Cake bridge

Cake bridge

A name later corrupted to Kate Bridge

 

Cake Bridge, also known as Kate Bridge, or Kate's Bridge, was a bridge that carried Newton Road over Dodham Brook, just to the south of today's Newton Road bridge.

Where the name of Kate Bridge arose is a complete mystery. Although, having said that, there may be a connection with the Harbin family of Newton Surmaville who owned the land the bridge was on and certainly had at least two generations with daughters by the name of Katherine in the seventeenth century - who knows? However the earlier 1589 Terrier refers to Cake Bridge.

The 1743 Terrier makes reference to "Dodham to Cake Bridge" however the Churchwardens' Accounts, also for the year 1743, has several entries for payments in connection with "Kate Bridge". The 1743 account entries are as follows -

Paid Jno Marshell for works done in repairing Kate Bridge

Paid for Lime used about the Said bridge and Carriage

Paid Mr Gerrads for hampdon hill Stone for Kate Bridge

Paid Ralph clarke for Clamps used about Kate Bridge

Paid Wm Cockey his bill for work done on the School and Kate Bridge

Jno ffrench for a Sive use about Kate Bridge to Sift the Lime

Paid farmer Newman for Carriage of a Load of Hampton hill Stones for Kate Bridge

Paid for 5 load of Stones about Kate Bridge

A Load of Stones from Hampton hill to Kate Bridge

Carrying of sand

Peter Hart's bill for Beer for the Labourers about the Bridge
£1 16s 0d

13s 4d

£1 16s 6d

4s 6d

£1 1s 8¼d

1s 0d


8s 0d

£1 0s 0d

8s 0d

6s 0d

11s 3½d



Also in 1743 the Minutes of a Vestry Meeting recorded yet another variant spelling ".... do order Mr Onesiphorus Penny and Mr Philip Francis, the present Churchwardens, to repair the lane from the lower part of Mr Thomas Hayward's Barn to Cate Bridge."

Minutes of the Turnpike Commissioners' meeting of 23 November 1775 imply that Cake Bridge was a wooden bridge, rather that stone-built when it recorded "Timber on the bridge going to Newton ordered to be repaired."

In 1845, in the London Gazette, it was reported in the great railway debate that the proposed railway line into Yeovil would "terminate at or near Cake Bridge or Newton Bridge". When the Town Station was built in 1860, Cake Bridge was demolished, Dodham Brook was diverted into a culvert under the road and the present Newton Road bridge was built.