The Duchess

Sarah Churchill, the first duchess of Marlborough was not impressed with Vanbrugh’s plan. She thought that the plan and the architecture were unnecessarily expensive and cost a lot of money.

The Result?

Vanbrugh was banned from Blenheim altogether by the Duchess. He had planned and designed the bridge for nothing. And after he was banned, his secret of what was beneath the bridge went with him. 

Hidden

In 1768, the gardener and architect of the Palace, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown planned a project wherein he got workers to bring 160-acre sets of lakes to the grounds of the palace, which hid inside it something vast and huge which has never been exposed..until recently.

At Risk

The Great Bridge covers two lakes of Blenheim Palace, which are at the risk of being dried out for the first time, and might even make the bridge unstable because of the dryness of the lakes. To save it, the lakes will be drained for the first time in 250 years. 

Repair

To save the bridge, workers decided to dredge 400,000 tonnes of sediments in the hope to return the water of the river to its original height. But before that could happen, there was going to be a revelation too big.

Intervention

The involvement of the estate to plan the renovation of the river was essential because otherwise, the river would have vanished in the coming ten years period of time and England would lose its finest view. But it was all going to change very soon.