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266 THE CITY AS IT IS
heavy piers supporting a timber footway. If this was the bridge that
kept Cnut at bay, it must have been strongly fortified, but how
we can only conjecture. In fact, all we know is that it must have been
included in King Alfred’s scheme of repair in 886, and it certainly
was in existence in the reign of Alfred s descendant, Eadgar, less than
a hundred years later, because it 15 mentioned in a contemporary
chronicle as the place of execution of an unhappy woman accused of
witchcraft. This bridge subsisted till the middle of the twelfth century,
when it had become dilapidated and unfit for traffic. Peter, the curate
of St. Mary Colechurch in Cheap, who was the great engineer of the day,
repaired or rebuilt it in 1163 of elm wood, but evidently looked upon
this as merely a temporary structure, and soon set about the work of
an entirely new bridge a few yards higher up the stream. This in the
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