The Iron Bridge

Background The Ironbridge Gorge was formed at the end of the last ice age by the overflowing of Lake Lapworth, which resulted in the exposure of useful deposits of resources such as coal, iron ore, fire clay and limestone near the surface where they were readily mined. With the river providing a means of transport, the local area was an important centre of the emerging Industrial Revolution. Abraham Darby I first smelted local iron ore with coke made from Coalbrookdale coal in 1709, and in the coming decades Shropshire became a centre for industry due to the low price of fuel from local mines. The River Severn was used as a key trading route, but it was also a barrier to travel around the deep Ironbridge Gorge, especially between the then important industrial parishes of Broseley and Madeley, the nearest bridge being at Buildwas away. The Iron Bridge was therefore proposed to link the industrial town of Broseley with the smaller mining town of Madeley and the industrial centre of Coalbrookdale. The use of the river by boat traffic and the steep sides of the gorge meant that any bridge should ideally be of a single span, and sufficiently high to allow tall ships to pass underneath. The steepness and instability of the banks was problematic for building a bridge, and there was no point where roads on opposite sides of the river converged. The Iron Bridge was the first of its kind to be constructed, although not the first to be considered nor the first iron bridge of any kind. An iron bridge was partly constructed at Lyon in 1755, but was abandoned for reasons of cost, and a wrought iron footbridge over an ornamental waterway was erected in Kirklees, Yorkshire, in 1769. Proposal In 1773, architect Thomas Farnolls Pritchard wrote to his 'iron mad' friend and local ironmaster, John Wilkinson of Broseley, to suggest building a bridge out of cast iron. Although he specialised in the design of chimneypieces and other items of interior decoration, and in funerary monuments, he had also previously designed both wooden and stone bridges. During the winter of 1773–74, local newspapers advertised a proposal to petition Parliament for leave to construct an iron bridge with a single span. In 1775, a subscription raised funds of between £3,000 and £4,000 (equivalent to £ to £ in 2016), and Abraham Darby III, the grandson of Abraham Darby I and an ironmaster working at Coalbrookdale, was appointed treasurer to the project. In March 1776, the '''''' (16 Geo. 3. c. 17) giving authorisation to build a bridge received royal assent. It had been drafted by Thomas Addenbrooke, secretary of the trustees, and John Harries, a London barrister, then presented to the House of Commons by Charles Baldwyn, MP for Shropshire. Abraham Darby III was commissioned to cast and build the bridge. In May 1776, the trustees withdrew Darby's commission, and instead advertised for plans for a single arch bridge to be built in "stone, brick or timber". No satisfactory proposal was made, and the trustees agreed to proceed with Pritchard's design, but there was continued uncertainty about the use of iron, and conditions were set on the cost and duration of the construction. ==Construction==

The site, adjacent to where a ferry had run between Madeley and Benthall, was chosen for its high approaches on each side and the relative solidity of the ground. Pritchard died on 21 December 1777 in his towerhouse at Eyton on Severn, only a month after work had begun, having been ill for over a year. The bridge is built from five sectional cast-iron ribs that give a span of . Components were cast individually to fit with each other, rather than being of standard sizes, with discrepancies of up to several centimetres between 'identical' components in different locations. The masonry and abutments were constructed between 1777 and 1778, and the ribs were lifted into place in the summer of 1779. The bridge first spanned the river on 2 July 1779, and it was opened to traffic on 1 January 1781. In 1997, a watercolour by Elias Martin was discovered in a Stockholm museum, which showed the bridge under construction in 1779. Design The bridge is to a carpenters' design typically used for wood structures, built from five sectional cast-iron ribs that give a span of . Components were cast individually to fit with each other, rather than being of standard sizes, with discrepancies of up to several centimetres between 'identical' components in different locations. A foreman at the foundry, Thomas Gregory, drew the detailed designs for the members, resulting in the use of carpentry jointing details such as mortise and tenon joints and dovetails. Material The Iron Bridge is made of cast iron. This is immensely strong in compression, but performs less well than steel and wrought iron when subjected to tension or bending moments, because of its brittleness and lower tensile strength. Analysis of an arch and a strut from the Iron Bridge revealed the following elemental compositions: Puddled wrought iron was a much better structural material than cast iron but not widely available until after 1800, eventually becoming the preferred material for bridges, rails, ships and buildings until new steel making processes such as the Bessemer process were developed in the late 19th century. Cost Darby had agreed to construct the bridge with a budget of £3,250 (equivalent to £426,353 in 2023) and this was raised by subscribers to the project, mostly from Broseley. While the actual cost of the bridge is unknown, contemporary records suggest it was as high as £6,000 (£787,113 in 2023), and Darby, who was already indebted from other ventures, agreed to cover the excess. However, by the mid-1790s the bridge was highly profitable, and tolls were giving the shareholders an annual dividend of 8 per cent. ==Later history==

The opening of the bridge resulted in changes in the pattern of settlement in the gorge, and roads around the bridge were improved in the years after its construction. The town of Ironbridge, taking its name from the bridge, developed at the northern end. It was suspected that the sides of the gorge were moving towards the river, forcing the feet of the arch towards each other, and consequently repairs were carried out in 1784, 1791 and 1792. In 1800 the trustees commissioned repairs which lasted for several years, which involved the replacement of the stone land arches with wooden ones to relieve pressure on the main span. Closure to vehicles A 1923 report by engineering consultants Mott, Hay and Anderson suggested that other than the paintwork, the main span of the bridge was in good condition. It was suggested that the metal deck of the bridge was dangerously heavy, and that after removing the dead weight the bridge should be reopened to vehicles no heavier than 2 tons and restricted to the centre of the roadway. A weight limit of 4 tons was imposed, but the housing boom of the 1930s meant that drivers distributing tiles produced at Jackfield were insistent that they should be allowed to use the bridge, so the trustees took the decision to close it to vehicular traffic with effect from 18 June 1934. The tolls collected only marginally covered the cost of collection, leaving no budget for conservation, and the bridge had not been cleaned or painted for many years. Restoration With funding from Shropshire County Council, the Historic Buildings Council for England, and the nascent Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, a programme of repairs took place on the foundations of the bridge at a cost of £147,000 between 1972 and 1975. The consulting engineers Sandford, Fawcett, Wilton and Bell decided to place a ferro-concrete inverted arch under the river to counter inward movement of the bridge abutments. The arch was built by the Tarmac Construction Company, starting in the spring of 1973, but unusually high summer floods washed over the cofferdam, frustrating hopes that the work could be done in a single summer. Filling material was removed from the south abutment to reduce its weight, and the arch through it was reinforced with concrete. The road surface was replaced with a lighter tarmac, the stone of the abutments was renewed and the toll-house was restored as an information centre. In 1980, the structure was painted for the first time in the 20th century, and the work was complete for the bicentenary of the opening, which was celebrated on 1 January 1981. Between 1999 and 2000, the bridge was scaffolded to allow examination by English Heritage. The bridge was also repainted and minor repairs were carried out. In January 2017 English Heritage announced a £1.2 million restoration project on the Iron Bridge, starting in September 2017, the "biggest ever conservation project" undertaken by English Heritage. The cost was quoted in 2018 at £3.6 million, with English Heritage describing it as "an ambitious conservation of its ribs and arches, its stonework and decking." The project was created after extensive surveys of the area revealed that the historic structure was under threat due to stresses in the ironwork dating from the original construction, ground movement over the centuries, and an earthquake in the 19th century. Apart from the structural restoration, the bridge was also reverted from blue-grey to its original red-brown colour after forensic analysis revealed this was how the bridge looked when it was first erected. The project was partly funded through the use of crowdfunding in which £47,545 was raised. It also received a €1,000,000 donation from the Hermann Reemtsma Foundation, a German foundation which mainly promotes cultural and social projects in northern Germany. This would also be the foundation's first funding in the United Kingdom. Following the works the bridge was reopened on 6 December 2018. Recognition The bridge, the adjacent settlement of Ironbridge and the Ironbridge Gorge form the UNESCO Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site, which was created in 1986. In 2020 the conservation and restoration work on the bridge was honoured in the European Heritage Awards/Europa Nostra Awards, which includes up to 30 of the most outstanding heritage projects from all parts of Europe within the EU and EEA. ==Influence on bridge design==

The bridge, as the first bridge of significant size built of metal, had "considerable influence on developments in the fields of technology and architecture". The successful use of cast iron in 1781 pioneered the choice of that material for many subsequent bridges, and cast iron arches of considerable span were constructed late in the 18th and early in the 19th century. • In 1786, the revolutionary author and polymath Thomas Paine had models built to demonstrate the use of cast iron for bridges, and promoted these to the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and to the Royal Society in England. He went on to have manufactured and erected "a complete rib of 90 feet span, and 5 feet of height from the chord line to the of the arch", weighing three tons. This was followed by a complete bridge of five ribs and span which he had erected in a field in Paddington, but without buttresses it was merely for display and was dismantled after a year. • In 1793–96, the Wearmouth Bridge was built with a span of , constructed from cast iron in the form of cast voussoirs, somewhat like the voussoirs of a masonry bridge. The bridge used some of the iron from Paine's bridge, which had been returned to the foundry in Rotherham. • In 1795, a large flood in the Severn swept away all the bridges in the vicinity, except the Iron Bridge, where the open structure allowed the floodwaters to pass through. Thomas Telford was Surveyor of Public Works in Shropshire at the time. His design for the replacement bridge at Buildwas incorporated a high arch like the Iron Bridge, but it had a span wider and used less than half the amount of iron. Telford went on to design a series of cast iron bridges, the oldest of which to survive is the Craigellachie Bridge. • In 1799, the Coalport Bridge was rebuilt after the flood as a single span with three cast iron ribs. This 1799 version was re-modelled in 1818 with two additional ribs, and survives to the present day. ==Artistic depictions==

1780 painting, which was commissioned by Abraham Darby III. An engraving by Michael Angelo Rooker proved popular, and a copy was purchased by Thomas Jefferson where it was displayed in the dining room of Monticello. In 1979, the Royal Academy of Arts held an exhibition entitled "A View from the Iron Bridge" to commemorate the bicentenary of the bridge. == See also ==