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One of Shrewsbury’s greatest features is the river, so what do you know about its bridges? Well, you can probably guess which used to be called ‘The Penny Bridge’, but do you know where a bi-plane once fly under (no kidding!), and which bridge bears a link with the one at Victoria Falls? Just some of the things I found out during a dig into the history of the town’s bridges….

Castle Footbridge
First on an A-Z list is the Castle Walk footbridge, which opened on 7th November 1910. It cost £1300 and replaced a ferry that had run on the site from 1882. Sad that it replaced a ferry, which would be attractive to many of us today. Indeed, there used to be two other ferries in town (more about them later), as well as one downstream, that linked Monkmoor with Uffington. As well as a way for people to cross the ferries also enabled horses, that pulled barges along the Severn between 1810-70, to cross when the towpath changed from one side to the other.

The Castlefields bridge was opened by the mayor, Benjamin Blower, and as part of the same ceremony his wife then ‘flicked the switch’ which led to introduction of electric lights along Castle Walk. In his speech Mr Blower described the bridge as ‘picturesque’, ‘an ornament as well as a public utility’, and said it would ‘serve the moral and social objective of bringing people together from Castlefields and Underdale.’ You can think about that the next time you are crossing it!

But in 1951 what had been a suspension bridge was replaced by what stands there today – a ‘pre-stressed and tensioned reinforced concrete structure’ (as the experts apparently describe it!), which was the first of its kind in the UK. Enough said.

English Bridge
And what about Shrewsbury’s greatest landmark, the English Bridge? Well, there has been a bridge here - in fact TWO - since the height of the Abbey’s days, in the eleventh century. First there was the ‘Stone Bridge’, with its drawbridge and portcullis. It was also called ‘East Bridge’ because it was on that side of town, and had six arches that spanned from the town to Coleham Head, which was then an island (with Meole Brook entering the river at two places). And then there was the ‘Abbey Bridge,’ which had a further 11 arches stretching towards the Abbey.

What became known as the ‘English Bridge’ was built much later, during the 1760s and 1770s, under the design of a Shrewsbury-born architect, John Gwyn. (The short Longden Coleham Bridge was built around the same time out of Grinshill Stone, and cost £450.) But the local man’s work was not a great success – construction costs doubled from the £6,000 originally estimated and people were soon expressing dissatisfaction with the bridge’s narrowness and its steep gradient. (Gywn had his later bridges in Worcester and Oxford built flatter and wider.)

As a result the English Bridge was completely re-built. First in the 1830s when Thomas Telford re-routed the traffic around the Abbey, and again in 1926-27, at a cost of £87,000, when the centre of the bridge was lowered and doubled in width.

It’s not just during our lifetime that the town has known floods and droughts. In 1578 the river was so dry that a horse fair was held in its middle ‘as never before seen.’ Severe floods occurred in both 1740 and 1795, during which several houses were completely swept away. And in 1634 ice floated down the river and damaged Coleham wall.

Frankwell Footbridge
The newest of the town’s bridges, and another of the most regularly used, is Frankwell footbridge, that connects the Frankwell Car Park and the Riverside Shopping Centre. It was opened on 5th July 1979. It’s also the town’s bounciest. If a couple of heavier people are walking across the rest of the shoppers quickly feel giddy and can be seen to clutch the railings for safety!

Greyfriars Bridge
There is not much to be said about Greyfriars Bridge, that provides a handy 150 feet wide crossing between St Julian’s Friars and Coleham. It was built in 1879 by a firm called Cochrane Engineers, from Dudley, and opened on 1st January 1880.

Kingsland Toll Bridge
Yes, you guessed it, the Kingsland Bridge, which opened on 30th July 1892, was originally known as ‘Penny Bridge’, for that is the fare that everyone paid to get across. It’s also the bridge that bears the town’s link with Victoria Falls, for its builders, the Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Corporation, from Darlington, were also involved in building the bridge that links Zimbabwe with Zambia – and I bet at least a dozen of you have crossed this infamous landmark.

Research suggests Kingsland Bridge’s construction was linked to Shrewsbury School’s move from the town centre up onto Kingsland (an event marked by a two-day cricket match between the school and the MCC). Whatever the reason, its opening led to the demise of another of the town’s former ferries, this time one that crossed from The Quarry to what is now the school’s boathouse.

In its first year nearly 3,000 four-wheeled coaches and 3,300 two-wheeled ones, along with 203 horses, 45 smaller animals and 101,000 pedestrians, all crossed the bridge. Pretty heavy usage, so the £11,000 that it had cost to build probably seemed like a good investment. From its opening the largest coaches paid 6d to cross (today cars pay 20p), and there was a sliding scale down to 1d for anyone with two legs, whether pedestrians or coach passengers. On the day after it opened however, boys from Shrewsbury School were allowed to cross free of charge.

In addition to its toll, Kingsland Bridge also has two other unique attributes. Those of you who have witnessed some of the town’s epic floods will recall how the bridge becomes the town’s only way in and out for motorists. And one or two older readers may remember or have heard stories about an occasion in 1918 when, to the applause of a large crowd that had assembled, a bi-plane flew UNDERNEATH the bridge – several times! What a site that would have been!!

Porthill Bridge
Another traditional suspension bridge (that now has steel cables rather than its original chains) is Porthill Bridge, next to the Boathouse Pub, on New Street, which links the Quarry with Copthorne and Porthill.

The town’s Mayor, Thomas Page, opened the bridge on 18th January 1923. It cost of £2,680 to build – £2000 of this was a gift from the Horticultural Society, with Shrewsbury School providing some of the necessary land. At the bridge’s opening the former proprietor of the ferry, Mr F W Finch, made a last trip across the river. Half way across he smashed a bottle to mark the end of the ferry – one that had operated on the site for the last 300 years.

Railway Bridge
Maybe one or two railway enthusiasts can write in with information about the Railway Bridge, since I have not found out many details about this one either. Suffice to say that it was built under the direction of Robert Stephenson (one of the last projects of his career) and opened in 1848, the year that the Shrewsbury to Birmingham Railway line opened. Since then of course, to accommodate more railway lines above, it has been progressively modified, and a second bridge has been built adjacent to it.

Welsh Bridge
Last but not least is the bridge that, way back in the twelfth-century, used to cross upstream from the current one, from the Council house to the bottom of Mardol, and was called St George’s Bridge.

The bridge is widely known for two major historical events. First, it was to here, after the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, that the Welsh rebel Owain Glyndwr came, and ransacked Frankwell. And secondly, Henry Tudor marched over the bridge in 1485 (later staying somewhere off Wyle Cop) in order to meet Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field.

Today’s much later, re-located and re-named ‘Welsh Bridge’ (famously painted by William Turner) dates from 1795. It was built on a site that was disapproved of by Thomas Telford when he was the county’s surveyor. And he was found to be right when years later the power of river’s flow started to erode the bridge’s foundation. But in 1833 the foundations were made more secure and the problem was resolved … these days the only problem seems to be the height of some of the recent floods, which have come to within feet of the arches’ top.

Pictures are from the County Council’s Records and Research Service. Sources for the text include ‘The River Bridges of Shrewsbury’, by P A Hutchinson.
 

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