Thomas Telford's single-arch stone bridge over the Severn at Gloucester, built in the late 1820s and now walkers and cyclists only
Open accessfree to visit at any reasonable time
Thomas Telford, one of the era’s leading civil engineers, designed Over Bridge to take the place of a Tudor crossing that river ice had wrecked in 1818, and the single stone arch across the Severn was finished in 1830. The bridge runs about 100 metres from bank to bank, using a design based on an 18th-century bridge over the Seine near Paris. Telford cut horn-shaped notches into the sides of the arch, a technique called cornes de vache, meant to ease the flow of floodwater and make the arch look longer and flatter than it really is. When the temporary wooden supports came out after building work, the arch’s highest point dropped by about ten inches as the ground beneath settled, though the dip never weakened the bridge. A new road bridge eventually took over, and today only walkers and cyclists cross Over Bridge, free at any time. Gloucester Cathedral and the city’s old friary ruins are a couple of miles east, and the River Severn path runs north and south from the bridge on both banks.
