 10 still survive. All but one of the extant bridges are grade II listed. For a map of all the bridges and a marked trail covering a number of them, produced by the Horsley Countryside Preservation Society, see Link.