The Bridge of Avon is a bridge over the River Avon at

Ballindalloch Ballindalloch ( gd, Baile na Dalach) is a small village on the River Spey in Scotland. It is known for its Scotch whisky, whisky distilleries and for Ballindalloch Castle. In Ballindalloch itself, there are two distilleries, Cragganmore distille ...

Moray Moray () gd, Moireibh or ') is one of the 32 local government council areas of Scotland. It lies in the north-east of the country, with a coastline on the Moray Firth, and borders the council areas of Aberdeenshire and Highland. Between 1975 ...

, Scotland, built between 1800 and 1801 by

George Burn George Burn (1759 – c.1820) was an architect, civil engineer and contractor active in Scotland in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Burn was born in Yester in East Lothian in 1759. His career in bridge design started in 1797, when he wo ...

. The bridge is mainly

rubble Rubble is broken stone, of irregular size, shape and texture; undressed especially as a filling-in. Rubble naturally found in the soil is known also as 'brash' (compare cornbrash)."Rubble" def. 2., "Brash n. 2. def. 1. ''Oxford English Dictionary ...

-built, with an

abutment An abutment is the substructure at the ends of a bridge span or dam supporting its superstructure. Single-span bridges have abutments at each end which provide vertical and lateral support for the span, as well as acting as retaining walls ...

on the south bank, and a

pier image:Brighton Pier, Brighton, East Sussex, England-2Oct2011 (1).jpg, Seaside pleasure pier in Brighton, England. The first seaside piers were built in England in the early 19th century. A pier is a raised structure that rises above a body of ...

with a

cutwater In architecture, a starling (or sterling) is a defensive bulwark, usually built with pilings or bricks, surrounding the supports (or piers) of a bridge or similar construction. Starlings may be shaped to ease the flow of the water around the brid ...

on the north bank, of tooled

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...

. It crosses the river in a single wide

segmental arch A segmental arch is a type of arch with a circular arc of less than 180 degrees. It is sometimes also called a scheme arch. The segmental arch is one of the strongest arches because it is able to resist thrust. To prevent failure, a segmental arc ...

, with a smaller

flood arch A flood arch is a small supplemental arch bridge provided alongside a main bridge. It provides extra capacity for floodwater. The space beneath a flood arch is normally dry and often carries a towpath A towpath is a road or trail on th ...

on the north bank. The south

spandrel A spandrel is a roughly triangular space, usually found in pairs, between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame; between the tops of two adjacent arches or one of the four spaces between a circle within a square. They are frequently fill ...

bears two plaques. The upper plaque records the date of the bridge's construction and its architect's name, and the lower plaque records the height reached by the waters in the catastrophic floods of August 4, 1829, known as the

Muckle Spate The Muckle Spate was a great flood in August 1829, which devastated much of Strathspey, in the north east of Scotland. (Muckle is a word for 'much' or 'great', chiefly used in North East England and Scotland.) It began raining on the evening of ...

, which destroyed numerous other bridges in Moray. The bridge was designated a

Category A listed building Category, plural categories, may refer to: Philosophy and general uses *Categorization, categories in cognitive science, information science and generally *Category of being *Categories (Aristotle), ''Categories'' (Aristotle) *Category (Kant) ...

in 1972. It is no longer open to vehicular traffic, having been bypassed in 1991 by a modern concrete structure that now carries the A95 over the river, but can still be used by pedestrians.

References

Listed bridges in Scotland Category A listed buildings in Moray {{UK-bridge-struct-stub