The bridge was built after 1400 to replace one built early in the 12th century for
Ranulf Flambard, who was
Bishop of Durham 1099–1128. Flambard's bridge seems to have had five or six arches. A record of a lawsuit in 1437 records that Flambard's bridge: Until the replacement bridge was completed a ferry was substituted, the profit from which was shared between the Bishop of Durham and the
Prior of
Durham Cathedral Priory. of Durham Cathedral and the River Wear, showing all three arches of Framwellgate Bridge The current bridge is of two shallow arches, each with several reinforcing ribs. Their combined span is about . The early 16th-century
antiquary John Leland recorded that there were three arches. A
watercolour of
Durham Cathedral painted by
Thomas Girtin in 1799 shows a third arch, with a rounded shape characteristic of
Norman architecture. Buildings at the
central Durham end of the bridge may conceal the third arch, which may be a surviving part of Flambard's original 12th-century bridge. Some sources indicate that both ends of the bridge were fortified by towers and gates, though others infer only a single gatehouse was built on the peninsula side of the river. The gateway and tower at the eastern end of the bridge were deemed an obstruction to traffic and demolished in 1760. A flood destroyed two houses at the end of the bridge in 1771. Early in the 19th century the bridge was widened on its upstream side. It is now wide. Of the reinforcing ribs under each arch, five belong to the 15th-century bridge and two to the 19th-century widening. In 1318,
Robert Neville, the "Peacock of the North", murdered his cousin, the Bishop's Steward, Sir Richard Fitzmarmaduke, at Framwellgate Bridge. Until the building of Milburngate Bridge in 1969, Framwellgate Bridge was the main traffic route from the west through the centre of Durham. Today, the bridge is
pedestrianised. ==References==