A Bridge Too Far, or Too Late!

 Over the winter I intend to use my subscription to the British Newspaper Archive to look out for stories of the past along the route we have traveled this year. Our boat was close by where we live over winter this year. Even so from March we weren't allowed to visit for a good few weeks. We finally got away towards the end of July. Thorne is one the Stainforth and Keadby Canal.

We turned right out of the marina, heading towards Stainforth and Thorne Lock. The first obstruction is the Princess Royal Swing Bridge. This is notorious for not working, but is just a pedestrian bridge. The main road is taken over the canal by the high level bridge next to it.

The site of the high level bridge was the cause of around a decade of disadvantage to the town as in 1921 the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Canal Company banned heavy traffic, greater than 5 tons from using it. You can see below that the bridge, know as the Toll Bridge was a wooden construction and could be swung to allow vessels to pass. Hearings were held over the next couple of years as it caused severe problems for the town. Darley's Brewery in the town had four or five lorries greater than this and these had to unload at one side and have the stuff carried across and reloaded. Thorne Rural district Council had a road roller for road mending and they had to use the railway to move it from one side of the canal to the other!

Picture of the bridge from May 1925.

The wooden bridge seen from the other direction. It is remarkable how similar the old bridge is to the new foot bridge.

A very similar picture to the last but a little more clear, ans with a keel just coming through the bridge hole.

In 1923 it was agreed that a new bridge was required, it was thought that who was going to pay for it would be the problem. By 1925 things had progressed somewhat and an estimate of £75,000 had been received. However things weren't plain sailing. There was disagreement about what type of bridge was required. West Riding County Council wanted a fixed bridge and the Canal Company wanted a swing bridge, on top of who was to pay for it. The canal company didn't want to pay anything but wanted to control the bridge to ensure priority for canal traffic over the road users. The Canal Company used blocking tactics by not attending meetings and generally being obstructive. By 1927 it had been agreed that the Canal Co would only contribute £1600 and the rest would be found between the West Riding and the Ministry of Transport. However the S&SYCC still wanted to be in control of the bridge!

By 1929 there was more pressure on having the bridge completed as the Boothferry Bridge over the Ouse had been opened and now Thorne was on the main connecting route from the south of England to the docks at Goole and Hull. Thorne Rural District Council were getting extremely angry at the delays caused and had sort permission to build a temporary bridge over the old bridge in 1928. By May 1929 tenders had been received and there was now the wait for permission to commence from the Ministry of Transport in London. By September 1929 construction had started. The old bridge was moved bodily to one side to allow the new bridge to be built on the original site. The bridge finally opened in October 1930! It sounds as if nothing changes as the new bridge was only single file traffic!!. It seemed to break down frequently as it was operated by a rope and pulley affair and the ropes came off the pulleys often. It seems that usually this didn't take the bridge men, who were in their hut by the bridge, more than fifteen minutes to fix.

The Princess Royal Bridge seems to have similar problems of reliability but we had no problems on this occasion. 

When we lived in the Midlands we had to come to Hull to visit relatives passing through Bawtry and Thorne and passing what must have been RAF Finningley with the Vulcan Bombers lined up ready for a rapid scramble with their atomic bombs aboard. The route is now a secondary route as the A1M and M18 have become the trunk routes, and the canal passes under the M18 just outside Thorne.