History behind the Union Chain Bridge and the Aldwark private bridge

Up near Berwick, the Union Chain Bridge over the Tweed, linking England to Scotland, is back in business after being shut for 30 months during which every piece of its 202-year-old structure has been removed, examined and repaired where necessary.

The Union Bridge being reopened this week near Berwick. Picture: Northumberland County Council

The Union Bridge is the world’s oldest operational chain suspension bridge, opened on July 26, 1820, to the designs of Captain Sir Samuel Brown. He had served in the Royal Navy from Newfoundland to the West Indies in which he had experimented with wrought iron chain cables. He left the navy in 1811 when it agreed to use iron chains to hold ships’ anchors rather than hemp ropes, and he set up the company which supplied all the chains to the Royal Navy until 1916.

Then Sir Samuel (above) began to see if his chains would hold up bridges. His first attempt was the 259ft (79 metre) Dryburgh Bridge, over the Tweed near Dryburgh Abbey in the Scottish borders, which opened on August 1, 1817, to much acclaim, even though it collapsed five months later in a hurricane.

Impressed, the private company 50 miles downstream at Berwick commissioned him to build the 449ft (137m) Union Chain Bridge, which opened on July 26, 1820.

The Union Bridge reopened this week near Berwick. Picture: Northumberland County Council

It’s success meant there was now an engineering solution that prevented pillars from being built in the middle of rivers where they were likely to be washed away. Over the next decade, Brown built another 10 chainlink bridges, from Brighton to Aberdeen, including the world’s first railway suspension bridge over the Tees between Stockton and the new port of Middlesbrough – on its opening day of December 27, 1830, it rumbled, cracked and rose up in the middle and was considered a scary disaster.

Whorlton suspension bridge, opened on July 7, 1831, but currently closed, awaiting repairs in the summer

On July 7, 1831, the region’s only other surviving suspension bridge from those pioneering days opened: the Whorlton Bridge over the Tees near Barnard Castle. It was designed by Newcastle architect John Green who hung it on chains that are apparently remarkably similar to those patented by Sir Samuel Brown. However, on July 24, 2019, it was closed for repairs which were initially due to be completed by March 2022. Durham County Council’s latest timetable says it hopes the work will now be carried out this summer, subject to funding.

Then it, too, will be back in service like the Union Bridge.

The Union Bridge reopened this week near Berwick. Picture: Northumberland County Council

SUSPECTING that Memories would be mentioning the reopening of the Union Bridge, Chris Barraclough presciently sent in this fabulous picture of his grandfather, Walter Barraclough, and his uncle, Frederick Barraclough, crossing the Union Bridge in their model T Ford in about 1930. They were returning to County Durham having visited their cousin in Berwickshire.

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Aldwark bridge in 2005 when the toll rose from 15p to 40p from cars

ONE of the great curiosities of North Yorkshire is the 250-year-old toll bridge that crosses the River Ure to the south of Boroughbridge.

As the Echo reported this week, the Aldwark Toll Bridge has just closed for the summer to allow for extensive renovations, meaning motorists will have to undertake a 25mile detour.

It is one of just eight privately owned toll bridges in the country, most of which date back to the mid to late 18th Century when individuals were able to approach Parliament and ask for permission to build a bridge – or indeed a road – at their own expense and then charge people to use it. Because of the conditions in the Act which enabled them to be built, most of the eight bridges are, like Aldwark, free of any obligation to pay tax on the takings because in the 18th Century, the government, which didn’t have a network of councils and highways authorities, was keen to encourage private individuals to improve the national infrastructure.

In Aldwark’s case, the individual was John Thomson who operated the ferry rowboat that connected the villages of Ouseburn on the west and Aldwark on the east – the name Aldwark comes from the Anglo-Saxon meaning “old fort”, which suggests that the Romans kept guard on the river crossing which was on the road to York. The bridge is still approached on both sides by Boat Lane in a nod to the centuries of ferrymen who plied their trade across the river.

One day, bad weather prevented Mr Thomson from operating, so he rode to London to seek Parliament’s permission. It was granted in 1768 and the bridge was in operation by 1772.

Not that travellers can today see much of the original structure because there’s an undocumented story that it was once damaged when it was struck by an iceberg, and it was almost entirely rebuilt in 1880 when its central section was swept away by a flood, so the lattice iron parapets date from then.

A Google StreetView image of one of the approaches to Aldwark bridge showing the tollkeeper's booth and cottage

In 1962, the bridge’s then owner, a company called Yorkshire Farmers Ltd, put it up for sale and the North Riding county council refused to buy it and so bring it into the public network. To astonishment, it was revealed that the toll collector, Mrs Wright, worked 105 hours a week for which she was paid £3 – less the £2 she paid for the rent of the tollkeeper’s cottage.

To raise the toll, the bridge’s owner, currently a private company registered in Derbyshire, has to get Parliamentary permission. In 1980, the toll for cars was doubled to 1p; in 1997, when 700,000 vehicles a year used it, it was 8p; by 2005, it had reached 15p and there was more astonishment as it rose to 40p. Last year, a planning inspector refused permission to raise it to 80p.

Now the Aldwark Bridge is closed for repairs until the end of October, so beware if you get stuck on Boat Lane on a smaller bridge over an unnamed stream to the east of the Ure. This misty, marshy spot is said to be haunted by a restless ghost which may, or may not, be connected to the Witch of Hollows Hole.

WE think Aldwark is Yorkshire’s last remaining private toll bridge. Until 1991, it had the company of the Selby Toll Bridge which was built in 1793 over a ferry crossing, and was on the main road from Doncaster to York and Newcastle. In 1963, it cost 9d for a vehicle to cross – so much that ambulancemen were instructed to carry patients over on a stretcher to the other side where they would be transferred to another ambulance to avoid the toll.

The act of toll collecting caused constant traffic back-ups in the town, so the bridge was bought by North Yorkshire County Council in 1991 with the council leader making the last paid for crossing on September 19 that year.

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