![Sample our Engineering & Technology journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5933/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Engineering-Tech.jpg"})
Abstract
Sunderland Bridge, when built, was the longest iron arch in the world. Discussions about building it with stone had been held in the 1780s but the idea of an iron structure took hold in 1791 and as such it was finally opened in 1796. Severe deterioration soon occurred and only drastic action in 1805 saved it from collapse. Thereafter it survived until 1853 when it was largely rebuilt although the main ribs remained in situ. Total replacement took place in the 1920s, the present bridge being opened in 1929.
Notes
(Place of publication is London unless stated otherwise)
1. N. Cossons and B. Trinder, The Iron Bridge (Bradford-on-Avon, 1979).
2. J. G. James, ‘Iron Arched Bridge Designs in Pre-Revolutionary France’, History of Technology, 4 (1979), 63–99.
3. N. Aubry, ‘Mémoire sur la construction d’un pont de bois, de quatre cent cinquante pieds d’ouverture, d’un seul jet’ in his collected Mémoires sur Differentes Questions de la Science des Constructions Publiques et Economiques (Lyon, 1790), pp. 1–102. When James, ‘Iron Arched Bridge’ was published no example of this work had been traced but since then I have to thank Julia Elton and Vittorio Nascè for providing copies and to thank Eric DeLony for a copy of the Paris Académie des Sciences 1787 report on Paine’s bridge proposal.
4. The interpretation of Paine’s work here is based on an unpublished paper of my own. A more flattering view is in E. L. Kemp, ‘Thomas Paine and his ‘Pontifical Matters’’, Trans. Newcomen Soc., 49 (1977), 21–40.
5. A. W. Skempton, ‘The Engineers of Sunderland Harbour 1718–1817’, Industrial Archaeology Review, 1.2 (1977), 103–25.
6. V. Brockie, Sunderland Notables (Sunderland, 1894), pp. 100–05.
7. M. Elvin, The Noels and the Milbankes (1967), pp. 338–40, 374, 448.
8. Soane’s correspondence is summarized in A. T. Bolton, The Portrait of Sir John Soane (1927). Only a few of Burdon’s letters to Soane survive: after one of 4 April 1780 there is a gap till 2 April 1812. The bridge drawings and 11-page ‘Observations’ are in the Museum’s file ‘Miscellaneous Drawings of Bridges and Centres for Bridges’ in ‘Breakfast Parlour Portfolio 3’. Some of the copy drawings were made by London surveyor J. Foulds.
9. J. Summerson, John Nash (1980), is the standard life.
10. Fox Papers, Ms 105/167, Devon Record Office, W. Devon Area: “Extracts from Mr.Milne’s Letter to RB, 1791 […] The Bridge now building over ye River Usk in Monmouthshire by Mr. Nash is a segment of a circle of 10 feet, and 285 feet span & only 18 feet wide’. These papers also have a copy of a letter from Hutton to Burdon, 18 June 1792, with his ‘ideas and remarks’ about remarks’ about the proposed Sunderland Bridge (Ms 105/164).
11. A. E. Richardson, Robert Mylne (1955); G. Gotch, ‘Robert Mylne and Tyne bridges’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th series, vol. 33 (1955), 87–98.
12. H. W. Dickinson and A. Lee, ‘The Rastricks, Civil Engineers’, Trans. Newcomen Soc., 4 (1924), 48–63.
13. J. Guest, Relics and Records of Men and Manufactures &c. (Rotherham, 1866): and A. H. John (ed.), The Walker Family (1951).
14. J. Guest, Historic Notices of Rotherham (Worksop, 1879), pp. 485–504. Guest stated that Hannah and Ann Walker, sisters of the founders of the Walker business, married George and John Yates, and he refers to William Yates as a cousin of the next generation of Walkers.
15. J. Tann (ed.), Selected Papers of Boulton & Watt, 1 (1981), 317–19.
16.
| a. | The signature of one Thomas Wilson appears on a 1757 petition from users of the River Wear, reproduced in T. Corfe, Sunderland: A Short History (1973), p. 39. | ||||
| b. | Thomas Wilson (1748–1820), the well-known Boulton & Watt agent in Cornwall (buried at Falmouth), was apparently from Yorkshire where he had business connections. He visited the Walkers at Rotherham about their B & W engine in 1781, which fact has led to mis-identification. | ||||
| c. | Thomas Wilson (1773–1858) of Gateshead was the central figure in the famous engineering firm of Losh, Wilson & Bell, and was also known as the ‘Tyneside Poet’. He completely overshadows the bridge engineer in local histories. | ||||
| d. | Thomas Wilson, an entrepreneurial engineer, left England c. 1818 to establish factories in the Netherlands and only returned in 1845 when he published the pamphlet ‘The Railway System and its Author Thomas Gray’. | ||||
| e. | Thomas Wilson of Faskine, Lanarkshire, built the early iron ship ‘Vulcan’, launched 28 May 1818. | ||||
| f. | Contemporary journals record deaths of Thomas Wilsons at South Shields in 1805 and 1816, at Stockton in 1806, and at Sheffield in 1819. | ||||
17. J. W. Corder, Sunderland family records (ms in Sunderland Library) and local newspapers in the British Library
18. T. Bowdler, An Account of an Iron Bridge lately erected near Sunderland by Rowland Burdon M.P. in a Letter from Thos. BowdIer Esqr. to Sir Jos. Banks F.R.S., Gosforth, near Newcastle, August 11th 1796, (with postscript 13 January 1797), unpublished ms in the Royal Society Library’s Letters & Papers, XI, 55; and a copy in the Soane collection.
19. A microfilm copy of the Account Book is held in Sunderland Library: the whereabouts of the original was unknown in 1978.
20. Proc. Inst. Civil Engineers, 23 (1864), 485–86.
21. Unidentified newspaper cutting (No. 113 in a late nineteenth-century series about local worthies) stuck in a copy of Burdon, Letter (Ref 29) in Sunderland Library.
22. E.W. Brayley and J. Britton, The Beauties of England & Wales, vol 5 (1803), p. 145 (pp. 136–140 deal with Sunderland Bridge). ‘A new roof has been just built for Sunderland Church under the direction of Mr. Wilson, the architect of Wearmouth Bridge’. The Newcastle Courant reported that Wilson and Grimshaw contributed to a fund for re-roofing Monkwearmouth Church, tenders for which were invited on 1 March 1806.
23. House of Commons Journals 1791–96 (indexed under Bishopwearmouth).
24. Unidentified newspaper cutting in the J. Cowen Collection relating to Sunderland Bridge in Newcastle Library.
25. G. H. Phipps, Lectures on Practical Engineering (Chatham, 1874), Lecture 2 (4 December 1873), pp. 6–8, pls 10–16. Phipps, who had access to far more evidence than is available today, was one of many who have unsuccessfully attempted to explode the myth that Paine’s iron bridge system had any connection with the actual design of Sunderland Bridge: see, for example, his correspondence following a pro-Paine claim in Mechanics’ Magazine, vols 13 and 14 (June and July 1865).
26. G. L. Groves, ‘The New Wearmouth Bridge, Sunderland’, Proc. Inst. Civil Engineers, 230 (1930), 144–66.
27. Brayley.
28. Drawings by ‘P.D.’ of William Bridges’ Clifton Bridge plans dated January and February 1793 in City of Bristol Museum & Art Gallery. They include two different forms of wooden centering, both rope-supported. In two drawings the arch span scales off at 240 ft and in a third 180 ft: the much published impression of the completed bridge has the span misprinted as 140 ft. Bridges sent a description of a wooden arch bridge system to the Royal Society of Arts 11 March 1795.
29. Revd J. Burdon, letter to the Wearmouth Bridge Committee, 28 June 1859 (Sunderland). This 16 pp. pamphlet, prompted by adverse publicity during the recent bridge reconstruction, was written to try and restore the honours to Rowland Burdon.
30. Pope’s Bath Chronicle, 2 July 1795.
31. Newcastle Chronicle, 12 September and York Courant, 14 September 1795.
32. In addition to Phipps, a few dimensions were copied from some drawings signed by Robert Stephenson into a historical scrapbook kept by Wood, an engineer employed by Mott, Hay & Anderson, the Consultants for the 1920s replacement of the bridge. I am grateful to Mr Finch, the firm’s Librarian, for giving me access to this.
33. Anon, Ceremony of opening Wearmouth Bridge with the Oration and Sermon given on that Occasion: and also a Description of that Structure. The Freemasons’ Magazine, 7 (October and November 1796), 231–41, 303–05,. The same magazine also reported the foundation-stone ceremony in vol. 2 (June 1794), 406–08,. I am grateful to Mr N. T. Sinclair of Sunderland Museum for this reference.
34. Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal, 3 October and 10 October; York Courant, 5 October; Newcastle Chronicle, 10 October 1795.
35. The Revd R. Warner, A tour through the Northern Counties of England and the Borders of Scotland (1802), pp. 308–09.
36. The Revd J. T. Middlemiss, ‘Some Account of Sunderland Bridge’ (paper read 12 March 1907 to the Sunderland Antiquarian Soc.), Antiquities of Sunderland, 8 (for 1908) (Sunderland, 1909), 29–43.
37. E. Mackenzie and M. Ross, An history, topography and descriptive view of the County Palatinate of Durham, 1 (Newcastle, 1834), 309–11.
38. York Courant, 1 August, and Newcastle Chronicle, 6 August 1796.
39. Newcastle Chronicle, 13 August, York Courant, 15 August, and The Freemason’s Magazine (October and November 1796).
40. Middlemiss gives the verses in full.
41. Brockie, pp. 27–33. Middlemiss said that Brockie took his data from a local pamphlet by G. W. Meadley, published March 1815.
42. R. C. Bell, The Iron Bridge at Sunderland, Coin, 22 February/6 March 1980, pp. 78–82; J. C. Baker, Sunderland Pottery (Tyne & Wear CC Museum, 1984).
43. The portrait is reproduced by Dickinson and Lee.
44. C. Dupin, Narratives of two excursions … in 1816, 1817 and 1818 (1819), pp. 35–36; and The Commercial Power of Great Britain, 1 (1825), 103. Dupin noted that, ‘Mr. Wilson, the ingenious architect who built the bridge, and who has charge of attending to its repairs, resides on the right bank of the river in a house built at the expense of the company’. He added that, ‘It was asserted that this bridge showed symptoms of twisting or giving way and that, from the unavoidable effect of the expansion of the iron in summer, this will end by detaching the feet of the iron arches from their abutments […] This objection made against large arches of iron is, as I took pains to satisfy myself, destitute of foundation in regard to the bridge at Sunderland.’ Evidently Wilson did not tell him of the 1805 emergency!
45. Notes and illustrations were given in the preprint of J.G. James, ‘Thomas Wilson’s Cast-Iron Bridges 1800–1810’, Trans. Newcomen Society, 50 (1979), pp. 55–72 which may be seen at the Science Museum Library, and the Sunderland Library. That part was omitted from the version published in the Newcomen Transactions for brevity.
46. Burdon, Letter.
47. James, ‘Thomas Wilson’s Cast-Iron Bridges 1800–1810’, Trans. Newcomen Soc., 50 (1979), pp. 55–72.
48. A. Raistrick, Quakers in Science and Industry (1950).
49. H. W. Dickinson, ‘A Condensed History of Rope-Making’, Trans. Newcomen Soc., 23 (1943), 71–91; J. Tann (Ref. 15). Robert Clarke did the drawings of the machinery according to Brockie (Ref. 6).
50. W. W. Tomlinson, The North Eastern Railway (Newcastle, 1915), p. 46; L. G. Charlton, The First Locomotive Engines (Newcastle, 1974), p. 46.
51. J. Grimshaw, A report on the repairs given to Wearmouth Bridge in the year 1805 (Sunderland, 1818).
52. The Simon Goodrich Collection of journals and papers preserved at the Science Museum, South Kensington. Brief extracts have been published as Simon Goodrich and his work as an engineer, Pt 1 1796–1805, Pt 2 1805–12, Pt 3 1813–23 in Trans. Newcomen Society, 3 (1922), 1–15; 18 (1937), l–27; 32 (1960), 79–91.
53. J. Elton, Catalogue 45: Bridges Docks & Harbours (B. Weinreb Architectural Books Ltd, 1982), Item 204a. My thanks to Julia Elton for a photocopy. M. I. Brunel was a friend and associate of Goodrich and in 1803 they jointly visited Scarth’s Castle Eden rope-works as Naval Supplies advisers. It is odd that Brunel did not take the opportunity to see Sunderland Bridge on that occasion.
54. J. Farington, The Farington Diary, 3 (1924), 285.
55. E. Hughes (ed.), The Diaries and Correspondence of James Losh, 1 (Durham: Surtees Society, 1962), 16.
56. E. T. Svedenstierna, Tour of Great Britain 1802–1803 (Newton Abbott, 1973, reprint of 1804 translation by E. L. Dellow), pp. 109–10.
57. The Lottery Act, together with the original Sunderland Bridge Act, was later reprinted for the Commissioners as ‘Copy of Wearmouth Bridge Acts of Parliament &c.’ ,1830 (Bishopwearmouth). Bell (Ref. 42) reproduces a lottery ticket and illustrates a medallion struck to commemorate the lottery. Some notes on the affair are given in C. L’Estrange Ewert, Lotteries and Sweepstakes (New York, 1972), pp. 293–94.
58. J. Millar and W. Vazie, Observations on the advantages and practicability of making tunnels under navigable rivers (1807), pp. 123–24. William Vazie (no doubt related to the more well-known entrepreneur Robert Vazie of Thames Tunnel and Highgate Archway fame) appeared briefly in the Sunderland Bridge Account Book as a supplier of ‘wood for rails: 17s 6d’ in 1802. From 1805–07 he actively promoted a scheme for tunnelling under the Forth at Queensferry.
59. This was sent by Burdon to Soane and is in the Soane collection.
60. The Artizan, 13 (October 1855), 246; and 15 (February 1857), 44–45.
61. J. C. Jeaffreson and W. Pole, The life of Robert Stephenson, 2 (1864), 70–71, 233–34. Stephenson arranged a visit to the work for members of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (Proc. I. Mech. E. (1858)), pp. 261–63. Resident Engineer in charge of the reconstruction was Jeremiah Head (1835–99), a former apprentice of Stephenson, who subsequently started a large ironworks at Middlesbrough and was a key figure in founding the Cleveland Institution of Engineers in 1864.
62. Brayley (Ref. 25).
63. Wood’s notes (Ref. 32).
64. S. A. Staddon, The Tramways of Sunderland (Huddersfield, 1964), pp. 11–12.
65. Groves (Ref. 26).
66. A circumstance occurred before the Centre was removed which deserves to be noticed as it afforded a remarkable Proof of the Strength of the new Arch. One of those heavy Storms which blew in November 1795 came on at the time when, the Arch being finished, the Workmen were going to remove the Centre. The Wind rushing between the high Banks of the River Wear as thro’ a Funnel, drove the Water with such violence against the Centre as to force one of the two Stages which have been described in some measure, out of its Place. The Stage, not yet separated from the Bridge, dragged the Iron Arch Ten Inches out of the Line of Direction. The Clerk of the Works, as soon as he perceived that the Stage began to give way, got together all the Workmen that could be collected, & as expeditiously as possible knocked out the Wedges which connected the Bridge to the Stage. This was no sooner done, than the Elasticity of the Metal carried the Arch back into its original Situation. It did not remain half an Inch out of the Straight Line.