Welsh Bridges: 22. Cwmcoch Footbrige, River Wye

This is the next crossing of the River Wye upstream from  the Cwmbach Footbridge discussed in my previous post.

It was built in 1967 by N.R. Hope of Newbridge-on-Wye, a "swing" suspension bridge of total length around 53m. A wooden beam bridge had previously spanned the river here, before being destroyed in the 1960 floods.

If you were unaware that this bridge existed, you would never look for it. I parked in the entrance to a farm track (although I can't recommend this) on the A470, and walked downhill. There is also space to park on the minor road on the opposite side of the river.

And indeed ... there was no bridge to find. At least, not one that you can still cross.

Powys County Council have no record of the bridge, suggesting this may have been a private bridge as there is no recorded public right of way.

However, Alan Crow's book Bridges on the River Wye, indicates that the bridge was built by the council, after an application to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries for a grant to build a vehicular bridge was rejected.

Considering that the remains of the bridge are still visible, attached to the western abutment, I guess that this bridge may have been destroyed in the floods of February 2020.

Peering closely at the debris of the bridge, it can be seen that there was a timber walkway, three planks wide, supported on timber cross-members. Below these are a set of six parallel wires, an arrangement similar to the Invermark Footbridge in Scotland. The remains of suspension towers and cables are also just about visible.

I have included a picture of this bridge from Crow's book, to show it as it once was.

Further information:

• Google maps
• Bridges on the River Wye, Alan Crow, 1995

Welsh Bridges: 21. Cwmbach Footbridge, River Wye

Back in August 2021 (yes, time has been moving slowly here at Pontist Towers), I had the chance to look for three interesting footbridges along the River Wye in Powys. I had discovered all three in Alan Crow's excellent 1995 book Bridges on the River Wye.

Unfortunately, my search was less successful than I had hoped!

To reach the first of these spans, I parked in a layby on the A470 (see Google Maps link below), then crossed the road and headed downhill towards the river. Slightly further south, a public right of way is marked on the OS map, but no bridge is shown.

Crow's book records that a "swing" bridge was built here in 1962, to replace a structure that had been destroyed by a flood in 1960. This is the term "swing" bridge in its colloquial sense, referring to a slightly unstable suspension bridge. It was demolished in 1991 on safety grounds, and a new bridge was installed in August 1994 by Tysons plc, of Liverpool.

This was the bridge I had come to see: an arched beam bridge constructed in laminated timber, described by Crow as "one of the most attractive small bridges on the River Wye".

Sadly, there was no bridge to be found. If you look very closely at my main photo, perhaps you can spot the abutments.

The concrete abutments are still there, as are the remnants of steel hinges attached to them. Originally, there was third hinge at the crown of the arch as well.

It's an attractive river setting, and it was disappointing there was no bridge.

Powys County Council have told me that the bridge was removed for safety reasons in 2013, "as it had reached the end of its working life". There are no plans to replace it. I imagine the public right of way saw very little use before anyway.

Since there was little else to see here, I have included an image from Alan Crow's book showing the previous bridges.

Further information:

• Google maps
• Bridges on the River Wye, Alan Crow, 1995

Scottish Bridges: 53. Loups Bridge

Loups Bridge is another of John Justice Jr's structures. We'd been to his other bridges at Crathie, Kirkton of Glenisla, and Haugh of Drimmie, and Loups Bridge completes the set: the only other Justice bridge known to survive.

Loups Bridge spans the River North Esk not far from Edzell. I guess it is named for the waterfall which cuts through a rocky channel just below it, "loups" referring to a salmon leap.

The bridge is on private land, and I'm not clear whether normal Scottish rights of access to walk across the land apply, as it is in the grounds of a partially residential building. The Happy Pontist had obtained permission from the landowner to visit the bridge on this occasion.

The bridge has two spans, supported by a masonry pier at its centre. The RCAHMS website lists the spans as 9m and 10m, but also states 15m and 17.4m, while Ruddock's paper lists two equal 36 foot spans. I don't know which is right.

The bridge is Listed Grade B, and seems of considerable historic importance as a rare example of the Justice family's work, and also as one of the earliest surviving stayed bridges in the UK. Its exact date of construction is unknown. It may possibly pre-date the stayed footbridge at Kirkton of Glenisla, which was built in 1824, or the Haugh of Drimmie bridge from 1823.

Unlike the other Justice bridges that we visited, Loups Bridge is derelict. Very little of it remains, and it would be foolhardy to try and walk across it. It is more than a ghost of a bridge, but only barely so.

From what can be seen, it's clear that the bridge's skeleton must have been exceptionally slender even by the standards of other Justice spans. The stay rods and cross-members are tiny in cross-section, and the odd arched pylons above the pier are not made out of anything more substantial. There are two wire-like stringers which must once have been below a timber deck, and I would guess there were once longitudinal edge members providing tension ties to the inclined stays. Most of what now remains would once have formed the wire-fence balustrades.

It would make for a very interesting restoration project, but I suspect this bridge is well past the point where it can be repaired.

Further information:

• Google maps / Bing maps
• RCAHMS
• British Listed Buildings
• Aberdeenshire SMR
• Some iron suspension bridges in Scotland 1816-1834 and their origins (Ruddock, The Structural Engineer, 2003)

Scottish Bridges: 45. Abergeldie Castle Bridge

This was once a very fine suspension footbridge in the classic style (as can be seen in an old photo), with similarities to the two Abernethy spans covered in the previous two posts. This one was designed by Blaikie Bros and built in 1885, and always lacked one significant design feature present in the Abernethy structures: stiffening deck trusses.

There are not many suspension footbridges left in the UK without such stiffening. John Hume’s classic paper on Scottish suspension bridges included a gazetteer of every such bridge known to the author, right up to and including the Forth Road Bridge. He identified a total of 14 unstiffened suspension footbridges in Scotland. I think the only one I’ve previously walked upon in Britain is the Sapper’s Bridge at Betws-y-Coed.

The stiffening truss normally also doubles as the bridge’s parapet, and as well as rendering the vertical deflection of the bridge less disconcerting for its users, it also helps to evenly distribute loads amongst the hangers and reduces the likelihood of damage to the structure.

A contemporary drawing of the bridge included in Civil Engineering Heritage shows the bridge as having two layers of suspension cables, one passing from the top of the tower to the top of the parapet at midspan, and a second passing from mid-way up the tower to the deck at midspan. Both cables are still present, and this is a very unusual feature of this bridge, one I can't immediately recall seeing anywhere else.

I don’t know whether the Abergeldie Castle bridge became derelict because of damage caused by the bridge’s users, or because the footpath became redundant leading to no maintenance, or a combination of the two. Today, it is a bridge to nowhere, for nobody. Gates discourage anyone from setting foot on the ruinous main span, but it’s straightforward to clamber around and stand on the tattered remnants of the deck. I wouldn’t recommend it, though, and the thought of falling onto scraps of rusty metal ought to deter most people from going anywhere near it.

Having degraded to its current parlous and perilous state, I’m unsure whether the bridge is in a process of gradual decline, or has reached a point of temporary if precarious stability. It is a protected Listed Building, but is on the Buildings at Risk Register. I imagine there’s no continuing need for it to be refurbished and can’t believe the cost of doing so could be justified. I’d be astonished if the deck is still there in ten year’s time, so if, like me, you have a soft spot for derelict bridges, I suggest you visit it while you still can.

Further information:

• Google maps / Bing maps
• British Listed Buildings
• RCAHMS
• Scottish Highland Bridges
• Aberdeenshire SMR
• Bridgemeister
• Scottish Suspension Bridges (Hume, Scottish Archaeological Forum Vol. 7, 1977)
• Highland Bridges (Nelson, 1990)
• Civil Engineering Heritage: Scotland Highlands and Islands (Paxton and Shipway, 2007)

Merseyside Bridges: 10. Warrington Transporter Bridge

The last two posts were a bit of a diversion from Merseyside, not being very near the River Mersey for a start. This time, it's back to the River, although whether Warrington is part of Merseyside is perhaps a moot point.

There are plenty of bridges in Warrington, but I only had time to visit two.

The Transporter Bridge at Warrington was something of a must-see. It's one of only three surviving transporter bridges in Britain, although sadly it's by far the most neglected of the trio. It has been a presence on English Heritage's "At Risk" register for some years now, I believe.

It was originally built to service the Crosfield chemical and soap works. A railway siding to the east ended at the river bank, but wagons were transferred onto the transporter carriage and brought over the river. The rail tracks, long since disused, still run through an adjacent site. Today the site of the soap works is occupied by chemical firm Ineos Silicas, and the bridge hasn't been used since the 1960s, becoming increasingly derelict has the years have passed. Today, the bridge is maintained by Warrington Borough Council, but as it serves no practical use, it has not been well looked after.

It's also a pretty tough bridge to get to. The west abutment, within the Crosfield site, is only accessible with special permission. The east abutment involves negotiating a convoluted route through the grounds of an industrial works, or, as I did, approaching via an overgrown and somewhat forlorn pathway. The combination of lack of use and difficult access mean that any attempt to preserve the bridge for much longer may be essentially futile. I can't see how it can survive in this situation, and if it were to be relocated, that would sever the link with its historic context.

The photos make clear that this was never a pretty bridge, certainly not by comparison with its fellow transporter bridges at Newport and Middlesbrough. Its portal truss form is squat and inert, and if the latticed metalwork holds any visual attraction, it's surely only for the most committed industrial archaeologists or those besotted with the romance of dereliction.

So, it sits there and rusts. Some indication of quite how decrepit the bridge is can be gleaned from two websites with photos from unauthorised visits.

The gondola can be seen in the last photo, on the west bank, and it's still just about possible to close your eyes and imagine how it might have looked while still in active use.

Unless someone has the appetite for something radical, such as relocation, I would expect the bridge to be fenced off as dangerous within half-a-dozen years, and gone within the next decade or two.

Further information:

• Google maps / Bing maps
• Wikipedia
• Structurae
• Engineering Timelines
• Our Transport Heritage
• Friends of Warrington Transporter Bridge

Scottish Bridges: 1. The Shakkin' Briggie

I recently made a trip up and down the east coast of Scotland, and while looking for bridges was far from the purpose of the journey, I did visit one or two along the way.

These weren't necessarily spectacular structures in any way, indeed several were in varying states of dilapidation ranging from "senior citizen" to "six feet under". But they all had enough of interest to merit including them here.

The first bridge of interest was Aberdeen's Shakkin' Briggie, also called St Devenick's or Morison's Bridge. Built in 1837 on behalf of a local churchman, the bridge was designed by Aberdeen's city architect John Smith, who had worked six years previously with Captain Samuel Brown to design the Wellington Suspension Bridge, also in Aberdeen. The image on the right (courtesy of RCAHMS and dating from the mid-1970s; all B&W images are from the same source; all colour images are mine) shows the bridge a few decades ago and gives a fair idea of its original appearance.

The 55m span suspension footbridge originally provided access across the River Dee for over 700 churchgoers, and got its nickname from its somewhat flexible unstiffened deck.

The bridge was damaged several times by flooding, and affected by changes in the river channel, with its southern spans destroyed in 1955. In 1971, it was declared a Listed Building, but this offered it little protection as in 1984 it had deteriorated so badly that all the decking was removed. The image below right is from the mid-70s while it was in poor condition but still largely intact.

Its twin problems were that nobody knew who actually owned it, and that it was no longer part of a significant footpath route.


Today, it's a sad sight. As is often the case with historic bridges, it has been allowed to fall into ruin over the years to the extent that is probably now beyond repair.

Its Doric-style cast iron columns are heavily rust spotted, while the iron bar main cables and hangers are sufficiently rusty that it's surprising they haven't fallen into the river. Transoms connecting the hangers might suggest an unusual way across for an enterprising trapeze artist, at best.

There seems no hope of resuscitation from its current comatose state, but this elderly patient still endures. It sits silently, an accusation against municipal penny-pinching and lack of foresight. At any point, it could have been saved for the cost of medicinal repair far less than would now be required to give it renewed life.

If this were a ruined stately home, it would be given protection and funding by a body like Historic Scotland. Its Listed status might actually offer it some assistance. But the vision needed to create new riverside paths that might justify funding for refurbishment seems to have remained absent for a quarter of a century now.

It's hard not to assume that within the next quarter century, much of what now remains will end up at the bottom of the river.

Further information:

• Location on Google maps
• Page at Bridgemeister
• Page at Wikipedia
• Page at Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (lots of historical images and drawings of the bridge)
• Aberdeen City Council report on possible restoration [PDF]
• Scotsman article on possible restoration