Chepstow Bridge. Photograph by Ruth Sharville.
Chepstow Bridge over the River Wye, built to the design of the engineer John Urpeth Rastrick (1780-1856), was opened on 24 July 1816. This historic Grade I listed cast-iron structure takes the road from near Tutshill in Gloucester, in the Forest of Dean in England, into Monmouth, in Wales. Technically, it is "carried on five ribs of five segmental arches graded from the centre and carried on four massive stone breakwaters, approximately elliptical, and with larger plinths at low water level," with the abutment on the Monmouthshire side "to right-angled return in road" (listing text).
Ornate ironwork at the centre of the bridge. Notice Chepstow Castle, with its great round tower, on the left bank. Photograph by Dave Bevis.
The use of the foundations of the previous bridge detract a little from its gracefulness, especially at low water, but it is still very attractive, its balustrade given extra interest by decorative panels and cast-iron lamp-standards. As can be seen in the photograph above, the central decorative panel reads, "ANNO DOMINI 1816" and "MONMOUTH GLOUCESTER." Rastrick's obituarist in 1857 commented, "The extreme lightness of the cast-iron work of this bridge, and its general details, are remarkable, and rival those of works of more recent construction" (129).
Text by Jacqueline Banerjee. Photographs taken by Ruth Sharville and Dave Bevis for the Geograph website, both kindly released on a Creative Commons licence, CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.
Links to Other Chepstow Bridges
- The Old Wooden Bridge at Chepstow, watercolour by David Cox
- The Chepstow Tubular Suspension (railway) Bridge, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Bibliography
Boase, G. C., and M. W. Kirby. "Rastrick, John Urpeth (1780–1856), civil engineer." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 September 2004. Online ed. Web. 20 March 2024.
Chepstow Bridge. Historic England. Web. 20 March 2024.
Obituary, John Urpeth Rastrick (1780-1856). Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers. E-ISSN 1753-7843 Volume 16 Issue 1857, 1857, pp. 128-133 (session 1856-1857).
Created 20 March 2024