Prior to the 17th century information concerning the physical description of Taunton Castle is mainly found in the pipe rolls of the bishop of Winchester. A chance survival amongst the records of the clerks of the castle of Taunton, whose non-court related papers are sadly very few and far between, is a record of the bridge at the castle gate. The information is the form of a bill endorsed ‘Weekes his note for the Bridge att the Castle gate’ and headed ‘Anote for the Railes and slepers made for the bridge’.1 Although the document is not dated it is clearly Elizabethan and may coincide with the extensive works carried out from 1575 to 15782 during the episcopate of bishop Robert Horne; the reason for this thinking, apart from the handwriting, is because an additional expense at the end of the bill is for ‘the stewards borde in the halle’. The cost of the timber for the sleepers and rails was 15s and it took 12½ days labour for the work to be completed, employing three men for four days and another for half a day. The total bill for both jobs costing 33s 6d.3 Although this does not tell us how big the bridge was, or which bridge it was, the use of the term rails unfortunately the OED has four meanings; ‘raile is a piece of timber 6 foot or more long, and carrieth four inches broad, and an inch or more thick’; ‘a horizontal bar of wood or metal, fixed upon upright supports (posts) as part of a fence’; ‘a continuous series of bars forming the horizontal part of a fence; also, ‘by extension, or railing, whether constructed of posts and rails, or of some other form’. My query is, which of the three possible bridges does this account refer to?
1. SRO, DD/SP 348.
2. SRO, DD/X/WHI 1; Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 86, 53.
3. SRO, DD/SP 348.
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