The project was the idea of Nicholas and Walter Gervase, father and son and influential local merchants, who travelled the country to raise funds.

The result was a bridge at least 590 feet (180 metres) long, which probably had 17 or 18 arches, carrying the road diagonally from the west gate of the city wall across the River Exe and its wide, marshy flood plain.

Timber-framed shops, with houses above, were in place from at least the early 14th century, and later in the bridge's life, all but the most central section carried buildings.

As the river silted up, land was reclaimed, allowing a wall to be built from the side of St Edmund's which protected a row of houses and shops which became known as Frog Street.

Walter Gervase also commissioned a chantry chapel, built opposite the church, which came into use after 1257 and continued until the Reformation in the mid-16th century.

At Exeter, the Exe was naturally broad and shallow, making this the lowest reliable crossing point before the river's tidal estuary.

[8][9][10] A stone bridge was promoted by Nicholas and Walter Gervase, father and son and prominent local residents.

Walter was subsequently elected mayor of Exeter several times and had his parents buried in the chapel on the Exe Bridge upon their deaths (the exact dates of which are unknown); he died in 1252.

It crossed the Exe diagonally, starting from close to the West Gate of the city walls, and continued across the marshy banks which were prone to flooding.

[1][15][16][17][18] The foundations were created using piles of timber, reinforced with iron and lead and driven in tightly enough to form a solid base.

After part of the bridge was demolished in the 18th century, some of the piles were removed and found to be jet black and extremely solid, having been underwater for some 500 years.

The earliest repairs are impossible to date, but a partial collapse was recorded during a storm in 1286, and again in 1384, when several people were killed.

By 1447, the bridge was recorded as being severely dilapidated—Richard Izacke, the chamberlain of Exeter in the mid 17th century, wrote that it "was now in great decay, the stone work thereof being much foundred, and the higher part being all of timber was consumed and worn away".

He approached John Kemp, the Archbishop of York, with whom he was acquainted and who was an executor of the estate of the recently deceased Henry Beaufort, the famously wealthy Bishop of Winchester.

The records show that it leased 15 shops on the bridge, and over 50 other properties elsewhere in Exeter, including mills and agricultural land, all providing an income for maintenance and repairs.

Construction of the replacement bridge began in 1770 and suffered a major setback in 1775 when floodwaters washed away much of the part-built structure and damaged its foundations.

By then, the marshland over which several of the medieval arches were built had been reclaimed and the river was restricted to a width of 150 feet (46 metres).

[9][23][27] Parts of the medieval bridge were exposed when a German bomb exploded nearby during the Exeter Blitz in the Second World War.

During the work, an old brewery and several adjoining buildings along the street were demolished to make way for a new road scheme connecting with the twin bridges.

[16][30][31] The bases of several of the demolished arches survive on the riverbed, and about 25 metres (82 feet) of bridge is buried under Edmund Street and the modern bank of the Exe.

As such, the bridge is a scheduled monument and a grade II listed building, providing it legal protection from modification or demolition.

Local trap stone was used for the faces of the arches, behind which is gravel and rubble contained within a box of wooden stakes which were driven into the ground and the riverbed.

The chapel provided travellers a place to pray or to give thanks for a safe journey, and the alms collected were often used towards the maintenance of the bridge.

Work on a bell tower began in 1449 after Edmund Lacey, the Bishop of Exeter, offered indulgences in exchange for financial contributions.

Indulgences, in which senior clergymen offered reduced time in purgatory in exchange for acts of charity, were a common method of funding bridges in the Middle Ages.

The church was struck by lightning in 1800 and largely rebuilt in 1834, then severely damaged in a fire in 1882 and repaired the following year, though retaining much of the ancient stonework.

Another fire in 1969 left the church in a ruinous state, and it was partially demolished in 1975, when most of the later additions were removed but the medieval stonework was preserved.

[1][9][38][43] On the opposite side of the bridge was a smaller chantry chapel (a chapel employing a priest to pray for a given period of time after a person's death, to aid that person's passage to heaven), built for Walter Gervase and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Upon his death in 1257, Gervase left an endowment of 50 shillings a year for a priest to hold three services a week to pray for him, his father, and his family.

[1][15][48][49] In the later 13th century, silty deposits had built up on the Exeter side of the bridge, allowing the land to be reclaimed for two buildings which backed onto the river and fronted onto what became Frog Street.