ABSTRACT
Approaching the town over the medieval bridge will have brought the castle into majestic view, its donjon rising high above the town defences, its outer circuit and towers extending far to the north looking down onto the Thames and reflected back in the flowing water. Unlike the area south of the town, medieval Wallingford has no northern suburb, and there is good reason to think of the flank of the townscape as a zone kept free of development by design and partly reserved for a variety of specialist functions. The presence of the royal castle and Wallingford's economic floruit are reflected in the construction of a stone bridge that replaced an earlier timber structure by the mid-13th century. Wallingford Bridge is a prominent and highly distinctive component of the eastern, Thames-side landscape of Wallingford. At the east terminus of Wallingford bridge the historic borough boundary deviates to take in a wedge of land styled here as the 'bridgehead'.
