There was a narrow bridge carrying St Mark's Street over the Upper Witham to Ropewalk by about 1817 that is visible on Marrat’s map. The 1888 OS map shows a wider bridge, perhaps the present one. It is a single-span flattened arch in blue brick and the roadway is humped. {1} A narrow bridge is visible on Marrat's map of 1817 and continued to be represented on later mapping until Padley's and Thropp's 20 inches to the mile map of 1883 when the wider road bridge is first marked. Thus the wider bridge dates to after 1868 and before 1883, probably built in the 1870s. On mapping it is first referred to as Holmes Bridge in 1842, so named because, at the time, it gave the only ready access from the Wigford part of the lower city to Holmes Common, west of the River Witham and to the south of the Brayford Pool. {2} Although there had been a bridge at the end of Ropewalk since at least 1842 (Padley’s map), it was not until after the railways came to Lincoln that Ropewalk was widened and improved for traffic. At some time the bridge would have been replaced. There is no evidence that it ever carried a railway line, but there is a clear indication that high strength was needed for the bridge to support heavy loads coming out, by road, from the factories on the west side of the river from the 1930s onwards, such as Ruston Bucyrus dragline excavators made in Beevor Street, for example, the 1950s 54RB weighed 75 tons. {3}