Southwark iron bridge, London, UK

Abstract

With the longest cast iron arch span ever built, Southwark Bridge brought the structural engineering of the industrial age to the heart of London. The bridge was a monumental work of engineering, spanning the Thames in the new material of iron rather than in traditional masonry. To the French engineer Charles Dupin it was ‘the bridge of the giants’. John Rennie himself wrote in 1820, ‘On the whole nothing in which I have ever been concerned has proved more satisfactory than this bridge’. As a toll bridge the project was a commercial failure, and although completion of the 5780 t of structural ironwork was a tremendous achievement by Walker and Co. of Rotherham, it broke them financially and was their last major work. This paper gives an account of Southwark Bridge against a background of the development of early iron bridges, with particular emphasis on Rennie's contributions.