AMONG the paintings in my home is a watercolour of Whitby’s swing bridge.

Actually, it isn’t quite of the swing bridge.

It shows the bridge’s tiny, shingle-roofed control house with one of the bridgemen leaning against the open door. Though he’s not meant to be identified, nevertheless, my wife and I had observed that workman in that position many times.

And so no doubt had the artist, a Whitby amateur named Barry Cowell. By pure chance he turned out to share my Teesside birthplace. He inscribed the picture for me: “From one Normanby lad to another. I hope this painting gives you a lot of pleasure.”

Indeed it does. I never pass it without smiling.

And I’m doubly happy to possess such a distinctive image of what is indubitably the most central feature of the Whitby scene.

Practical yet with a simple grace (“comely”

is the precise word I would choose), it holds the two sides of Whitby together like the well-worn clasp of an antique necklace.

Or, of course, it divides them – either briefly, as a vessel passes through, or for longer, when it obstinately refuses to close.

The recent nine-day breakdown was an exceptionally prolonged tantrum. But the bridge has been temperamental for as long as… well, as long as that more celebrated contraption of a bridge up the coast, Middlesbrough’s dear old Transporter, has been giving similar trouble.

Neglected after Whitby’s High Level bridge opened in 1972, the swing bridge became uncooperative.

By the mid-Eighties full-scale renovation was deemed necessary – a £400,000 overhaul – after which the consulting engineer announced: “Not an inch has been left untouched.”

But the bridge remained as wayward as ever. In 1989, a two-day summer breakdown led traders to present their MP, Michael Shaw, with a catalogue of problems. “Bread and butter are being taken out of the mouths of East Side shopkeepers,” he roundly declared.

But what the Whitby Gazette usually termed the “mini mayhem” triggered by breakdowns did not cease. In 1993, the bridge varied its customary sticking routine by failing to stop. Its eastern leaf swung into the Dolphin Hotel, narrowly missing an earlymorning cleaner.

When the bridge’s working parts were renewed yet again in 2003, at a cost of £500,000, special care was taken with the wedges, designed to prevent a repetition of the Dolphin smash.

Meanwhile, the Whitby Gazette, which had once favoured scrapping the bridge, now recognised its worth. Able to observe, from its office overlooking the bridge, not only that “mini mayhem” but the interest whenever the bridge opened, it urged: “Let’s make the most of what we have. The bridge is a major tourist attraction which we should cherish despite its inconvenience.”

Absolutely right. The bridge is industrial archaeology in action. More should be made of it. Opening times should be chalked on the board that states the tides. Better still, the former practice of ringing a brass handbell to announce the bridge’s opening should be reintroduced.

I have a photograph of the bridgeman ringing the bell. Seen from a distance – say the bandstand down the harbour – the scurrying this used to prompt was a perfect LS Lowry image. Shame he didn’t capture it.

But I still wouldn’t have swapped it for my picture of the idle bridgeman, lounging at the bridgehouse door.