Old Inveraray, Town Bridge

RCAHMS surveyed the Town Bridge, Old Inveraray on 5 July 1989 producing a plan at a scale of 1:100. The plan was redrawn in ink and published at a scale of 1:500 (RCAHMS 1992, 429).

TOWN BRIDGE. The foundations of a bridge which spanned the River Aray NNE of the old town were identified during a period of low water-level in 1989, at the S end of a small island 320m upstream from the present bridge (No.255) (en.7). An older bridge on the site was ruinous in 1704, and assistance in repairing it was again sought by the Town Council in 1718. William Douglas carried out work to the bridge in 1743, and a drawing of 'Douglas's Bridge in the Garden' in Roger Morris's Letter-book suggests that it was rebuilt at that time. That drawing of the bridge, which was also shown in views by Paul and Thomas Sandby and John Clerk, corresponds exactly to the surviving footings of the abutments and central pier, which were to be preserved in an unexecuted scheme of 1774, probably by Robert Mylne, for replacing the arches with a cast-iron superstructure in Chinese style (see Introduction). It was demolished soon after that date. The bridge measured about 75m in overall length including long sloping approaches, and incorporated two segmental arches 12.2m in span and 5.5m high, springing from a central pier with triangular cut-waters, rising to refuges at road-level, whose ashlar-faced footing survives along with that of the W abutment. The original roadway was 3.8m wide, with a wider approach from a tree-lined avenue on the E, and at the N it was angled to rise gently to the market-place (en.8).

RCAHMS 1992, visited September 1989