By the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, bridges were a common feature of the English landscape. They were vital to the life of the country. But they were expensive to maintain and, since the general principle of universal land-based obligations had disappeared, there was no one system of financing maintenance. Three solutions evolved.

The first was the enforcement of obligations: this seems to have been going on quietly, almost behind our sources. Where obligations do enter the record it is usually the challenging of them. Obligations there were in the late Middle Ages, but they were not common to all; instead, they were customary and haphazard, and because they were haphazard they left important and dangerous gaps.

The second approach was the appeal to charity: on the most organised level, this approach involved the creation of elaborate bridge trusts. These trusts owned property, the rents of which went to the upkeep of the bridge in question. On a less complicated level, there were the repeated efforts by kings and bishops to encourage by example and by granting indulgences the simple giving of alms for bridge-work. Such alms became part of the accepted canon of good works and were included in many late medieval wills alongside bequests to chantries and hospitals. On the simplest level, we see humble hermits performing heroic acts of self-abnegating bridge-repair. When we hear of this, it is usually because the king grants them his protection, but the initiative was theirs, and the work already begun.

The third approach to the problem of the repair of bridges was the granting of pontage tolls. In essence, these grants were extensions of the charitable impulse connected with roads and bridges; in granting pontage or pavage, the king made a grant of the right to raise money from his roads. The most revealing feature of the pontage grants and, indeed, of repair by charitable contribution is their association with many of the greatest bridges of the country. They reveal, in fact, the lack of obligations and the insufficiency of charity to maintain them.