Pickhill Meadows Suspension Bridge

Cadw's description

Location

Spans the River Dee to east of Pickhill Hall, just south and upstream of point where the Clywedog joins the Dee.

History

Bridge constructed in 1903, first appearing on the 1914 Ordnance Survey map. Commissioned by Oliver Ormrod of Pickhill Hall (1855-1945) from David Rowell & Co. Ltd. at a cost of £640 to connect the Hall to the now-demolished Upper Wern farm.

David Rowell & Co. Ltd. was an iron and steel working company based in Westminster, London established in 1855. In an 1891 advert the company described itself as ‘the iron, wire, wire rope and fencing company’, and in the 1900s it began mass producing a catalogue of steel suspension bridges using its steel wire rope. The design of these economical foot and single lane bridges was heavily indebted to 19th century French precedents. They were shipped from Westminster as kits of parts to locations across the British Empire and beyond, with customers in New Zealand, the Falklands and Baghdad as well as the British Isles. The firm continued manufacturing bridges to slightly modernised designs until the 1960s.

Exterior

Steel suspension bridge of hollow lattice truss construction and steel-wire cable suspension. 41 metre span and 3-metre-wide single lane deck. Paired lattice towers at either end carry the cables with the lattice frames hung below with connecting transverse members supporting timber deck. The towers are tapered and have ball and spike finials, lower portions up to handrail level now encased in supporting concrete. A pair of steel wire ropes on either side (four ropes total) run through tubular suspenders with flat link section with two heavy rivets, bulky anchor point clasps at each corner stamped ‘ROWELL LONDON’. Portal trusses have shallow arch below and are flat above with zig zag girders between.

Reason for designation

Included for its special architectural and historic interest as one of the earliest and best-preserved Rowell bridges in Wales. Notwithstanding concrete encasing lower portions of towers the bridge is otherwise little altered and retains far more original components than some later Rowell bridges, making it an increasingly rare survival of a once common structure. Group value with Pickhill Hall and associated listed buildings.