The South Eastern Railway built this first bridge in 1860 which for some reason was known as the Queen's Bridge. This was later replaced in 1906 by the bascule bridge featured earlier. What looks like the Lord Nelson pub is visible toward the right. 
There has been written elsewhere some erroneous information concerning an even earlier medieval bridge known as the Tremseth Bridge, which according to the historian Charles Igglesden was destroyed by a freak flood tide and never replaced. However, the Isle of Sheppey was at one time the Isles of Sheppey, with Harty and Elmley once separated from the main island, and this bridge actually connected Sheppey with Harty rather than Sheppey with the mainland. After it was lost, a ferry operated in its stead, until by the 18th century the dividing fleet became so completely silted up it was no longer needed.
From
The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent by Edward Hasted, in reference to Harty:
"It appears by the pleas of the crown, in the 21st year of king Edward I taken before the justices itinerant, that there was formerly a bridge leading from hence into Shepey, then called Tremseth bridge, which had been broken down by a violent inundation of the sea, and the channel thereby made so deep, that a new one could not be laid, and therefore the inhabitants of Shepey, who before repaired it, maintained in the room of it two ferry-boats, to carry passengers to and fro".
"There is now no bridge here, and the fleet which divided this island from that of Shepey is become so very narrow, and has for several years past been so much filled up, that, excepting at high tides and overflow of the waters, Harty has ceased to have any appearance of an island".
