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In the United Kingdom, an accommodation bridge or occupation bridge is one that preserves a pre-existing private road, path or right of access when a major transport route is built across it. Without the
Most accommodation bridges, in the UK at least, were constructed during the railway building boom of the mid-19th century. British practice avoided
In the United Kingdom, an accommodation bridge or occupation bridge is one that preserves a pre-existing private road, path or right of access when a major transport route is built across it. Without the bridge
A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...
, access would be disrupted. Accommodation bridges are usually built at the cost of the route developer, as part of the conditions for obtaining the land for building the new route.
The term is not applied where the new route crosses an existing public highway.
Canals
The first accommodation bridges were built as part of 18th-centurycanal
Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flow un ...
building. Most were provided for farmers, whose lands and grazing were separated by the canal. The first canals developed from rivers, with short lengths of canal built to bypass obstacles, such as weirs and millponds. The river represented a long-established and accepted boundary, but these new sections were resented by landlords.
Unlike turnpike roads, drovers could not simply cross the new road but now needed a bridge. These bridges also needed to meet the standards of the canal builder, allowing the towpath
A towpath is a road or trail on the bank of a river, canal, or other inland waterway. The purpose of a towpath is to allow a land vehicle, beasts of burden, or a team of human pullers to tow a boat, often a barge. This mode of transport ...
through beneath, sufficient clearance for passing boats and being adequately constructed to be robust, without risk of a collapse blocking the canal. To save costs, the Kennet Navigation
The Kennet is a tributary of the River Thames in Southern England. Most of the river is straddled by the North Wessex Downs AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty). The lower reaches have been made navigable as the Kennet Navigation, which â ...
, in flat country, used swing bridge
A swing bridge (or swing span bridge) is a movable bridge that has as its primary structural support a vertical locating pin and support ring, usually at or near to its center of gravity, about which the swing span (turning span) can then pi ...
s rather than arches. Other canals such as the Oxford Canal
The Oxford Canal is a narrowboat canal in central England linking the City of Oxford with the Coventry Canal at Hawkesbury (just north of Coventry and south of Bedworth) via Banbury and Rugby. Completed in 1790, it connects to the River Thame ...
, also used lifting bridge
A bascule bridge (also referred to as a drawbridge or a lifting bridge) is a moveable bridge with a counterweight that continuously balances a span, or leaf, throughout its upward swing to provide clearance for boat traffic. It may be single- or ...
s.
Railways
Most accommodation bridges, in the UK at least, were constructed during the railway building boom of the mid-19th century. British practice avoided level crossing
A level crossing is an intersection where a railway line crosses a road, Trail, path, or (in rare situations) airport runway, at the same level, as opposed to the railway line crossing over or under using an Overpass#Railway, overpass ...
s wherever possible, except in the flat parts of the country where building a raised approach to a bridge would be more costly. Nevertheless the term is still more usually applied to canal bridges.
As the load carried by the new railway was almost always greater than the old path, nearly all accommodation bridges are overbridge
An overpass (called an overbridge or flyover in the United Kingdom and some other Commonwealth countries) is a bridge, road, railway or similar structure that crosses over another road or railway. An ''overpass'' and ''underpass'' together form ...
s, carrying the old track over the new railway. Underpasses were relatively rare, except where more convenient in hilly country, as the old track may have followed the land more closely than a gradient-sensitive railway.
In Britain an accommodation bridge is the name for a bridge connecting land that belonged to one owner severed by the railway. An occupation bridge is the name for a bridge that carried an existing private road or took the railway over an existing private road. Similar terms were applied to level crossing
A level crossing is an intersection where a railway line crosses a road, Trail, path, or (in rare situations) airport runway, at the same level, as opposed to the railway line crossing over or under using an Overpass#Railway, overpass ...
s.
Motorways
Accommodation bridges were rarely needed across roads, as a road junction would be provided instead. This changed in the 1960s, with the development of themotorway
A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway and expressway. Other similar terms i ...
network, where slow-speed local traffic is segregated from the high-speed traffic.
See also
*Cattle creep
A cattle creep is a small, field-to-field access for farm animals, usually to allow passage beneath an obstacle such as a road, canal, or railway embankment. Those under roads or railways may be termed underpasses.
As they are intended primar ...
References
External links
* * Canal restoration project involving the construction of a new accommodation bridge to maintain a previous right of access. Bridges by mode of traffic