Today we visited the village of Ironbridge to see the iron
bridge. The village is built on the bank
of the River Severn in Shropshire and the village is named after the bridge
that is built over the river. The bridge
was the first in the world to be built out of cast iron.
We visited the information centre in the tollhouse at the
end of the bridge and this is what we learnt about the bridge.
In the 1750’s the only way to cross the river was by ferry
boat. There were 6 ferry’s crossing the
river but the river was sometimes too shallow in summer and too fast in
winter.
A man called Thomas Farnolls Pritchard came up with the idea
of building a bridge from cast iron. He
sent his designs to a man called 'Iron Mad' Wilkinson who was obsessed with
iron and devoted his life to finding as many things to do with it as possible
(he built the first cast iron boat, minted coins and had his own coffin and
tombstone made from cast iron)
Along the river was an iron smelting factory and furnace at
a village called Coalbrookdale. When
they discovered that iron could be smelted with coke instead of charcoal it
made it cheaper to produce.
A man called Abraham Darby who ran the company decided to
make the bridge out of iron because it would be a good advertisement for his
company.
In 1776 the Act of Parliament was passed authorising the
Bridge and work began in November 1777.
The bridge uses 378 tons of iron and is made of 5 arches.
Its height is over 16m from the water and the road along the top is over 7m
wide.
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| This is the tollhouse |
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| this is a sign on the tollhouse saying what the toll to cross the bridge was |
In 1934 the bridge was closed to traffic and you can only
cross it on foot. It is now listed as an
ancient monument. In 1950 they stopped
making people pay a toll to cross the bridge and it is now listed as an ancient
monument.
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| This is the village of Ironbridge from the top of the bridge |
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