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Kingsmeadows Wire Bridge
Footbridge (19th Century)
Site Name Kingsmeadows Wire Bridge
Classification Footbridge (19th Century)
Alternative Name(s) River Tweed; Hunter's Stream
Canmore ID 278657
Site Number NT23NE 79
NGR NT 26817 39995
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/278657
- Council Scottish Borders, The
- Parish Peebles
- Former Region Borders
- Former District Tweeddale
- Former County Peebles-shire
NT23NE 79 26817 39995
Extends onto map sheet NT24SE.
For Wirebridge Cottage (adjacent to N), see NT24SE 230.
FB [NAT]
OS 1:2500 map, 1898-9.
This bridge crosses or formerly crossed the River Tweed at Hunter's Stream, some 2km downstream (to the E of) Peebles. It is apparently depicted on the 1st edition (1857-8) of the OS 6-inch map; the 2nd edition apparently depicts it as extending from NT c. 26825 40011 to NT c. 26808 39980. The location assigned to this record defines the centre of the structure.
It is unclear from the available map evidence whether or not the bridge still stands.
Information from RCAHMS (RJCM), 7 February 2006.
Publication Account (2007)
An abutment at Wire Bridge Cottage, a mile east of Peebles on the A72, is all that now remains of J. S. Brown’s innovative 4 ft wide and 110 ft span bridge erected over the Tweed for Sir John Hay in 1817. It was one of the world’s earliest wire bridges and had 0.3 in. diameter wire suspension stays radiating from cast iron tubular side supports. Adjustable screw-bolts enabled the stays to be tensioned. The bridge was modified by Redpath Brown in 1923 and lasted until destroyed in a flood on 29 October 1954.
Brown’s bridge was more workmanlike in engineering terms than that of the same span erected by Richard
Lees, Galashiels mill owner, over the Gala Water in 1816, of which Brown was almost certainly aware, and may be a development of it. Lees’ bridge lasted only a few decades.
Although both designs had little influence on suspension bridge development generally, they are noteworthy
as indigenous examples of the new bridge genre stemming from practice in the USA, Telford’s iron-stay bridge
proposals published from 1811 and his 50 ft span wire, load-tested, model suspension bridge at Runcorn in 1814, and Capt. S. Brown’s well publicised bar-chain bridge of ca.1814 at his Isle of Dogs works.
R Paxton and J Shipway 2007
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission from Thomas Telford Publishers.
