Exploring Downtown Amesbury’s Stone Bridges

Pond Street stone arch bridge crossing the Powow. Viewed from Amesbury’s Upper Millyard, looking upstream.

ACM Industrial Survey Team volunteers Mike Harrold and Steve Klomps teamed up to provide an armchair tour of three graceful but mostly invisible stone arch bridges in downtown Amesbury. Mike and Steve examined the granite bridges under Pond, Main and Elm streets and presented their findings in a report, Stone Arch Bridges in Downtown Amesbury, just published on the ACM website.

Their research involved a little adventure, along with the usual online and library research techniques. Accompanied by John Mayer, ACM’s executive director, Mike and Steve took advantage of recent low water levels to put on boots and walk under the Main Street bridge, taking photos and measurements and looking for clues to the age of the stone work.

The Main Street bridge, out of sight from street level, spans the Powow near Craft Beer Cellar and the building housing Ben’s Uniforms. Most residents and visitors are largely unaware of this bridge and two others under Pond Street and Elm Street, although hundreds of people and vehicles pass over them every day.

Original construction dates for these bridges are still being investigated, but it’s fairly certain that they’re well over 150 years old. Mike and Steve say the granite blocks in these structures might have come from quarries in nearby Rockport.

Read Stone Arch Bridges in Downtown Amesbury on the Researching People & Place page of the ACM website.