on one or both banks. As the process of moving an army over bridges is slow and complicated, it is usually necessary to secure it from hostile interruption, and the works constituting the bridge-head must therefore be sufficiently far advanced to keep the enemy’s artillery out of range of the bridges. In addition, room is required for the troops to form up on the farther bank. In former days, with short-range weapons, a bridge-head was often little more than a screen for the bridge itself, but modern conditions have rendered necessary far greater extension of bridge defences.
BRIDGEND, a market town in the southern parliamentary division of Glamorganshire, Wales, on both sides of the river Ogwr (whence its Welsh name Penybont-ar-Ogwr). Pop. of urban district (1901) 6062. It has a station 165 m. from London on the South Wales trunk line of the Great Western railway, and is the junction of the Barry Company’s railway to Barry via Llantwit Major. Bridgend has a good market for agricultural produce, and is an important centre owing to its being the natural outlet for the mining valleys of the Llynvi, Garw and the two Ogwr rivers, which converge about 3 m. north of the town and are connected with it by branch lines of the Great Western railway. Though without large manufacturing industries, the town has joinery works, a brass and iron foundry, a tannery and brewery. There are brick-works and stone quarries, and much lime is burnt in the neighbourhood. Just outside the town at Angelton and Parc Gwyllt are the Glamorgan county lunatic asylums.
There was no civil parish of Bridgend previous to 1905, when one was formed out of portions of the parishes of Newcastle and Coity. Of the castle of Newcastle, built on the edge of a cliff above the church of that parish, there remain a courtyard with flanking towers and a fine Norman gateway. At Coity, about 2 m. distant, there are more extensive ruins of its castle, originally the seat of the Turbervilles, lords of Coity, but now belonging to the earls of Dunraven. Coity church, dating from the 14th century, is a fine cruciform building with central embattled tower in Early Decorated style.
BRIDGE OF ALLAN, a police burgh of Stirlingshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 3240. It lies on the Allan, a left-hand tributary of the Forth, 3 m. N. of Stirling by the Caledonian railway and by tramway. Built largely on the well-wooded slopes of Westerton and Airthrey Hill, sheltered by the Ochils from the north and east winds, and environed by charming scenery, it has a great reputation as a health resort and watering-place, especially in winter and spring. There is a pump-room. The chief buildings are the hydropathic and the Macfarlane museum of fine art and natural history. The industries include bleaching, dyeing and paper-making. The Strathallan Gathering, usually held in the neighbourhood, is the most popular athletic meeting in mid-Scotland. Airthrey Castle, standing in a fine park with a lake, adjoins the town on the south-east, and just beyond it are the old church and burying-ground of Logie, beautifully situated at the foot of a granite spur of the Ochil range.
BRIDGEPORT, a city, a port of entry, and one of the county-seats of Fairfield county, Connecticut, U.S.A., co-extensive with the town of Bridgeport, in the S.W. part of the state, on Long Island Sound, at the mouth of the Pequonnock river; about 18 m. S.W. of New Haven. Pop. (1880) 27,643; (1890) 48,866; (1900) 70,996, of whom 22,281 were foreign-born, including 5974 from Ireland, 3172 from Hungary, 2854 from Germany, 2755 from England, and 1436 from Italy; (1910) 102,054. Bridgeport is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway, by lines of coast steamers, and by steamers to New York City and to Port Jefferson, directly across Long Island Sound. The harbour, formed by the estuary of the river and Yellow Mill Pond, an inlet, is excellent. Between the estuary and the pond is a peninsula, East Bridgeport, in which are some of the largest manufacturing establishments, and west of the harbour and the river is the main portion of the city, the wholesale section extending along the bank, the retail section farther back, and numerous factories along the line of the railway far to the westward. There are two large parks, Beardsley, in the extreme north part of the city, and Seaside, west of the harbour entrance and along the Sound; in the latter are statues of Elias Howe, who built a large sewing-machine factory here in 1863, and of P. T. Barnum, the showman, who lived in Bridgeport after 1846 and did much for the city, especially for East Bridgeport. In Seaside Park there is also a soldiers’ and sailors’ monument, and in the vicinity are many fine residences. The principal buildings are the St Vincent’s and Bridgeport hospitals, the Protestant orphan asylum, the Barnum Institute, occupied by the Bridgeport Scientific and Historical Society and the Bridgeport Medical Society; and the United States government building, which contains the post-office and the customs house.
In 1905 Bridgeport was the principal manufacturing centre in Connecticut, the capital invested in manufacturing being $49,381,348, and the products being valued at $44,586,519. The largest industries were the manufacture of corsets—the product of Bridgeport was 19·9% of the total for the United States in 1905, Bridgeport being the leading city in this industry—sewing machines (one of the factories of the Singer Manufacturing Co. is here), steam-fitting and heating apparatus, cartridges (the factory of the Union Metallic Cartridge Co. is here), automobiles, brass goods, phonographs and gramophones, and typewriters. There are also large foundry and machine shops. Here, too, are the winter headquarters of “Barnum and Bailey’s circus” and of “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.” Bridgeport is a port of entry; its imports in 1908 were valued at $656,271. Bridgeport was originally a part of the township of Stratford. The first settlement here was made in 1659. It was called Pequonnock until 1695, when its name was changed to Stratfield. During the War of Independence it was a centre of privateering. In 1800 the borough of Bridgeport was chartered, and in 1821 the township was incorporated. The city was not chartered until 1836.
See S. Orcutt’s History of the Township of Stratford and the City of Bridgeport (New Haven, 1886).
BRIDGES, ROBERT (1844–), English poet, born on the 23rd of October 1844, was educated at Eton and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and studied medicine in London at St Bartholomew’s hospital. He was afterwards assistant physician at the Children’s hospital, Great Ormond Street, and physician at the Great Northern hospital, retiring in 1882. Two years later he married Mary, daughter of Alfred Waterhouse, R.A. As a poet Robert Bridges stands rather apart from the current of modern English verse, but his work has had great influence in a select circle, by its restraint, purity, precision, and delicacy yet strength of expression; and it embodies a distinct theory of prosody. His chief critical works are Milton’s Prosody (1893), a volume made up of two earlier essays (1887 and 1889), and John Keats, a Critical Essay (1895). He maintained that English prosody depended on the number of “stresses” in a line, not on the number of syllables, and that poetry should follow the rules of natural speech. His poetry was privately printed in the first instance, and was slow in making its way beyond a comparatively small circle of his admirers. His best work is to be found in his Shorter Poems (1890), and a complete edition of his Poetical Works (6 vols.) was published in 1898–1905. His chief volumes are Prometheus (Oxford, 1883, privately printed), a “mask in the Greek Manner”; Eros and Psyche (1885), a version of Apuleius; The Growth of Love, a series of sixty-nine sonnets printed for private circulation in 1876 and 1889; Shorter Poems (1890); Nero (1885), a historical tragedy, the second part of which appeared in 1894; Achilles in Scyros (1890), a drama; Palicio (1890), a romantic drama in the Elizabethan manner; The Return of Ulysses (1890), a drama in five acts; The Christian Captives (1890), a tragedy on the same subject as Calderon’s El Principe Constante; The Humours of the Court (1893), a comedy founded on the same dramatist’s El secreto á voces and on Lope de Vega’s El Perro del hortelano; The Feast of Bacchus (1889), partly translated from the Heauton-Timoroumenos of Terence; Hymns from the Yattendon Hymnal (Oxford, 1899); and Demeter, a Mask (Oxford, 1905).
