Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders
Date 2007
Event ID 589411
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/589411
A well-maintained example of a 16th century masonry bridge with buttressed abutments, ribbed arches and
pointed cutwater to the pier, dating from ca.1550. An earlier stone bridge was reported to have been razed by
the French army in 1549, but a bridge, presumably the present one, existed by 1560. The bridge, which carried the A1 Edinburgh to Berwick road until bypassed in the late 1920s, has twin arch spans of about 40 ft each, founded on exposed rock in the bed of the Tyne. There are four ribs to each arch, closely spaced, and easily inspected from outcropping rock on the downstream side. The dates 1762 and 1763 on the keystones record when it was widened. The original overall width across the soffit was 1012 ft, increased to nearly 14 ft when it was widened. Other repairs took place in 1884, 1895 and 1934. In 1927 the bridge was relieved from trunk road traffic by an elegant three-span steel plate-girder bridge of the cantilever and suspended span type with a central opening of 102 ft 8 in. designed and built by Sir William Arrol & Co. 118In the 1990s this was replaced by an embankment and culvert.
R Paxton and J Shipway 2007
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission of Thomas Telford Publishers.
