STATUTE LAW REVISION: SIXTEENTH ... - Law Commission

5.2 Three of the bridge Acts - the Evesham Bridge Act 1853, the Stourport Bridge
Transfer Act 1892 and the Worcestershire County Council (Bridges) Act 1905 -
have ceased to have effect in accordance with section 262(9) of the Local
Government Act 1972, except for two protective provisions in the 1892 Act which
are both obsolete. 56
5.3 The other bridge Acts appear to have been exempted from the cesser
mechanism in section 262(9) because the Bills for them were not promoted by a
local authority as defined in section 262(13).
5.4 The Bengeworth bridge Act 1662 is a reminder of the damage and disruption
caused by the English Civil War. The Act was passed to restore the bridge which
-
“in the time of the late wars within this kingdom ... being then built with
stone and in good reparation, was through the necessities and
extremities of the said wars pulled down by the soldiers then in
garrison at Evesham ... in the service of his late Majesty King Charles
the first, of our glorious memory, and other soldiers passing that way,
and is since made up with wood for a present passage over the said
river in such manner as cannot long continue, and is now very unsafe
and dangerous for carriages and travellers’ passage over the same
...”.
5.5 Because there were no lands, tenements, rents or other moneys appointed for
the repair of the bridge, and the inhabitants of Bengeworth and Evesham were
very poor and unable to repair the bridge in stone, the Act provided that the
bridge should be repaired at the common charge of the county of Worcester and
it empowered the justices of the peace for the county to repair the bridge with
stone and, at the next quarter sessions after 24 June 1662, to tax the county’s
inhabitants up to a maximum of £600 to pay for the work. The Act is obsolete
and spent. The bridge was repaired in accordance with section 67 of the
Evesham Improvement Act 1824 which is spent, and it was replaced by the
bridge built in accordance with the Evesham Bridge Act 1853.
5.6 The remaining bridge Acts either empowered named trustees (Worcester bridge
building Act 1769), or named commissioners (Bewdley bridge building Act 1795)
or a specially formed company (Kerne bridge building Act 1825, Holt Fleet bridge
building Act 1826, Hoarwithy Bridge Act 1855 and Fownhope and Holme Lacy
Bridge Act 1857) to build the bridge concerned and to finance it through tolls.
The Acts, so far as proposed for repeal, are in general spent and obsolete since
54 1857 (c.xlviii).
55 1905 (c.cxxxiii).
56 Section 6 makes provision for an annual payment to be made to the Staffordshire and
Worcestershire Canal Company and to the rector of Areley Kings. Both payments were
terminated by lump sum payments in 1959. Section 11 requires Worcestershire County
Council to provide a navigation light on the bridge at night subject to a fine for each failure
to do so, now recoverable by the British Waterways Board as the successors to the River
Severn Navigation Commissioners. A light has not been provided for many years and the
Board say that one is no longer needed in view of the decline of commercial traffic on the
river. The bridge is floodlit until midnight and modern street lights on it are in operation
throughout the hours of darkness.
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