This is Hexham Bridge, which has been crossing the Tyne for 232 years: longer even than it takes to cross the Tyne Bridge at rush hour with the current ongoing restoration work.

Hexham Old Bridge, this bridge’s predecessor-but-one, lasted only a year, swept away in the Great Tyne Flood of 1771.

Its replacement last only a couple of years, swept away by a ‘hurricane’ in 1782.

So when the third Hexham Bridge eventually opened in 1793, even its architect Robert Mylne surely couldn’t have dared to hope that it would still be standing two centuries later… unlike his bridge at Blackfriars in London, for which he’s rather better known, which lasted only a century.