Cantlop Bridge is a single span cast-iron road bridge over the

Cound Brook Cound Brook (pronounced COOnd) is a tributary of the River Severn in Shropshire, England, running to south of the county town Shrewsbury. The Cound Brook rises in the Shropshire Hills AONB, Stretton Hills and discharges into the River Severn at ...

, located to the north of

Cantlop Cantlop is a small village in the English county of Shropshire. It is part of the civil parish of Berrington. Nearby villages include Condover, to the west of Cantlop, and the village of Berrington to the north-west, on the other side of the C ...

in the parish of Berrington,

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to ...

. It was constructed in 1818 to a design possibly by

Thomas Telford Thomas Telford FRS, FRSE, (9 August 1757 – 2 September 1834) was a Scottish civil engineer. After establishing himself as an engineer of road and canal projects in Shropshire, he designed numerous infrastructure projects in his native Scot ...

, having at least been approved by him, and replaced an unsuccessful cast iron coach bridge constructed in 1812. The design of the bridge was innovative for the period, using a light-weight design of cast-iron lattice ribs to support the road deck in a single span, and appears to be a scaled-down version of a Thomas Telford bridge at Meole Brace, Shropshire. The bridge is the only surviving Telford-approved cast-iron bridge in Shropshire, and is a Grade II* listed building and scheduled monument. It originally carried the turnpike road from Shrewsbury to

Acton Burnell Acton Burnell is a village and parish in the English county of Shropshire. Home to Concord College, it is also famous for an early meeting of Parliament where the Statute merchant was passed in 1283. The population at the 2011 census was 544. ...

History and description

Thomas Telford worked as the

county surveyor A county surveyor is a public official in the United Kingdom and the United States. United Kingdom Webb & Webb describe the increasing chaos that began to prevail within this same period in field of county surveying in England and Wales, with c ...

of Shropshire between 1787 to 1834, and the bridge is reported to have once held a cast iron plate above the centre of the arch inscribed with ''"Thomas Telford Esqr - Engineer - 1818"'', which is apparently visible in historic photographs, but has not been in place since at least 1985. The bridge design incorporates dressed red and grey sandstone

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 wal ...

s with

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 ...

dressings, these are slightly curved and ramped, with chamfered ashlar quoins, string courses, and moulded cornices. The structural cast-iron consists of a single segmental span with four arched lattice ribs, braced by five transverse cast-ironmembers. The road deck is formed from cast-iron metal deck plates, tarmacked over, and now finished with gravel. The original parapets have at some point been replaced with painted cast-iron railings with dograils, dogbars and shaped end balusters.

Present-day

The bridge today remains as a monument only, being closed to vehicular traffic. It was bypassed by a more modern adjacent concrete bridge built in the 1970s. It is in the care of

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

and is freely accessible to pedestrians. A layby exists for visitors to park and there is an information board.

Notes

References

{{Commons category, Cantlop Bridge *Blackwall, A 1985. 'Historic Bridges of Shropshire', Shrewsbury: Shropshire Libraries *Burton, A 1999. 'Thomas Telford', London: Aurum Press *Sutherland, R J M 1997. 'Structural Iron, 1750–1850', Aldershot: Ashgate Bridges by Thomas Telford Bridges in Shropshire Structural engineering English Heritage sites in Shropshire Grade II* listed buildings in Shropshire

History and description

Present-day

See also

Notes

References