Until 1980 the old bridge was still part of a busy main road - the only road bridge over the Ouse between Huntingdon and Earith, as it had been for 900 years. Buses and lorries rumbled over its ancient arches while pedestrians cowered in the refuges, and to stand in the chapel while a double-decker bus drove by was to experience some of the qualms that Mr and Mrs Bullen must have felt about traction engines. There were occasional accidents, and the fact that the accidents never became tragedies would seem to imply that St Leger (or St Lawrence) was still keeping a proprietorial eye on things. Many people will remember the occasion in June 1976 when a giant lorry from the nearby gravel pits swerved to avoid a pedestrian emerging from the chapel and ploughed through the bridge parapet, ending up poised precariously with two wheels handing over the river. A Bren-gun carrier is said to have done something similar during a Home Guard exercise in the Second World War.

These problems were alleviated in 1980 by the opening of the St Ives bypass, with its new bridge over the river. Traffic over the old bridge was enormously reduced, and the long queues in the town centre during rush hours have all but disappeared. Since then a new one-way system in St Ives has reduced the use of the bridge still further, and buses no longer cross it. It would be nice to see the bridge entirely closed to traffic one day.

Source: St Ives Bridge and Chapel. Burn-Murdoch, Bob. 1988. Friends of the Norris Museum. ISBN 0950720976.