network card bridging failing on wheezy

[Gary Dale <garydale@torfree.net>]

For some reason my network card bridging has failed after working 
properly for many years.

My /etc/network/interfaces is:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet manual
auto br0
iface br0 inet static
        address 192.168.1.14
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        broadcast 192.168.1.255
        gateway 192.168.1.1
        bridge_ports eth0
        bridge_stp off
        bridge_fd 0
        bridge_maxwait 0

From a fresh boot, I get nothing running. If I bring up br0 (ifconfig 
br0 up), it comes up with 192.168.122.1 whether I do it with eth0 up or 
down. Bringing up eth0 seems to produce the correct results - a network 
interface with no IP, same as it always did.

Bringing up br0 with the 192.168.1.14 address leaves me with a machine 
that can't connect or be connected to. However, if I drop br0 and bring 
up eth0 with the address, things work, apart from the lack of a gateway.

I can manually add a default gateway to the route. While this works, 
running the route command takes a long time to come back with the 
results. However my computer now connects and can be connected to.

Unfortunately I can't run virtual machines without the bridging (why I 
was using it in the first place).

Any thoughts anyone?