Craigellachie Bridge
The Craigellachie Bridge is a cast iron arch bridge at Craigellachie near Aberlour in Moray ( Scotland ). It was designed by the famous civil engineer Thomas Telford and built between 1812 and 1814. The bridge has a single opening about 46 m span and was revolutionary in its day in that it used an extremely slender arch that could not have been made in conventional masonry construction. The iron parts were made in the Plas Kynaston foundry in Cefn Mawr near Ruabon in north-east Wales by William Hazledine , who had a number of Telford's bridges cast. The parts were transported from the foundry to the sea via the Ellesmere Canal and then by sea to Speymouth , where they were loaded onto wagons and taken to the construction site. Investigations in the 1960s showed that the cast iron has an unusually high tensile strength . This was probably requested by Telford because, unlike ordinary stone arch bridges, tensile stresses occur at some points on the arch under traffic loads .
At each end of the bridge there are two 15 m high pseudo- medieval towers with loopholes and parapets .
The bridge was in regular use until 1963 when it was closed for a major overhaul. The railings and the bars in the spandrels have been replaced with new parts that are true to the original. In addition, the load was limited to 14 tons . Because of this and the fact that the road immediately north of the bridge makes a sharp bend to avoid a rock wall, the bridge was unsuitable for modern road vehicles. Nevertheless, it carried traffic over the Spey until 1972 , when it was replaced by a reinforced concrete bridge built by Sir William Arrol & Co. , which opened in 1970 and over which the A941 now runs. Telford's bridge is still in good condition and can be used by pedestrians and cyclists. It stands as a Category A building under monument protection and 2007 by the American Society of Civil Engineers in the List of International Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks been added.
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- Nelson, Gillian. Highland Bridges . Aberdeen University Press. 1990. ISBN 0-08-037744-0
- Paxton, Roland. Thomas Telford's Cast-Iron Bridges , Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Volume 160, Special Issue One. ISSN 0965-089X
Web links
- Craigellachie Bridge. In: Structurae
- Entry on Craigellachie Bridge in Canmore, Historic Environment Scotland database
Coordinates: 57 ° 29 '28.7 " N , 3 ° 11' 38" W.