Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders
Date 2007
Event ID 578271
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/578271
This bridge at Whitesands over the Nith, originally providing pedestrian access to and from the mills on the
west bank, was designed by John Willet and erected in 1875 by J. Abernethy & Co., Aberdeen, at a cost of about
£1500. The span is 200 ft and the chain-link cables are in pairs, each wrought iron eye-bar link being about 5 ft
between the suspending rods. In cross-section the individual links are of the Telford 1820s Menai Bridge genre
but of 4x34 in. cross-section. The towers each consist of a pair of plain circular cast-iron columns, 17 ft high, bridged at their tops by a heavy ornamental entablature bearing the cable saddles. The columns sit on freestone masonry piers about 10 ft tall. The columns are not braced except for the capping beam and the ornamental arch in the view. The deck is stiffened by lattice girders forming the parapets. The bridge was described at its opening as ‘an airy graceful thing of beauty that might have been conjured into existence by the wand of an eastern magician’. It was refurbished by Whatlings Ltd in 1983 under a contract let by consulting engineers W. A. Fairhurst & Partners.
R Paxton and J Shipway 2007
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission from Thomas Telford Publishers.
