Nobody knows how many bridges there are in Great Britain, although various estimates suggest that there could be more than 1,000,000 footbridges, packhorse bridges, river bridges, canal and road, rail and motorway overbridges and underbridges. Many of these are dull, insignificant or copies of standard designs used elsewhere, but there are still many bridges that are interesting in terms of their design, construction or location, or their connections with people or events of history, or simply for their heritage value.
Some of these bridges were described in the general books about British bridges that have been previously published. Unsurprisingly, however, there were many gaps. None of these earlier books, for example, described a single timber covered bridge, those romantic delights of the North American countryside where youngsters took advantage of the gloom to steal their first kisses. A few such British bridges are recorded in these pages. In addition, this book also includes examples of the many exciting new bridges that have been built since those earlier surveys were published.
The purpose of this book is to give some outline facts about as many interesting bridges and types of bridges as reasonably possible. I have also included a handful of seaside piers (effectively one-ended bridges), the structure of which is often similar to that of bridges. In order to keep the length of the book manageable, the entries on individual structures are therefore only short summaries, mostly of information taken from published sources. More information is usually available in these publications. For example, the Civil Engineering Heritage series of books gives additional technical details, Edwin Jervoise generally quotes the sources of historical information about the ancient bridges, de Maré provides many crisp architectural judgements, Wright has some matchless photographs and Wood often has interesting anecdotes about particular bridges. These, and the other writers to whom I refer, together provide a far wider perspective and greater expertise than I could ever encompass on my own. References to these publications are given at the end of each entry, with full details in the bibliography, so that the reader will know where to go to find out more. The sources have mostly been used many times, so the reference details are in abbreviated form, thus AB for Jervoise’s The Ancient Bridges of England and Wales series. A complete list of these abbreviations is given just before the beginning of the main entries. Where a source has information about a single bridge only, the reference gives the surname of the author (or first author), or short title if anonymous. Since I have made no judgements of my own about the value of the information given in these listed sources, there are occasions when they have no more than a few words about a bridge I have included.
About half the individual entries are accompanied by illustrations; any more would have made the book impractically long and expensive. Most of these are photographs (mainly colour) taken in the last few years, but I have also thought it interesting to include a few recent bridge paintings and drawings, as well as some older black and white photographs from early in the twentieth century and prints from the nineteenth century.
Entries in the ‘Bridge miscellany’ section, covering all sorts of different types of bridges, such as arch bridges, inhabited bridges and lifting bridges, are, like the individual bridge entries, also brief with some being necessarily somewhat superficial. Indeed, the subjects of some of the general entries (‘Aesthetics of bridges’, for example) have had complete books devoted to them. Since my own interest in bridges when I was a boy was sparked by the details of heroic tales of fighting to capture or defend bridges, and of how developing technology enabled greater spans to be constructed, I have included a general entry on bridge battles and a complete section on successive recordbreaking bridges.
There are a few points of clarification about the way in which the information in the book is presented. First, the individual bridge entry heading and the entry in the separate Geographic Index both identify the nearest place to each bridge as shown in the AA Road Atlas Britain. Second, all dimensions quoted are given using the system in force when the bridge was built – in other words Imperial units for up until the mid-1970s, when the construction industry went metric, and metric thereafter, with the longer measurements usually rounded to the nearest foot or metre. Third, the dates given for when the bridges were built are those when building work finished or the bridge was opened. Last, I have used the term ‘semi-elliptical’ for all bridge arches of a generally oval shape, even though most are actually three-centred arches, because it more easily brings the shape to mind.
There are 1,350 bridge entries in the main part of the book. Allowing for brief descriptions of predecessor bridges at some sites where relevant information is available and for the inclusion in one entry of other bridges in a single general location—for example, in great parks such as at Blenheim—the book covers more than 1,650 different structures altogether. This is more British bridges than in any publication since Jervoise’s four-volume series that appeared in the 1930s or in any single volume yet published.
Many other unusual structures or earlier masterpieces of the bridge-builder’s skill that should be noted in these pages may be described in books about obscure canals or railway branch lines of which I am unaware, or may lie unrecognised in some overgrown corner of a private park, or be known only to a few local engineers, archivists or walkers. As well as arguably leaving out bridges that should be included, I am bound to have made mistakes: bridges listed as still standing that have been long since demolished, and incorrect dates, numbers of spans and dimensions. I am also particularly aware that my attempts to list a variety of different bridge records may be incomplete. The publishers will be pleased to hear about omissions of substance or any errors so that these may be corrected in any further edition.
The remainder of this introductory section continues with a brief history of the development of the country’s transport infrastructure and an explanation of how bridges work. There then follow a glossary of technical terms and a list of abbreviations used in the book for references to other printed sources of information about individual bridges.
In the main section of the book the separate bridge entries are ordered alphabetically by the bridge name itself, where this is distinctive or well known, or by the name of the location in which the bridge stands.
The ‘Bridge miscellany’ contains 150 general entries about different types of bridges, such as Covered Bridges, or on such topics as Collapses and Failures of Bridges, and includes the names of representative bridges for which there are individual entries. The final main section is a summary of successive record-holding bridges in fifty different categories. The book ends with a select Bibliography, a Geographic Index in which the bridges are listed by county or unitary authority, then by the name of the town, city or village in which the bridge is located (this index also indicates those that are listed Grade I or A and that are, or have been, record holders) and a classified general index.
Since the first edition of this book was published I have come across many other interesting bridges of which I was previously unaware. My thanks are therefore due to those people who have told me about some of these and often provided additional information; their names have been added to those already listed in the Acknowledgements. As well as some corrections and amplifications to the original entries, this edition has 250 new bridge entries (some illustrated). These bring the total individual entries to 1,600. Allowing for entries that give details of predecessor bridges or several co-located bridges at one site, there is information describing more than 2,200 different structures. More than half the entries are for public road bridges, but analysis shows that, altogether, the numbers of different types and dates of bridge are as follows:
Furthermore, it is perhaps worth noting that roughly one in ten of all the bridges described in the book are bridges (either little known or recently built) that are not noted in any of the 267 bridge books and pamphlets listed in the enlarged Bibliography. In addition, this edition has twenty-four new miscellany entries and some previously un-illustrated entries now have pictures, so there are now about 900 illustrations. Also, in view of the increased interest in cycling and walking, the names are now given of more than 180 bridle paths, cycle ways and walking trails that cross or pass bridges described in the book.
Following their invasion of England in 43AD, the Romans quickly started building a strategic network of roads, much of it following earlier prehistoric trackways although greatly straightened and improved, which by 410AD may have amounted to more than 5,000 miles. As part of this network at least one hundred bridges were built where fording was impossible or unsafe. Most of these were probably simple timber beam structures supported on either timber bents or (more rarely) stone piers.
The Roman road system in England and Wales remained the basis of land communications throughout the Middle Ages, although most of the Roman bridges had disappeared. The Anglo-Saxons built several major bridges once trade started to flourish again after the end of the Roman occupation, but nothing of these now remains. Following the Norman invasion there was a great increase in castle and church building and the Church itself took on the responsibility for much of the bridgebuilding. Many other bridges were built by private charitable foundations, often funded by specially granted pontage rights. During this period, Magna Carta of 1215 formalised the general custom that the parishes in which the highways lay, and not the users of them, had to meet the costs of repairing and maintaining the roads and bridges. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the sixteenth century, the state of the roads worsened considerably and, in order to maintain trade activities, goods were often moved by trains of horses carrying loaded panniers, and some new packhorse bridges, not wide enough for carts, were built for them.
Stagecoaches were introduced into England in 1640 but their impact was greatly reduced by poor road conditions. It was not until after the first Turnpike Act was passed in 1663, and the first turnpike tollgate had been erected at Wadesmill in Hertfordshire in 1675, that efforts really started throughout Britain to make transport by stagecoach and horse and cart easier. In fact, 400 Road Acts were passed between 1700 and 1750, 1,600 between 1751 and 1790. These resulted in many new sections of turnpike road being built by local turnpike trusts and, although travellers had to pay tolls to use these roads, traffic quickly built up. In 1740, for example, there was just one stagecoach a day between London and Birmingham; within a quarter of a century there were thirty. As part of this construction work many old bridges were repaired or improved and new ones built and, by 1830, there were more than 20,000 miles of turnpike road. With the arrival of the railways, however, many of the turnpike trusts soon became bankrupt and after 1864 they were quickly handed over to local public authorities. In Scotland during this period, General Wade began the process of opening up the Highlands following the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, resulting in the construction of more than 1,000 miles of new road with associated bridges (although a century later these were described by Telford as ‘miserably constructed’).
Although the first canal was built in Exeter in 1566 and there was considerable improvement to river navigations in the period 1700–1760, the beginning of the Canal Age in Britain is usually deemed to be 1761 when the Bridgewater Canal was opened. Work continued on canal-building until about 1840, quickly falling off after the Railway Age started in 1825. The beginning of the Canal Age saw the emergence of the civil engineer, and James Brindley (1716–1772), who designed and supervised construction of the Bridgewater Canal, is sometimes referred to as the Father of Civil Engineering. At first the canals built by Brindley, John Smeaton (1724–1794) and their contemporaries were small-scale: the canals were generally dug along contour lines to avoid heavy engineering and the few locks were narrow. The bridges built to reconnect existing roads that had been sundered by the canal cut were small and simple brick or stone structures, in keeping with the landscape. However, the later canal builders, such as Thomas Telford (1757–1834) and John Rennie (1724–1794), were far bolder, their canals taking straighter courses and requiring substantial engineering works. Some of the major features of these later canals are the aqueducts, carrying the new waterways high over rivers and roads, and many of the canal bridges, too, were built in the then new material of cast iron, reflecting the country’s growing industrialism. Altogether, some 4,100 miles of canal were constructed during the Canal Age and about 2,200 miles of historic canals and waterways are still usable. The period from the beginning of the eighteenth century was also when great landowners took interest in landscaping their parkland estates in a natural manner, often including graceful bridges.
The first tramway in Britain was in use at the Wollaton coal pits in Nottinghamshire in about 1604, but the Railway Age in Britain did not begin until George Stephenson’s (1781–1848) Stockton & Darlington Railway opened in 1825. Despite the early days of operation being difficult, with unsatisfactory locomotives and poor quality track, by the time the Liverpool & Manchester Railway started running in 1830, investors had decided that railways were the future. Up until 1837 only thirty-four Railway Acts were passed, covering a total length of less than 1,000 miles, but during the Railway Mania days between 1844 and 1847 private companies were authorised by parliament to construct and operate about 9,500 miles of new railway lines (although more than a third of this authorised mileage was not built). Between 1830 and 1860 more than 30,000 railway bridges were built, with bigger spans and carrying greater loads than ever before. Some of the best known of these bridges and viaducts are described in this book.
Within fifty years of the opening of the first railway, most of the country’s main trunk lines and bridges had been built and the railway companies began progressively to construct cut-offs aimed at shortening their routes wherever possible by building a series of great bridges over the widest and most difficult rivers and estuaries that they had been unable to cross before. Completion of the Forth Bridge in Scotland in 1890 resulted in the exciting series of races over the 540-odd miles of track between London and Aberdeen. The apogee of the Railway Age, with about 23,000 route miles in operation, was reached in the early twentieth century.
The economic difficulties and lack of capital investment following the two world wars led to a considerable decline in work on railway infrastructure and, until the Channel Tunnel was built, opening in 1994, it seemed as though only the roads would benefit from future spending on transport systems. However, upgrading the West Coast Main Line and the start in 2009 of the Crossrail link under London is showing that exciting projects to improve and extend the railways are still possible. The existing rail network has just over 10,000 route miles.
The Motorway Age began in Britain in 1958 with the opening of the eight-mile Preston Bypass, now part of the M6. Although road engineers had forecast before the Second World War that the country would need about 2,800 miles of motorway to provide free-flowing road connections between most of the larger towns, governments continued to find it difficult to make the necessary investment in the country’s infrastructure, and it was not until 1972 that motorway mileage reached the 1,000-mile mark. There are now more than 2,200 route miles of trunk motorways and more than 9,000 motorway bridges. While the motorway network was being built, many non-motorway trunk and other roads were also considerably improved to handle increased traffic and higher maximum gross weights of lorries. The early motorway bridges on the London to Birmingham section of the M1, built in the late 1950s to designs by Sir Owen Williams, were heavily reinforced concrete structures in a kind of Egyptian style. Later, however, the greatly increased adoption of cable stay bridges and the introduction of high strength steel and of prestressed concrete allowed longer spans to be constructed and, as in the earlier Canal and Railway Ages, the face of the landscape was changed once more.
The next major development of the country’s transport infrastructure may have started with the opening in 2007 of the 108km-long dedicated high speed rail link from St Pancras station in London to the Channel Tunnel, now known as High Speed 1. Two bridges from this route are included in this book. Work has now started on a second 400kmph high-speed line that will run between London and Birmingham.
There are five different types of force that can affect a bridge and each of its constituent parts. These forces, shown in the accompanying diagram, are:
Compression – in which an axial load presses on a structural member
Tension – in which an axial load pulls on it
Torsion – in which it is subject to twisting along its longitudinal axis
Shear – in which two opposing forces, working like the blades of a pair of scissors, are cutting into the member
Bending – in which one side of the member is being compressed and the opposite side stretched
Forces on structures
There are five main types of bridge:
Beam bridge – this supports its load by its resistance to bending; in truss bridges the bending is resisted by tension and compression forces in a triangular framework
Cantilever bridge – this also supports its load by its resistance to bending
Arch bridge – this supports its load by its resistance to compression
Suspension bridge – here, the main columns are in compression and the suspension cables and hangers are in tension
Stay bridge – the main columns are also in compression and the diagonal stays are in tension
It should be noted that, except in beam bridges where the top part of the beam can form the traffic-bearing deck, in bridges that are principally arch, cable stay or suspension structures the deck itself will usually be a subsidiary structure of some kind, between support points provided by the main structure. On the Forth Bridge, for example, which is a huge cantilever bridge, this main cantilever framework supports an internal viaduct on which the trains run. Elsewhere, this viaduct would be a major beam type of structure in its own right.
Types of bridge