Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders

St Andrew’s Suspension Footbridge is a wrought-iron chain-link suspension bridge with classical style towers constructed in 1853–54 at Glasgow Green. Its span is 220 ft and the dip of the chains is about 22 ft. Each tower comprises two pairs of cast-iron Corinthian columns of 27 in. diameter and 20 ft high, each pair being capped

by a cage of 12 rollers on which rests a cast-iron plate to which the chains, which are 4 in. deep and in two tiers, are connected. The rod suspenders are connected to the chains by a Brunel-type attachment. The designer was Neil Robson and the contractor, P. & W. McLellan. The cost was £6348.

In the 1950s the original lattice parapet stiffening girders were replaced by more robust girders of the Warren type. There is a model with the original parapets in the Glasgow Museum of Transport.

R Paxton and J Shipway 2007

Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission of Thomas Telford Publishers.