Bridges of 2024

This year’s choice of bridges (mostly) crossed and photographed would be very modest but for a visit to Newcastle, which it must be admitted has some fine specimens. From west to east along the Tyne, our first is the High Level Bridge designed by Robert Stephenson (1845-49), with T E Harrison - the rail deck is supported by cast-iron box columns while the road deck is suspended from the rail deck by wrought-iron hangers encased in the box sections. Grade I listed by Historic England. Next is the Swing Bridge of 1868-76, designed and built by W G Armstrong & Co. - a wrought-iron structure supported on cast-iron rollers to allow free movement of shipping, operated by the original Armstrong-built hydraulic engines and controlled from the cupola that spans the deck. Listed by Historic England as a Scheduled Monument and last opened in November 2019. The New Tyne Bridge (1925-28) comes next, built by Dorman & Long of Middlesbrough and designed by Mott, Hay & Anderson - the profile of its single span is often employed as a symbol of the city.  The design is a reduced version of the 1916 design produced for the Sydney Harbour Bridge - the four massive pylons, faced in Cornish granite were intended to house warehouses with freight and passenger lifts, none of which came to pass.  Grade II* listed by Historic England.  Finally to the only bridge over the Tyne designated for pedestrian and cyclist use - the Gateshead Millennium Bridge (1995-2001) designed by Wilkinson Eyre. The deck is suspended from an elegant parabola that can be rotated through 45 degrees to permit the movement of passing ships - a major element in the riverside regeneration project as an artistic and cultural quarter that in turn led to the conjoined coinage of Newcastle-Gateshead.

Finally, two views of the Scarborough Cliff Bridge, a pedestrian footbridge opened in 1827 when it was known as the Spa Bridge, it's an unusual example of a multiple-span cast iron bridge. Connecting the town centre with the Spa, it originally operated as a toll bridge. In the view from the deck the imposing bulk of Cuthbert Brodrick's Grand Hotel looms over the scene. Grade II listed structure.

 

Great Laxey Wheel

Anyone rummaging through boxes of miscellaneous vintage postcards will soon find one of the incongruously oversized Laxey Wheel. It’s the world’s largest working water wheel and can be found on the Isle of Man where it is a major visitor attraction.  The Isle of Man was rich in mineral deposits but had no seams of coal so to pump water out of the Great Laxey Mines complex this water powered Leviathan was constructed in 1854.  Reserves of lead, copper, silver and zinc finally ran out in 1929 and the mines closed.  The wheel languished out of use until 1965 when it was taken under government control and a project to restore it to working order was completed in 1971 since when it has been conserved. It makes a comfortable fit with the island’s major attraction of antiquated transport - narrow-gauge steam railways, electric tramways, and a mountain railway that climbs to the summit of Snaefell.  The tramway and the mountain railway converge in the village of Laxey making it something of a tourist hotspot.  Passengers on the Snaefell railway are treated to commanding views of the Laxey Wheel as their train ascends the valley side.  The white painted stone work and the bright red wheel spokes enhance its visibility today just as they did when it was a working structure rather than a museum piece.

 

Some Victorian Steel Engraving

Victorian printing technology steadily advanced through the 19th. century towards the ultimate goal of mass production of photographic imagery.  Along the way the process of printing from engraved imagery on steel plates was constantly refined and improved.  Engraving specialists were kept busy by the demands of mass circulation magazines (The Graphic, Illustrated London News, The Sketch, Punch) for new material to entertain the readers. Pictorial representations of current events, portraits of the great and the good, celebrity portraits and cartoons were especially in demand. Another army of engravers were preparing print versions of critically approved paintings  as shown in Royal Academy exhibitions to enable the rising middle classes to display their taste for the visual arts on the walls of their own homes.  Even more were engaged on topographical subjects - scarcely a manor house, ruined abbey or castle, riverbank, forest, lake, moorland or mountain went unrecorded. There was an affordable prospect for every affluent customer.  The finest of these practitioners achieved spectacular effects in terms of describing detail and creating subtle and dramatic tonal effects through the precision of their mark making.  Reproducing engineering drawings was a highly specialist skill requiring perfect clarity of visual description - this is a section of examples taken from the plates of various encyclopaedias.  They offer impressively analytical images of new applications of steam power and increasingly complex machine technology. Starting with the printing industry, the application of steam in shipping and railways, the selection is completed with a variety of mechanical wood saws. Admire the delicate subtleties of tone, the impersonal drawing and the complete absence of visual rhetoric. 

 

Great Railway Stations No.19: Hamburg Hauptbahnhof

The vast steel and glass train shed that spans 14 platforms at Hamburg Hbf was based on the Galerie des machines built in Paris for the Exposition Universelle of 1889 (casually and callously disposed of by the city authorities in 1910 to improve the view of the Champ de Mars).  An uninterrupted span was achieved with the support of steel trusses that flared out as they rose upwards and the hinged arch profile was identical to its Parisian ancestor.  It’s a through station with platforms set below street level - dramatic overviews of the station interior can be seen from the Nordsteg and Südsteg overbridges. The span measured 135 meters compared with 115 for the Galerie des machines.  Administration buildings and the main entrance were at the north end of the station, marked by two clock towers, one of which survived wartime bombing in 1943.  As planned, the buildings would have been decorated in Art Nouveau style but the story goes that Kaiser Wilhelm II took an interest and had them replaced with more austere Neo-Renaissance detailing giving a militaristic appearance more to his liking.  Planning the station was a complex exercise in rationalisation to combine the rail traffic from four existing termini, in and around the city centre, into a single through station.  An architectural competition was held and construction of the winning design took place between 1902 and 1906.  Today the city is connected by ICE trains to every major population centre in Germany and serves as a point of entry to European destinations for rail  travellers from Scandinavia.  Changes are on the way - in 2021 the city announced a competition for redevelopment of the station and surrounding area.

 

Bridges of Paris: 1 Viaduc d’Austerlitz

While most Paris Métro lines (with the notable exception of line 6) burrow underneath the Seine, line 5 crosses over the Seine between Quai de la Rapée and Quai d’Austerlitz by courtesy of the graceful Viaduc d’Austerlitz, a single arch steel bridge built in 1904, slender in appearance but rich in decorative ironwork.  On the north bank the bridge approach is via a curving steel ramp that lifts the tracks to the required height. At the other end the bridge extends over the Quai d’Austerlitz and the roadway before plunging into the roof space of the Gare d’Austerlitz - the only terminal station in Paris where the Métro platforms are situated above the station rather than safely interred beneath.  The view from downstream includes glimpses of the clock tower at the Gare de Lyon and the offices of RATP, the nerve centre of Parisian public transport.  There are houseboats tied up alongside the Quai d’Austerlitz - in an early series of The Spiral, the stocky figure of the eternally compromised Gilou (aka Escoffier) could be seen there, going aboard for a critical meeting with an organised crime boss to whom he would offer his services as an informer from inside the police.

Jean-Camille Formigé (1845-1926) designed the bridge with the engineer, Louis Biette. Formigé is no household name but he left a distinctive mark on the city around the turn of century.  He designed the Pont de Passy (1905) and the extended viaducts that supported Métro line 2 on its aerial sections through northern Paris. His taste for decorative moulded reliefs can be seen on all these structures. The nautical themed coat-of-arms for the City of Paris with its anchor and trident, is stretched and extended and draped with fronds of seaweed and undulating fish, then repeated at intervals across the Viaduc from the main arch to the balustrades.  Robustly carved bulls’ heads surmount the stonework of the massive abutments to amplify the sense of structural strength.