East Row road bridge was obviously demolished by serious flooding 20th May 1910. The present day road bridge continues to be a problem for modern road traffic, despite the addition of an adjacent footbridge. The modern weather conditions have obviously been experienced before, as our image clearly shows. Richard Fox has advised the Archive; the Whitby Gazette on 24th May 2010 to comemmorate this event presented the original commentary to a photograph of the disaster: “A severe storm on 20 May 1910 reduced the East Row Bridge to rubble as the beck became a raging torrent that tore up trees from Mulgrave Woods and hurled them into a bridge. East Row Bridge was built from 1778-1780 to a design by John Carr. Some commentators have suggested the pillars were undermined by the spate but it was the large amount of wood that effectively blocked the arches and caused a dam behind the bridge that caused it to break. It was this blocking of the small arches that prompted the design of a single arch that could not be blocked by tree debris. The previous wooden bridge at East Row was dismantled in 1777 and moved to Raithwaite”.
Image courtesy of Joyce Dobson and Keith Bowers, thanks to Richard Fox for directing the Archive to the Whitby Gazettes excellent article.
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