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The Grade I listedStructure of particular architectural and/or historic interest deserving of special protection. Henley Bridge at Henley-on-Thames was built in 1786, over the River Thames between Oxfordshire and Berkshire. The road bridge, occupying the site of an earlier 12th-century bridge probably built by King Henry II in the 1170s, incorporates part of that earlier bridge’s easternmost span.[1]
The earliest recording of a bridge at Henley is in the Patent Rolls of 1232. Built of timber on stone piers, it was carried away in the great flood of 1774.[2]
The present-day five-arched bridge was designed by William Hayward, who died in 1782 before work on its construction had begun.[1] The bridge was built by the Oxford mason John Townesend,[3] at a cost of £10,000. A toll bar was installed on the Berkshire side of the bridge, where it remained for 100 years until the cost of the bridge’s construction had been recovered.[4]
The keystone sculptures of Isis and Thamesis, one on each side of the central arch, were created by Anne Seymour Damer (1748–1828).[5] Thamesis is an ancient name for the River Thames, and until relatively recently the name Isis was used for the Thames from its source in the Cotswolds until it merges with the River Thame at Dorchester-on-Thames. Today it is usually only that section of the Thames flowing through Oxford which is known as the Isis.[6]
Henley Bridge was the finishing line for the first Oxford and Cambridge university boat race in June 1829, won by Oxford.[7]