Here at Magdalene Bridge, Cambridge shows you its old supply line... not the dreamy postcard version, the working one. From at least the twelfth century until the railway arrived in eighteen forty-five and spoiled the river’s monopoly, this stretch of the Cam carried in the stuff that kept the town alive: coal, grain, stone, timber, fish, salt. Barges came up from King’s Lynn in flat-bottomed Fenland lighters, often linked head-to-tail in gangs of half a dozen. On the Cam itself, horses sometimes waded chest-deep, towing the loads in like patient, soggy engines.
And the university? Brilliant minds, yes, but not self-heating, self-feeding, or self-mending. Colleges depended on townspeople for nearly everything: bedders to light fires, kitchen porters to cook breakfast, gatekeepers, masons, binders, printers, brewers, traders, tailors... and watermen to bring the coal. The gown liked to look lofty; the town kept it standing.
Now, take a moment and look over the parapet at the river, especially the east bank and the slipway line of Quayside. That was the working wharf edge, where, as one local record put it, “everything needed for the life of the district” arrived by barge. Local memory even kept a verb for the men waiting here: bridge-porters would “prop up the bridge” while they leaned on the parapet, hoping the next boat needed unloading. It’s a wonderfully honest image... Cambridge literally supported by men standing about until there was hard work to do.
This is the third Magdalene Bridge. James Essex gave Cambridge a stone bridge in seventeen fifty-four, then Benjamin Brown and Arthur Browne replaced it with this iron one in eighteen twenty-three, cast in Derby for two thousand three hundred and fifty pounds... roughly a quarter of a million pounds today. One of England’s earliest cast-iron road bridges, and still doing the job.
Later, we’ll meet the road carriers too, because the town never trusted one supply route alone. For now, walk a few paces south down Magdalene Street. The white-painted brick pub on your right, with the coach arch, is the Pickerel Inn... and this bridge, rather sensibly, is accessible all day and all night.
