This bridge, over Pinhoe Road in Exeter carries the branch line from Exeter to Exmouth. The single track is slightly more skewed than he bridge itself. It illustrates the ability to measure such things as skew from publicly available data.

Pictures of this bridge were given to me some years ago and I couldn’t place them. (Shortly after this was published I received an email from Jose Martin Caro to say that the bridge is between Venta de Baños and Burgos in Spain.) The main reason for putting it here is the clues it gives to construction.

Several early railways to Kent run south east from near London Bridge Station on viaducts and the combined viaducts are beginning to spread. They are, of course, independent, though where they abut one another the construction may vary.

This month we will return to the Exe bridge as an example and think about the implications of pointed ribbed arches when it comes to assessment.

Leaths Bridge is just to the East of Castle Douglas in SW Scotland. Long disused, it used to carry the A745 over the railway but the railway was closed and the alignment taken over for realignment of the road. The bridge was left in a loop and totally neglected for many years.

Hubberholme is a joyous memory from student days, right at the top of Langstrothdale. It is famous for its church but for us, the bridge is more significant. This general style of construction is not particularly common.

Balcombe Viaduct on the London‐Brighton line is a magnificent structure, so much so that it shows clearly on Google satelite photographs and in streetview. That it is magnificent is enough to make it worth consideration, but there is room for a little more thought about what has been done here both in an engineering and an architectural sense.

Bridgemill no longer exists. It stood on the A77 near Girvan and was tested, notionally to destruction, in 1984. The test has been used as part of the justification for a number of non‐sensical statements about arch bridge behaviour.

Hawick, in the Scottish Borders, is a town of bridges. I passed through there on 20th June and found this interesting structure.

Brunel and his team of engineers built some amazing bridges. This one, though small is in a class of its own. The railway was originally single track, broad gauge. When widened, the only way was with a beam bridge.

This is a demolished bridge with some interesting features. It was located near Haxey in Lincolnshire, west of the Trent.

This bridge stood just off the A76 in Dumfries and Galloway. The G&SW was designed by John Millar. The railway was opened in stages around 1850 and this is in part of the last section. It was demolished some years ago and features here because that demolition was recorded and I have some photographs.

Large parts of this structure were demolished during the construction of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link or HS1 as it is now known. It isn’t often you get to see a bridge sectioned in this direction. The section shows a lot of the detail of construction of bridges in the high railway era.

Thomas Telford was responsible for many great bridges and Dean bridge is one of the most celebrated (though least seen). The bridge was built in 1833 and shows the progressive development of Telford’s bridges.

This bridge is a viaduct on the Glasgow and South West Railway. John Millar designed the whole line with much repetition of detail and general construction. For example, the rolled string course forming a colossal drip check is common to all the bridges.

This bridge is a small, but significant, part of a substantial viaduct. It displays some interesting features. It is a large span shew bridge, its width being considerably greater than its span. The bridge is also wider on the left hand (west) side than the right hand (east) side, forming a funnel shape in plan.

Here is one of the bravest designs I have yet seen. In Bethnal Green, a short walk east of the station is Morpeth St. The bridge has been refurbished but the road is now closed to traffic because vehicles kept driving into it. The bridge has a modest skew of about 30 but the most spectacular thing is the very flat arch.

I came across Pynes Bridge quite by accident. It is under the road and over a small river so it is hardly noticeable. These are some of the flattest parapets I have seen. A sign of a very robust bridge. The stone copings finish it well.

This skew bridge at Cowley Junction in Exeter has the distinction of having been designed by one William Froude. The reason for including a modest railway bridge here is that it tells us a great deal about what mid 19th century engineers thought about the way skew bridges worked.

The Exe bridge is a sad truncated thing compared with many of a similar age scattered around Britain, but it is at home and it does give the lie to the often heard statement that skew bridges were invented in the railway era.