Between Richmond and the North Sea thirty bridges span the Thames. They carry people across a stretch of river thirty-five miles long. Don Cruickshank, The Bridges that Built London, BBC 2012
These extraordinary structures have been the making of London. ibid.
Vauxhall – here in 1,500 B.C. before Troy fell and long before Julius Caesar came to Britain the people of the marshes made a first attempt at a crossing. ibid.
The Thames is like the River Jordan. ibid.
The river bed is changing all the time ... in truth very shallow. ibid.
Bridges were sacred things, things of religion. ibid.
London Bridge is the most famous. ibid.
For six hundred years London Bridge dominated the City. ibid.
The river regularly froze over. ibid.
The Watermen were a very powerful lobby indeed. ibid.
Between 1750 and 1850 nine bridges were thrown across the Thames. ibid.
There are one hundred and thirty-four bridges along the length of the Thames. Peter Ackroyd’s Thames 2/4, ITV 2008
The fatal command – burn the bridges ... This is a spectacle of horror and suffering. Napoleon: The Russian Campaign II, Yesterday 2015
It was the biggest bridge in the world: everyone in Brooklyn and New York agreed. Ken Burns, Brooklyn Bridge, PBS 1981
It took 14 long years to build the bridge: from 1869 to 1883. ibid.
The most striking features of this iron web were the cables radiating from its towers. ibid.
‘That’s the first mistake we’ve made since that guy sold us the Brooklyn Bridge.’ ibid. Stan Laurel
The Golden Gate Bridge should have a long bungee cord for people who aren’t quite ready to commit suicide but want to get in a little practice. George Carlin
The Severn Bridge, Bristol: ‘It was far ahead of its time’ ... ‘It’s magical’ ... ‘Back in the day that was a massive feat of engineering’. The Severn Bridge at 50: A High Wire Act, BBC 2016
The anchorages took over two years to construct, such is their scale. ibid.
On a Gothic bridge in Scotland: something is driving local dogs to their death … A long line of dogs to throw themselves off the bridge; what’s going on at Overtoun bridge? The Unexplained Files s2e8: Lost Giants of Georgia & Bridge of Death, 2014
For more than fifty years the Polcevera bridge stood as a landmark in the city of Genoa. It was one of the most famous bridges in Italy. But on 14th August 2018 disaster struck. 43 people died, 13 were injured: it was one of the worst bridge collapses in Europe for more than a century. So why did the bridge collapse? And was anyone to blame? Around the world people are now asking, How safe are our bridges? When Bridges Collapse: The Genoa Disaster, BBC 2019
17 cars and 10 lorries had fallen with the bridge. ibid.
The suspended parts of the bridge still hung precariously over blocks of flats: more than 600 people were forced to evacuate the apartments here. ibid.
Europe’s road have hundreds of bridges of the same age. ibid.
Its design contained a serious flaw … He [Morandi] bundled all his [steel] cables together and covered them in concrete to create single giant stays. ibid.
The close shave with the Hammersmith Flyover shows how cables buried in concrete can rust. ibid.
It was not an isolated incident. In the last six years six other bridges have collapsed in Italy. ibid.
Twenty-eight bridges span the river … ‘I’m standing in front of the most iconic bridge on the Thames: Tower Bridge. Everybody knows it. It’s got those twin towers. And it was built in 1894 so that the shipping could still come into this very valuable bit of water, the pool of London … It looks medieval, and that was the plan … It’s a really early steel-framed construction, but on the outside they put Cornish Granite and Portland Stone dressings … So it looks like a medieval castle’ Sophie Campbell, The River Thames: Then & Now, Channel 5 2020
London, England: a bridge that made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Bridges have been across the Thames for centuries. But twenty years ago a new iconic bridge left pedestrians with a very queasy feeling … The Millennium Bridge: a unique pedestrian-only crossing spanning the Thames. Massive Engineering Mistakes s1e1, Quest 2020
Britain’s iconic bridges spanning our most dramatic landscapes that not only linked our island but made it great. These are the bridges that are known around the world built by visionaries like Stephenson and Brunel. Rob Bell, Britain’s Greatest Bridges I: The Forth Rail Bridge, Channel 5 2016
The Forth Bridge: a mile and a half long, three hundred and sixty-one feet high, and more than a hundred and twenty years old, weighing over fifty-thousand tons and sitting on six hundred and forty thousand cubic feet of granite, it dominates the skyline. ibid.
Design: Sir John Fowler & Sir Benjamin Baker, 1890. ibid.
A gruelling eight years and cost many lives. ibid.
Tower Bridge: Horace Jones & John Wolfe Barry, 1894. Rob Bell, Britain’s Greatest Bridges II: Tower Bridge
In the heart of London there is a unique monument; Tower Bridge. The most famous bridge in the world and a true British icon, completed in 1894, almost 65 metres high and spanning 268 metres across the River Thames. ibid.
Clifton Suspension Bridge: Isambard Kingdom Brunel, William Henry Barlow, John Hawkshaw, 1864. Rob Bell, Britain’s Greatest Bridges III: Clifton Suspension Bridge
1,500 tons of wrought iron, 75 metres high, stretching gracefully for over 200 metres across the dramatic Avon Gorge in Somerset, the Clifton Suspension Bridge is nothing short of an engineering masterpiece. ibid.
The Britannia Bridge: Robert Stephenson 1850: There’s one bridge that not only changed Britain, it changed the world, and it’s a bridge you may never have heard of … This game-changing wrought-iron bridge had a span of over 460 metres and weighed more than 4,500 tons. Rob Bell, Britain’s Greatest Bridges IV: Menai Strait
Much of the original bridge was lost to a devastating fire. ibid.
The box girder: it was this innovation pioneered on the Britannia bridge that helped up to build the huge cargo ships that criss-cross the world’s oceans. ibid.
The Tyne Bridge: Mott, Hay and Anderson, 1928. Rob Bell, Britain’s Greatest Bridges V: Tyne Bridge
80,000 tons of solid steel and granite that dominate the skyline … All the weight of the bridge being passed along the arch down to the ground. ibid.
An extraordinary structure that is somewhat forgotten. It’s a record breaking structure that changed engineering for ever … This is the Humber Bridge. Its length from end to end is more than two kilometres. Britain’s Greatest Bridges VI: Humber Bridge
1981: It was the biggest suspension bridge on the planet. ibid.
Maidenhead bridge: the widest brick arches anywhere on Earth. Rob Bell, Brunel: The Man Who Built Britain, Channel 5 2017
The construction of the [Tamar] bridge was hugely complex and the biggest challenge of them was erecting the central pier right in the middle of the river Tamar. Rob Bell, Brunel: The Man Who Built Britain II
Construction of his Clifton Suspension Bridge finally began on 27th August 1831. But it was project fraught with problems. Rob Bell, Brunel’s Britain s1e1: Master of Bridges, Channel 5 2018
He would soon get the chance to build his own railway … The longest railway in the world. It was a project that would obsess him. ibid.
Majestic. Dramatic. Awe-inspiring. There are the bridges that are worldwide icons as well as engineering marvels. Each of them broke new ground. The first, the biggest, the longest, and the tallest. Rob Bell, World’s Greatest Bridges s2e1: Golden Gate Bridge, Channel 5 2018
The Golden Gate Bridge, 1937: I’m in California driving along the Pacific Coast Highway … It’s more than 1.7 miles long. Its two towers rise 746 feet above the water, and between them the main span stretches 4,200 feet across. ibid.
‘There are 600,000 rivets in each of these towers.’ ibid. workman