Stoke Bridge in

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, of which it is the county town. The town is located in East Anglia about away from the mouth of the River Orwell and the North Sea. Ipswich is both on the Great Eastern Main Line r ...

carries Bridge Street ( A137) over the point at which the River Gipping becomes the

River Orwell The River Orwell flows through the county of Suffolk in England from Ipswich to Felixstowe. Above Ipswich, the river is known as the River Gipping, but its name changes to the Orwell at Stoke Bridge, where the river becomes tidal. It broadens i ...

. It carries traffic into Ipswich from the suburb of Over Stoke. The bridge consists of two separate structures and is just upstream from Ipswich dock on a tidal section of the river. In 1789, Robert Ransome moved to Ipswich begin the “Orwell Works company employeeing 1500 men. His fourth patent in 1808 was for improvements on the wheel and spring ploughs. He was then joined in business by his two sons and the firm “Ransome and Sons” was one of the first to build iron bridges. The Stoke Bridge at Ipswich was constructed by them in 1818.

History

There are records of a bridge existing on the site from the late 13th Century. The fact that the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

mentions Saint Mary at Stoke implies that a crossing existed much earlier. The bridge is featured in John Speed's map of Ipswich of 1610 and Joseph Hodskinson's map of 1783. The southbound bridge has a plaque celebrating the bridge's erection over 1924 and 1925. The bridge was the southernmost crossing of the river in Ipswich until the construction of Orwell Bridge in the 1980s.

History

References

See also