Publication Account

Date 1996

Event ID 1016414

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016414

'The bridge is of iron, beautifully light, in a situation where the utility of lightness is instantly perceived. The span is 150 feet, the rise 20 from the abutments, which are themselves 12 above the usual level of the stream .' (Robert Southey, Journal of a Tour of Scotland in 1819).

Probably the oldest surviving iron bridge in Scotland, and one of the finest in Britain, this is among Thomas Telford 's most spectacular creations. A single four-r ibbed arch of cast- iron with a span of 45.7m, it leaps the swift Spey, springing from abutments of rustic ashlar topped by cylindrical crenellated turrets.

It was built between 1812 and 1815 as part of the overall improvement of the Highland road system then in progress under the direction of the Commissioners for Roads and Bridges, who put up half the £8200 cost. It was a vital crossing of the Spey, midway between Fochabers and Grantown, where the river is contained by the hard rock of the north bank. (This crag had to be cut back for the approach.)

The Commissioners' engineer, Thomas Telford, built in iron springing from tall abutments in order to accommodate the ferocious rise to which the Spey in flood is prone; the arch survived the devastating flood of 1829. The masonry abutments were the work of Telford's assistant, the Shrewsbury builder John Simpson, while the ironwork was cast at Plas Kynaston in the vale of Llangollen in Denbighshire by William Hazeldine ('Merlin' Hazeldine to Telford). The iron ribs then had to be floated over Telford's other extraordinary work, the Pontcysyllte aqueduct on the Llangollen canal and chipped round to the Moray Firth and up the Spey.

Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Aberdeen and North-East Scotland’, (1996).