Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Great Britain: Bishop's Mill Bridge in Salisbury

I couldn't find any information about this bridge. Its in the middle of town near the Clock Tower (originally a prison) and the Town House Inn (now called the King's Head).

Because of the dark color, I originally thought the deck was supported by steel girders. However, because of the large camber I'm now thinking it must be a cast-in-place reinforced concrete bridge.

I like the metal railing on this bridge (that continues along the sidewalk). I also like the little masonry abutments. Looking downstream (along the River Avon) is the big, Fisherton Street (vehicular) Bridge.

Salisbury is very pretty (with beautiful bridges, buildings, houses, quay walls). Stonehenge is just north of town (along with neolithic burial mounds) and the area has so much history that it gives an added dimension to one's surroundings.
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Great Britain: Bishops Mill Bridge in Salisbury by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

1 comment:

The Happy Pontist said...

It's hard to be sure from the photo, but there are plenty of firms in the UK who could precamber steel girders like that. I'd certainly do it that way as it would be cheaper than falsework for in-situ concrete.

The metal railings are non-compliant with UK design standards, because of the size of the gaps for small children to stick body parts through (maximum 100mm wide gap permitted).

It's good to see bridges where such things are ignored, as standards are often the death of good design - they can result in absurdities like a bridge over a river with high solid parapets, next to largely unprotected river banks (this example is a bridge I'll be featuring on THP in March).