Merrivale Bridge

• River: Walkham, on the Whitchurch and Walkhampton parish boundary
• Grid reference: SX 55023 75096
• Date: mainly 18th century on earlier ashlar; the turnpike Act is given as 1762 (listing) or 1772 (Dartmoor Explorations)
• Built of: granite and slatestone rubble, two round arches and a flood arch, about 12 m long
• Designation: Grade II, Historic England list entry 1152185 (listed 23 January 1987)

Merrivale Bridge carries the B3357 over the Walkham beside the Dartmoor Inn. The surviving bridge is mainly 18th century, built into earlier ashlar and probably on the line of an older crossing; Legendary Dartmoor counts three bridges here: a large clapper, the turnpike-era bridge of the 1770s, and a single-span bridge of 1957-8 built with stone from Tor Quarry. It was a ford on the northern end of a packhorse route between Tavistock and Ashburton.

Old books spell the name Merivale (Rowe, Crossing); Donn's map of 1765 has Merriville Bridge. Stories attached to the bridge include a waggonette from Plymouth that ran out of control down the hill and was thrown over it on 18 May 1879. The antiquities beside the bridge are described in our listings for Merrivale Antiquities and its stone rows.

Do not confuse it with the Historic England entry for the Bridge at SX 548727, a separate low granite bridge over a tributary of the Walkham.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1152185; Legendary Dartmoor, Merrivale; Dartmoor Explorations, Merrivale bridges and hamlet; W. Crossing, Gems in a Granite Setting (1905).

This bridge is one of the crossings gathered in Dartmoor Bridges, a guide to the clapper bridges, packhorse bridges and road bridges of the moor and its edge.