AN HISTORIC wooden Dartmoor footbridge is being officially opened after extensive repairs.

The 200-year-old wooden clam bridge across the Bovey River at Lustleigh Cleave was badly damaged during the storms in January this year.

A campaign to support the rebuilding raised £6,000 to cover the cost.

Now the bridge is to reopen and donors and other who supported the restoration have been invited to celebrate.

The Bovey Clam Bridge is a traditionally built bridge of a construction unique to the wooded borders of Dartmoor.

There is evidence that there has been a bridge of this construction at this site for more than 200 years.

Earliest evidence shows the bridge on both the Lustleigh Tithe Map of 1837 and the 1864 Ordnance Survey map, but a bridge of this form on this site is likely to be much older.

The bridge is recognised as being of historic importance by Dartmoor National Park.

Made from tree trunks felled in the adjacent woods, with a handrail attached to one side, the Bovey Clam was renewed every 25 years or so until the 1970s.

In the 1990s a new bridge was constructed alongside and the Right of Way diverted.

Following a campaign by local people that attracted national attention, Natural England took on responsibility for it, and has organised the work which has been carried out by Kes Magee and his team.

Donations towards the repairs came from the Lustleigh Commoners Association, the Adrian Swire Trust, the Dartmoor Trust, the Town Mills Charity, the Lustleigh Society and 17 individuals.

The restoration was also supported by the parish councils of Lustleigh and Manaton, on whose borders the bridge sits.

It is probably the last of a type of bridge that was common on the wooded borders of Dartmoor in the past.