The bridge at Preston on the Weald Moors is a classic of the canal era. A stone, three centred arch, slightly skewed, supporting brick infill and spandrels. The spandrel walls were both tilted ad curved, creating a very stiff structure. The various records of the test do not describe the structure in detail which is quite hard to forgive. One reason for writing this is that “I was there” and I see a real need to put some stuff on record.
A meeting at the University of Bath, and a sunny day, provided me with the opportunity to cycle along the towpath from Bath Spa station. It looks a strange route but the towpath makes a gentle ride. Getting up the hill to the university at the end was more difficult. So what is special enough to warrant the effort? The first view isn’t much, though there are very few of those cast iron pillar cranes still complete. Clamber down the steps to the river level though and the impression is rather greater.
This bridge over the Cample water in Dumfriesshire is spectacular mainly for its three large skew spans. The bridge is skewed to accommodate a river. The road through the middle span barely qualifies as such and must have been little more than a track when the bridge was built.
This bridge was almost certainly designed by Robert Mylne. It is believed to have been built as a warm up for the main Castle Bridge in Warwick itself. It is an estate bridge of magnificent proportions, crossing the Stratford Avon.
I have already written about one bridge in this stretch of railway. Cowley Junction in Exeter was certainly built under the direction of William Froude and I suspect this one was too. Froude is best known, of course, for his work on scale modelling of ships. This is also the second very similar bridge I have looked at on this stretch. Merry Harriers and Duke Street Cullompton, only 3Km further north are essentially identical, including having been built up at one end to bring the road high enough to cross the adjacent motorway.
This one is all about a new bridge crossing the Okura River, north of Auckland. I have been working for some time with a group of precasters led by Duracrete and others in New Zealand, developing a cheap and effective arch bridge capable of challenging the very tight costs of bridge building over there. They call it Smart Arch.
I was taken to this bridge in Hodges Park while in New Zealand. The bridge itself is obviously quite small, but rather lovely. The whole thing seems to be dry stone. The nature of New Zealand weather means that this suffers regular and severe flooding but is still looking in good sound condition.
Here is an unusual bridge. There are vaulted bridges around the UK but this one is relatively flat. Luckily it only passes from one part of a garden to another. Since it is attached to a monastery I presume it was to allow the Monks to get from place to place without interacting with the public.
Here is an unusual bridge. There are vaulted bridges around the UK but this one is relatively flat. Luckily it only passes from one part of a garden to another. Since it is attached to a monastery I presume it was to allow the Monks to get from place to place without interacting with the public.
This doesn't actually look like much of a bridge. Two spans (really quite rare), skew (about 37º), cycle/foot path under this side, single track railway under the other.
Back to the Lake District and the Sedgwick Aqueduct (disused) on the Kendal Canal. There haveclearly been some changes here over the years. It is unlikely that the canal level has been raised but the aqueduct was probably built without a parapet.
This is a very ordinary little bridge in many senses, but it does raise some interesting issues and has at least one unusual feature. It is on St Mary’s Lane SW of the centre of Hertford. I have only three photos but they show a bridge that has a few distinct features.
This lovely little bridge was pointed out by my friend Meg Hill when I visited her. Natland is right beside Oxenholme in the Lake District. It crosses the river Kent in Hawes Wood.
While in Hereford a few years ago, I found time to look at and take photos of the mediaeval bridge. And when I look at that Googleplan view, the first thing I notice is that the bridge is skew, not severely so but enough to count as skew.
I don’t know Manchester well and 19/20 March 2014 was the first time I had wandered at will. Well, I say at will but there was some element of direction.
One of the big differences between bridges and buildings has always been the need to build a temporary bridge to carry the permanent one while it is built. These bridges must be fiercely engineered for economy, but they are rarely recorded and leave little in the way of archaeology. Luckily, the engineers were often rightly proud of their centring and there are a number of volumes containing etched images of drawings.
This is claimed to be the biggest brick viaduct in the world. No doubt there are many other claimants to that title but few can be so impressive. It is, after all, 78m high, 574m long and 26 million bricks. I have wanted to see it for years and thanks are due to Stephanie Franck of HTWK Leipzig for taking me. We even got a balloon ride to get an aerial photo.
The bridge has actually gone, of course, and there is no record in the test report of where it was. However, there are some photographs, some graphs and some error strewn reporting in BA16 and nearly 30 years down the line it is time the record was straightened out while there is still someone able to do it.
I was introduced to this by Brian Duguid. The old Central Station, sometime GMex is built on a field of vaults which stretch to the canal. One interesting feature is the turntable just below the main sweep of the lines. It was deemed too heavy for the vaults and has a solid pier beneath.
