Kennington Railway Bridge is a railway bridge over the
River Thames near
Kennington, Oxfordshire between
Sandford Lock
Sandford Lock is a lock on the River Thames in England, situated at Sandford-on-Thames which is just south of Oxford. The first pound lock was built in 1631 by the Oxford-Burcot Commission although this has since been rebuilt. The lock ...
and
Iffley Lock. It carries the freight railway
branch line that serves the
BMW Mini factory at
Cowley. The freight railway is part of the former
Wycombe Railway that linked and via and .
The current bridge was built for the
Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...
in 1923. It is a steel
bowstring bridge
A tied-arch bridge is an arch bridge in which the outward horizontal forces of the arch(es) caused by tension at the arch ends to a foundation are countered by equal tension of its own gravity plus any element of the total deck structure such grea ...
of three equal spans, each long. The railway on the bridge is on a curve with a radius of . The bridge crosses the river askew.
Earlier bridge and replacement
The current bridge replaces a five-span
plate girder bridge built for the
Wycombe Railway in 1863. In 1914 Great Western Railway engineers noted that some of the
screw piles of the old bridge had settled slightly. They wanted to replace the bridge but were prevented by the
First World War. Therefore, with the consent of the
Thames Conservancy, the GWR shored up the bridge with wooden trestles resting on foundations of bagged cement until the end of wartime restrictions would allow the bridge to be replaced.
In 1923 the new bridge was built parallel to the old one. The GWR had it designed in-house, but contracted its construction to George Palmer of
Neath
Neath (; cy, Castell-nedd) is a market town and Community (Wales), community situated in the Neath Port Talbot, Neath Port Talbot County Borough, Wales. The town had a population of 50,658 in 2011. The community of the parish of Neath had a po ...
,
Glamorgan
, HQ = Cardiff
, Government = Glamorgan County Council (1889–1974)
, Origin=
, Code = GLA
, CodeName = Chapman code
, Replace =
* West Glamorgan
* Mid Glamorgan
* South Glamorgan
, Motto ...
. The
Horseley Bridge and Engineering Co Ltd of
Tipton was subcontracted to make the six bowstrings for the three new spans. Each span is long and weighs 23 tons.
The GWR transported each completed bowstring from Tipton to Kennington by rail on a pair of
Pollen C four-wheeled wagons. At the bridge site each bowstring was lifted into place by two rail-mounted 36-ton cranes. When the new bridge was completed, the railway was realigned for a distance of either side to cross the new bridge. The old bridge was then dismantled and its piers and temporary trestles demolished.
Halt
At the western end of the bridge is the site of the former
Iffley Halt railway station
Iffley Halt railway station was built by the Great Western Railway to serve Iffley, a suburb of Oxford; it was actually in Kennington, and not in Iffley.
The station was situated at the western end of Kennington Railway Bridge, which crosses ...
.
See also
*
Crossings of the River Thames
References
Sources
*
*
Bridges across the River Thames
Bridges completed in 1923
Bridges in Oxford
Railway bridges in Oxfordshire
1923 establishments in England
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