I have recently added a couple of images of the bridge at the entrance to Port Pendennis Marina in Falmouth Harbour. The pictures were taken by my next door neighbours while they were on holiday in the area.

On July 9th I had to travel up to Shipley on family business – which only took half a day. I seized the opportunity to cycle about 6 miles of the Leeds and Liverpool towpath and photographed 9 bridges – Leeds and Liverpool bridge number 187-195. I noticed that the older bridges had a fairly limited bearing system using wheel type bearings operating direct onto the concrete surface of the swing area on a very narrow diameter.

Newer Bridges had a large radius rail and the bridges rested on a tapered bearing that ran along that track. Most of the bridges in this group were installed for farm accommodation purposes.


Checking the evidence

While preparing for this trip I spotted some narrows shown on the 1853 OS map, just to the west of the fixed road bridge over the canal in the centre of Silsden. The narrows appeared to be the abutments for a swing bridge although even in 1853 there was no bridge shown. Modern maps and satellite images showed that narrows still there. As I was visiting this section of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal I went to have a closer look. When I actually arrived at the site I could see that the narrows were actually built for an entirely different purpose. Vertical grooves cut in the face of the abutments show that the abutments were built to accept a stop gate – a device that isolated a section of canal from the rest and made it possible to drain that section to allow maintenance work, or to prevent more water being lost due to a breach in the canal bank.

This discovery shows the importance of site visits to study the evidence presented by other forms of research.

By the time this news item is posted on the website I will have fled the country – or to be more precise – the awful summer! I am off to spend 10 days in a remote cottage in the hills of central Portugal where the daily temperatures are around 27C, and the days sunny with gentle breezes. The only swing bridge I have found in Portugal is over the entrance to a marina in Lisbon that is often visible as the aircraft makes the final approach to the airport.

I have been able to add photographs of quite a few more bridges so far this year, and now have at least one image on the website of 674 bridges, out of 1,420. So I still need to photograph 46 more bridges to be halfway! I am beginning to think it would be more efficient to go full time in the caravan and just tour the length and breadth of the country for 6 months working my way through the photo list!

Have a great summer!

Caissons – to include or not?

A dictionary check shows that the word ‘caisson’ is an old French word meaning ‘box’. The word has several uses.

In some forms of interior decoration a caisson is a sunken panel in a door or ceiling. In military usage it refers to an ammunition box or a vehicle designed to carry ammunition. In relation to water it is applied to water tight boxes used for a variety of purposes. A caisson dam is used to create a working environment in which the caisson structure is sunk below water level and the water then pumped out so that workers can build structures that will eventually be underwater.

The Brunels used caissons to build the first tunnel under the Thames. Water was kept out by pumping air under high pressure into the sealed caisson. It was an extremely hazardous working environment and caused serious health problems for all who entered it.

In dockyards and waterways a caisson lock refers to a large sealed box that is designed to be sunk across a channel to hold water in or hold it back. It is a form of lock gate.

In Chatham Naval Dockyard there were several such caissons. There was a caisson across each of the 2 channels connecting the 3 basins, and each of the graving docks was sealed off by a caisson.

When empty of ballast the caissons float, and can be moved about comparatively easily. Once in position across the channel or dock entrance valves are opened to allow water into the ballast chamber and the caisson sinks to the bottom. As it sinks it forms a seal between the walls of the dock. When used to close off a dock water can then be pumped out of the dock to create a dry dock.

The later versions of the caissons at Chatham were fitted with air valves so that water could be forced out of the ballast chamber by pumping in air at 100psi. Once empty the caisson could be moved aside to allow ships to enter or leave the dock.

In Chatham Dockyard the 2 caissons across connecting channels, and those across graving docks connected to the basins, also carried roadways and railway tracks across the channels and docks. This did not apply to the caissons for the graving docks that connected to the river since the railway tracks ran along the dockside at the inner end of these docks.

My dilemma

When I began work on this history of movable bridges I spent some time trying to establish a definition of what I – and a handful of supporters – would count as a movable bridge. The definition that we eventually agreed on is –


I excluded lock gates, partly because the main purpose of a lock gate is to be a water barrier. Many lock gates do provide a walkway across the top – sometimes this walkway may have become a public right of way – but the lock gate is nonetheless designed mainly as a barrier to water movement.
There is also the problem of just how many lock gates there are on canals, managed rivers and in dockyards – there must be thousands. I had also dismissed caissons from the study on the same principle.

However, after talking to Chris Scott, Alan Rayner and Eric Cross – all former tradesmen at Chatham Dockyard and now volunteers with the Chatham Dockyard Historical Society – I am having doubts about the exclusion of caissons from my study.

The caissons in Chatham dockyard were designed primarily as water barriers, but they were also a planned and systematic part of the transport infrastructure within the dockyard, making it possible to move trains and heavier road vehicles around within the docks. The caissons were in effect semi-submersible movable structures.

If I decide to include the Chatham dockyard caissons as movable bridges then I also will have to search for and add many more around other dockyards – perhaps adding hundreds of new structures to the study.

If I decide not to include these and other caissons is my study truly comprehensive?

Alan and Chris have supplied me with a thick file of records of the caissons at Chatham, for which I am very appreciative. I will be taking a more detailed look at those notes in the near future so that I can write a more detailed account to include in a general description of the dockyard. In the meantime I will consider whether or not to include these and other caissons to my definition of a movable bridge.

Comments are always welcome!

My trip to Gloucester was hugely successful. My choice of caravan site – the Tudor Arms Caravan Park at Shepherd’s Patch near Slimbridge – was a great base for getting around to photograph bridges starting with Patch Bridge on the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal right outside the entrance to the caravan park!

I was able to work through about 150 documents during four days in the Waterways Archives and I owe a real big thank you to Archivist Caroline Jones for all her help and advice. Caroline’s knowledge of waterways is immense and her enthusiasm for preservation quite infectious. I have many pages of notes to work through and it will take me a substantial number of wet days and evenings to add all the information to the website.

The archives in Gloucester are part of three museums and archive collections operated by the Waterways Trust, a national charity established in 1999 to promote public enjoyment of our waterways. The Trust website – www.thewaterwaystrust.org.uk – is a comprehensive and informative website explaining the origins, aims and activities carried out by the Trust. The Trust holds around 5,000 items, about 40,000 documents and 80 historic boats, some of which are displayed at the Trust’s three sites at Gloucester Docks, Ellesmere Port and Stoke Bruerne.

The archives contain documents and records from the earliest canal companies through to modern British Waterways documents. With support from the Heritage Lottery Fund all these records have been catalogued and the website www.virtualwaterways.co.uk makes it possible to search the archives on-line 24 hours a day. Using the on-line catalogue I was able to pre-select over 140 documents that I wanted to study during my visit to Gloucester – which turned out to be a pretty good choice since I finished looking at the last of these with just 11 minutes to spare before the archive closing time on the Friday afternoon!

Another advantage of the on-line catalogue is that it does not just cover the three locations of records held by the Trust, but includes 12 other archives around the UK as well.

During the week I added a few more documents to my original list of 143 items, which Caroline fetched from the store room for me, but even so the 150 documents I studied barely scratches the surface of the total records available for study. I am just beginning to appreciate the dedication that other authors must have shown in researching for historical works!

During my week in Gloucestershire I also managed to photograph 46 movable bridges or locations where movable bridges were once sited. This included all the bridges I knew of on the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal and the Stroudwater Canal, some sites on the River Severn and one on the Herford and Gloucester Canal. I also spent a day in Bristol photographing bridges on the River Avon and around the harbour. I am now processing several hundred images and will shortly be adding selected images to the website.

While in the Bristol area I went to Avonmouth to investigate the swing bridge that once existed across Junction Cut in Avonmouth Docks. The docks are of course a restricted area, but the staff of the Port of Bristol Company were extremely helpful and enthusiastic about my project and provided background information and historical material. I was loaned 2 books from the company library and studying those has produced information about even more bridges in Bristol Harbour. A very big thank you to the staff at the Port offices for their welcome and support!

As a result of my research in the archives and follow-up work since my return I have added 27 more bridge locations to my database including ‘new’ locations on the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal (2), the Stroudwater Canal (3), and Bristol Harbour (2). So next time I manage to find some time to return to the archives for more research I will still have plenty of bridge locations to photograph in the area!

I had hoped that photographing between 40 and 50 locations in Gloucestershire would bring me close to having images of around half of the bridges recorded on the website, but photographing 46 locations and then adding 27 new reports means that as usual I have taken 2 steps forward and 1 step back!

It reminds of my passion for hill walking when my hips and knees were still up to steep ascents. We would be walking up a hillside and ahead we would see the summit, but as we reached what we thought was the summit we found that there was still another higher spot further on. When my total number of bridges in the database was at about 700 John was suggesting that we might make a total of 1,000 one day, with my latest additions we have now passed 1,400 – and I still have not investigated about 50 castles and fortifications – so 1,500 seems quite possible now!

Reading the history of Bristol and its Port I have learned that the River Frome once ran through the heart of the city and had a number of bridges over it. The river has now been buried beneath the city, as were so many of London’s minor rivers, but I have to wonder how many of those bridges may once have been small drawbridges!

On the 28th April I had to drive to Blyth near Worksop on some family business. This was soon dealt with so I took the opportunity to continue northwards to the Kirk Bramwith – Barnby Dun area, where I spent the rest of the day exploring the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation, the western end of the Stainforth and Keadby Canal and the whole length of the New Junction Canal.

By 4 p.m. – when aching legs and hunger drew me away -I had photographed 15 bridge locations. A number of these are places where swing bridges were removed in the latter part of the 20th century. I now have 150 photographs to process and select from – and I hope to have them all uploaded to the website by the end of the week.

At Barnby Dun and on the New Junction Canal some of the swing bridges have been replaced by large bascule bridges in what many regard as a ‘Dutch’ style. These bridges have huge slabs of counterweights and the whole of each steel structure is painted a dull grey. It struck me that in this rural location these modern bridges are a nasty blot on the landscape and far more intrusive on the skyline than the remaining swing bridges.

No doubt it would be argued that the lift bridges are more efficient and quicker to operate – but those who live in the houses adjacent to the lift bridges must find them a bit overpowering.

It has been a very busy winter and I have added a substantial number of ‘new’ bridges to the website – including 30 swing bridges on the Croydon Canal alone!

At 9 a.m. on February 18th Stuart Maconie – standing in for Ken Bruce in the mid-morning spot - asked Radio 2 listeners to tell him about challenges that they had set themselves. I quickly sent an email telling him about this website, and how the task I had set myself had grown far beyond my expectations. At 10.10 Stuart Maconie read out my email in full, including the name of the website.

During the remainder of that day we had over 400 new visitors to the site and by the end of the week over 600 new visitors. This generated a substantial number of new messages in the mailbox and a wealth of information which took me over 2 weeks to process.

I am grateful to Stuart Maconie for reading out my email, and to all those who then visited the website and submitted comments and information. The reaction of listeners was real evidence of the power of advertising!

We now have 1,380 bridges listed on the website – and I still have around 50 castles to investigate and some brand new movable bridges that are now in the planning stage. Combined with the odd new ‘find’ that crops up I would not be at all surprised to reach 1500 entries by the end of 2008.

A number of contributors have continued to submit photographs through the winter and I really do appreciate everyone’s support.

As well as pulling in some photoshoots of my own I am also now moving onto the next stage of the project – some original research. Since last summer I have built up a significant collection of books about waterways, including rivers and docks. Many of these have been purchased through e-bay and I have financed the collecting spree by selling all my dark room equipment in the same forum! I am currently working through the 1969 reprint by David and Charles of Priestley’s 1831 book ‘Navigable Rivers and Canals’. This will be followed with reading Bradshaw’s and Hadfield’s 20th century accounts of navigable waterways, before moving onto more detailed records of individual waterways.

This study will form a significant part of the descriptions of waterways that I intend to add to the website as background to the more specific studies of individual bridges.

In May I have booked to spend a week in Gloucestershire, with the intention of spending as many daytime hours as possible in the British Waterways Archives in Gloucester and the evenings photographing bridges around the area.

While I do expect to gain a lot of information from my time in the archives I will not be able to actually copy a lot of it to the website, due to the costs. Whilst it is possible to copy material in the archives there is a charge for doing so, and that does not include any fees for publishing the material – either in print or on the internet. This website is purely a hobby run entirely at my own expense, with John Hazell giving all his time and expertise for free and I cannot at present afford to start paying copyright fees. This does raise the question once again of sponsorship.

I am finally getting round to uploading the images from my trip to Sussex and Hampshire in October. I have now uploaded images of the remains of the Guthrie bridges at Fort Nelson (see under Palmerston Forts), Portchcester Castle, Eastbourne marina, Brighton Marina, more images of the retractable bridge at Littlehampton (River Arun) and the site of the drawbridge leading to The Island at Newhaven (Sussex Ouse).

I will shortly be uploading images of bridge sites on the Portsmouth and Arundel Canal and also Ford Rail Bridge.

On November 18th I made a trip to Lowestoft on a very stormy day. The A12 bascule is undergoing a £2.5 million refurbishment and this necessitated to closure of the bridge for a total of 5 weekends. Since this is a busy pedestrian route with no nearby alternative crossing the contractors constructed a temporary pedestrian swing bridge. Vehicle traffic was diverted over Mutford Bridge about a mile away. The weekend of the 18th was the fourth of five planned weekend closures for the bridge and so I went across to photograph the temporary bridge. Unfortunately a combination of an onshore near-gale and low tide meant that no boats ventured downstream to pass under the bridges while I was there. The images are now on the website – and a few images of the stormy sea are on my flickr website page.

With the poor winter light and short days I am unlikely to make any trips for photoshoots now until the spring, but I have been building up my collection of old books about canals, docks and waterways so I have plenty of reading to do on the long dark winter nights!

On 29th October OMEC Engineering Solutions Ltd., delivered the new deck for the Hirst Mill Swing Bridge (Bridge 207) on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The old bridge had become very difficult to move and then suffered a serious failure of the underframe prompting removal in July 2007. The bridge provides the only public right of way to a number of private residences and also to a garden centre, so its absence has caused considerable difficulties.

During the day the bridge was lowered into place and fastened to the abutments. The main contractors – Morrisons Construction - and British Waterways were hoping that fine tuning of the bridge would be complete by Wednesday.

I had made the journey north to Saltaire and was on site by 08.30 ready for the arrival of the bridge deck, and spent the day observing the fitting operation and talking to local residents. One of my images was used for its coverage of the event by the Bradford Telegraph and Argus – although it was attributed to John by the copy writer! I was also interviewed by the BTA for the video section of their website.

The BTA coverage can be found at http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk

I have uploaded a selection of the 90 photographs I took during the day!

I spent the previous week in Sussex and Hampshire researching and photographing bridges. This included visiting Fort Nelson, Portchester Castle, Littlehampton, Newhaven, Eastbourne and Brighton Marinas, and some of the sites on the Portsmouth and Arundel Canal and the Chichester Canal. I was given a guided tour of the two old canals by Adge Roberts of SIAS – (The Sussex Industrial and Archelogical Society.)

I have around 200 images to sort and select from so those and the results of other research whilst ‘down south’ will also be added over the next week or so.

After all my travels – only 10 days at home in October! – I intend to take a break for a while and try and consolidate things a little before Christmas.