CLOSING York's Lendal Bridge was seen, by the city's previous Labour administration, as one way of helping to tackle York's congestion problem.
We all know how that ended.
It wasn't the first time the words 'congestion' and 'Lendal Bridge' had been used in the same sentence, however.
Just look at the wonderful photograph on these pages showing the bridge on April 5, 1961. There appears to be a head-to-head confrontation between a double-decker bus coming out of Rougier Street, and a petrol tanker wanting to go the other way, which is causing traffic to back up across the bridge.
And what's that fantastic little motorbike with sidecar doing in the foreground? It's a while since we've seen one of those...
"Jam today - and tomorrow - if York's traffic congestion is not relieved," says the photograph's rather laconic caption. That was 55 years ago, and the jam just seems to get better and better...
JAM: A clash of giants - a tanker and a bus seem to face off in this 1961 photo
There was congestion of a different kind on July 2, 1973, when crowds spilled onto the bridge after watching the Lord Mayor's Parade. The photo was taken by Press reader Malcolm Slater, and has been lodged in our archives for years. "A glimpse of the future?" reads the caption. "How Lendal Bridge might look if it became a paved (ie pedestrian) street." Let's not even go there.
Crowds spill onto Lendal Bruidge after watching the Lord Mayor's Parade in 1973
There have been plenty of classic photographs taken of Lendal Bridge down the years. We include a selection of them, all taken from our archives, on these pages today.
They include:
- a dramatic night-time photograph of the bridge at night taken in August 1975, with boats moored along the waterfront in the foreground
- a romantic scene from 1959 in which a couple are framed by the archway over the footpath under Scarborough Bridge, while Lendal Bridge is visible in the background
- a close-up, taken in June 1971, of signwriter Peter Nicholas, from Acomb, applying gold leaf to the bridge's figured lanterns...
Perhaps our favourite of all, however, is the wide view (main photo, top) taken in November 1960 as clear morning sunlight floods across the bridge, throwing an old Morris Minor and cyclists presumably on their way to work into sharp relief.
There's a lovely quality to the light in this photograph. But we particularly like the filthy glance being thrown by the woman cyclist in the middle of the picture at the Homburg-hatted driver of the Morris Minor. The feud between cyclists and motorists has clearly been going for some time...
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