Our aim is to 'collect' Clapper Bridges, or rather photos of them. This is an ongoing process and photos will be added over time as we manage to make our way to them.
If someone were to say 'Clapper Bridge' to you then you probably think of the best known one in Postbridge on Dartmoor, indeed if you search the phrase then it is usually that one that comes up. I once saw a report that stated clapper bridges were unique to Dartmoor and yet this statement is quickly disproved by the next best well known one, Tarr Steps on Exmoor. Indeed this statement is actually what started me on this mission.
What with clapper bridges being so old they are not all neccessarilly complete and I have no doubt that there are some that just have fallen to pieces, possibly even literally as Tarr Steps made the news at the end of 2014 when half of it was literally washed away although it has since been repaired with the stones being retrieved and reset into position. As such not all the clapper bridges on this site will be whole, and it lists those still existing rather than those that used to.
Very few of these clapper bridges have official names so we've named them based on their location, usually with the village or river name. It is worth noting that occassionally Google Maps differs from Ordance Survey maps in the name of rivers, when this occurs we use the OS Map name. Occasionally there are multiple clapper bridges very close together and we have numbered these.
We've had to implement some rules as to what count. We haven't included single slab stones over leats, although we have included single slab stones over natural streams and rivers. We also haven't included clappers that have been built over so much that they can be used by cars, an example of this being Delphi Bridge on Bodmin Moor, although this one is perhaps the most obvious that it was originally a clapper.
We use the OS Maps by Ordnance Survey to fine tune where we think the clapper bridges are before visiting and often plot out a route on the website before using the app to follow it on the phone. Many of the clapper bridges are in locations with no signal, however with a bit of preplanning you can save a route or map offline and then you can use it even in the remotest of places and it will show where you are on your route, very handy. Another resource that we use is geograph.org.uk whose aim is to take a photo of every ordnance survey square, in fact where we haven't yet been to a clapper ourselves we've given links to where we have got the details from and a lot of them are from geograph.