On a recent ramble through the village, I found myself heading towards the Idiot for a midday ploughman’s and a pint of Flaming Monk. This mission necessitated a perambulation across the old stone bridge that spans the River Puck about a half mile downstream from my destination. Whilst crossing it, I stopped to reflect on its glorious association with that mighty waterway.

As early as Roman times, the village, known then as Aether Puckeratio, nestled against the curve of the river. Ancient fishermen cast their seines across its breadth, drawing bright coloured fish from the watery deep. The nineteenth-century county archaeologist Sir Edmund Orbis discovered the foundations of a Roman footbridge and the paving of an ancient road adjacent to its more modern counterpart, postulating that in the days when England lay beneath the iron fist of the Emperors, traffic bearing tribute to the might of Rome passed through the village on its way north towards Londinium.

Although the year of construction for the stoney crosswalk lying beneath my feet that day has been lost in the mists of time, a bridge stood in this location when the venerable Domesday Book was penned for the conqueror William. Surely it is our beloved span that survived the Great Flood of 1748, so eloquently described by Puckering’s Victorian chronicler Reverend Edward Kingsdale. "The waters rose with such fury that all was enveloped beneath them, and all methods of communication north to south destroyed save one, a small stone bridge that stood firm against the surge."