Foreign Bridge

We know from Medieval documents that this bridge had seven arches with shops and houses built on top. But by the 1900s, the water had dried up and the bridge had gone.

"The Bridge that is on the Chefe Arme of [the] Severne"

That is how the traveller John Leland described the Foreign Bridge in about 1540 so perhaps this long since disappeared arm of the Severn was bigger than those now under the Westgate and Over bridges.
Some historians have said that the water was deliberately made deeper here to allow ships to use it, and that the bridge was originally built by the Romans or Anglo-Saxons. Unfortunately we will not know the truth until archaeologists excavate its remains. They are still under the part of Westgate Street near the modern Quay.
The name survived even later than the bridge. In the Middle Ages it had been called the `Foreign' or `Forein' , meaning `outer', Bridge. By the early 1900s all you could see was a slight kink in the Westgate Street road, but Gloucester people still talked about the "Farthing Bridge".