Halfpenny Bridge

A wooden footbridge was built across the river some yards upstream of the present bridge in the early nineteenth century to improve access to the Oversevern, or Beander Mill on the far. The mill dated from mediaeval times as a corn mill but later became a woollen mill. The footbridge was privately owned and for many years a man known as Tommy King collected a toll of a halfpenny from those wishing to cross over. Thus the bridge acquired the name “Halfpenny” or “King’s Bridge”. It was swept away by floods several times, but the concrete bridge erected in 1930 survived the 1960 and 1964 floods and was only demolished when the river was diverted as a part of the town’s flood defences. The present single span Halfpenny Bridge was built in 1972.