Was the Gaunless really the world's first iron railway bridge?

Last week, Memories told how Historic England had awarded £161,000 to restore “the world’s first iron railway bridge” over the River Gaunless in West Auckland.

The bridge was designed by George and Robert Stephenson in 1823 and carried the coal wagons of the Stockton & Darlington Railway when it opened in 1825.

One of the parapets of the Gaunless Bridge which is going to be saved and turned into a walking and cycleway

But, as ever with railway history, there are other places with rival claims to the title of being the world’s first of anything…

“Sorry, you’re going to have to eat humble pie,” said Merthyr Tydfil council in Wales very sweetly sending over a picture of “the world’s first iron railway bridge” which they advertise as being in their possession.

It is the Pont-y-Cafnau (above) over the River Taff which was built in 1793 – a full 30 years before the Gaunless bridge – by engineer Watkin George who worked at the Cyfarthfa ironworks.

“The 230-year-old structure is the world's oldest cast-iron railway bridge and both a Scheduled Ancient Monument and Grade II* listed structure,” says a council press release.

In Welsh, Pont-y-Cafnau means “bridge of troughs” because this bridge was a triple decker. It carried two streams of water, one top and the other bottom, into the ironworks to drive the waterwheels, and the lower trough was decked over so the miniature Gurnos tramroad could run along it to take limestone from a quarry into the ironworks.

The ironworks closed in 1921, and so the Pont-y-Cafnau no longer carries either water or tramroad as it is now a footbridge – only it is currently closed after damage sustained in the winter storms of 2020. Because it is such a historically precious structure, its repairs are taking some time.

People on the Gaunless Bridge, no doubt admiring its pioneering lenticular construction, before the ironwork was removed in 1901

The Gaunless Bridge could, if it wanted, confront the Welsh pretender to its crown. Afterall, a tramway – where the wheels usually run in grooves – is not quite the same as a railway, and the Gurnos tramroad only had a narrow 4ft gauge compared to the S&DR’s 4ft 8inch, which was the gauge that the rest of the world copied (with half-an-inch of wiggle room added on).

But perhaps these are just pedantic squabbles. Perhaps the S&DR should allow Wales its claim to fame and more accurately describe the Gaunless Bridge as “the world’s first standard gauge iron railway bridge” or just “one of the world's earliest iron railway bridges”.

Because this proves the point of why the S&DR is so special. It gathered together all the best ideas of the age, all of the most cutting edge technology of the moment, and then put them to work over an industrial 26 miles across the countryside, and rivers, of south Durham. It is not really the first of anything, but it is the first of everything – it is the railway that got the world on track.

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