A Bridge Too Far?

This is the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol in the South West of England. The idea of a bridge spanning the Avon River Gorge took shape in 1754 when William Vick, a local wine merchant, left £1000 in his will to be invested until the sum had grown sufficiently to pay for a bridge to be built. The investment matured and in 1829 a competition was arranged to design a bridge. There were 22 designs submitted but all of them were rejected by the judge, Thomas Telford, one of the greatest engineers of the day. Telford was subsequently asked to submit his own design, which was accepted by the trustees. However this decision was not well received, given that Telford had been the contest judge, and so a second design competition was staged. Isambard Kingdom Brunel was declared the winner in 1831 and it is his bridge that spans the Avon Gorge today. What only emerged recently however, discovered in some family papers, was that Brunel ran his design past his engineer father, Marc Isambard Brunel, who told him that it would be impossible to build such a bridge in a single span. Sir Marc put forward his own alternative design, which features a 300 foot Chinese pagoda to support the bridge in the centre. "You should do it like this," he said in one letter, including the drawing. The Asian influence on architecture and design was particularly strong at the time but Isambard decided to ignore his father's advice. His own bridge features two 86 foot towers at each side with chains that hold the bridge up. It's been standing since 1864 – one imagines that if Sir Marc and indeed Isambard himself had been alive to see it completed, the son might have been tempted to turn to his father and say: "I told you so!"

Do you think a 300 foot pagoda would have looked good in the centre of the bridge or do you prefer Isambard's version?

©2010 Nicola Cornick. All Rights Reserved.

.