Montford Bridge is a village in

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to ...

, England, and also the name of the bridge in that village. Montford Bridge, 1794

It lies on the

River Severn , name_etymology = , image = SevernFromCastleCB.JPG , image_size = 288 , image_caption = The river seen from Shrewsbury Castle , map = RiverSevernMap.jpg , map_size = 288 , map_c ...

and is close to the town of

Shrewsbury Shrewsbury ( , also ) is a market town, civil parish, and the county town of Shropshire, England, on the River Severn, north-west of London; at the 2021 census, it had a population of 76,782. The town's name can be pronounced as either 'Sh ...

. Most of the village is in the Montford parish, but some is covered by the Bicton parish. The

A5 road A5 Road may refer to: ;Africa * A5 highway (Nigeria), a road connecting Lagos and Ibadan * A5 road (Zimbabwe), a road connecting Harare and Francistown ;Americas * Quebec Autoroute 5, a road in Quebec, Canada * County Route A5 (California) or B ...

used to run through the village (over the Montford Bridge), but has been diverted via the Shrewsbury bypass. There are still some services, such as a shop (closed as of 2011) and a pub (the ''Wingfield Arms''), in the village. The bridge was

Thomas Telford Thomas Telford FRS, FRSE, (9 August 1757 – 2 September 1834) was a Scottish civil engineer. After establishing himself as an engineer of road and canal projects in Shropshire, he designed numerous infrastructure projects in his native Scot ...

's first bridge design. It was built by

John Carline John Carline (1730–2 March 1793) was an 18th-century English bridge-builder. Both his son (1758-1834) and grandson (1792-1862) continued the name - the former focussing on churches and church monuments but also building bridges. Life He ...

and John Tilley between 1790 and 1792. It has three masonry elliptical

arch An arch is a vertical curved structure that spans an elevated space and may or may not support the weight above it, or in case of a horizontal arch like an arch dam, the hydrostatic pressure against it. Arches may be synonymous with vau ...

spans, two of 55 ft, and the central one of 58 ft. They are built of red sandstone obtained from Nesscliffe Hill four miles distant. The bridge cost £5,800 to build. Regarding the bridge, Telford wrote:

''The contractors, Messrs. Carline and Tilley, being experienced workmen, it has proved a substantial edifice, having been completed upwards of forty years, and remaining quite perfect''

It was widened in 1963 by adding a

reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low ultimate tensile strength, tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion ...

slab. The bridge is now a

Grade II listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ir ...

.English Heritage
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References

Bibliography

*Cragg, R., ''Civil Engineering Heritage - Wales & West Central England'', Thomas Telford Publishing, 1997, Bridges in Shropshire Bridges completed in 1792 Bridges across the River Severn Grade II listed buildings in Shropshire Villages in Shropshire Bridges by Thomas Telford Grade II listed bridges {{UK-bridge-struct-stub

See also

References

Bibliography