Sonning Bridge is a road bridge across the River Thames at Sonning in Berkshire. The earliest reference to a bridge on this site is around 1530, although there are claims that there was an old Saxon wooden bridge here before 1125. The current bridge is a brick arch bridge completed in 1775, to replace an earlier wooden bridge. A stone marker at the centre of the bridge is marked "B | O" (for the counties of Berkshire and Oxfordshire on each side of the river) with the vertical line indicating the exact boundary down the middle of the river. This is an ancient border which used to be between Wessex and Mercia. It is rumoured that Dick Turpin used the bridge as an escape route from Berkshire to Oxfordshire to evade the authorities. Sonning Bridge is traffic light controlled because it is too narrow for traffic in both directions simultaneously. It is the only road bridge across the Thames between Henley-on-Thames and Reading, therefore large queues of traffic build up during the morning and evening rush hours. An additional bridge to relieve the traffic problems has been a subject of debate for many years. So far, nothing has been done to alleviate the problem and there are no current plans to build a new bridge. ------------------------------------------ Original Photograph 23 Jun 2013