THE wonder of Whorlton is back! Last Friday, after seven years, £12m and 1,728 new components, Britain's earliest surviving iron chained suspension bridge with pylons at each end was re-opened to traffic.
It seems now to have lost its claim to be Britain's oldest road suspension bridge with its deck supported by its original iron chains, as 96 per cent of its 1,800 components have been replaced, but the place in history of the 195-year-old bridge is once again secure.
The repaired Whorlton suspension bridge, by Andy Futers (Image: Andy Futers)
It is to suspension bridges what Locomotion No 1 is to railways.
They come from the earliest days of their eras, and both have somehow survived against the odds: when Whorlton went up, other suspension bridges were collapsing all around it; when Locomotion No 1 set off, so many other steam engines were exploding all around it.
And both the bridge and the locomotive have been rebuilt so many times since they came into being, it is difficult to point at one piece and say it is genuinely original – yet their whole is truly historic and genuinely pioneering.
An Edwardian postcard of the Whorlton suspension bridge (Image: Chris Lloyd)
The village of Whorlton is a backwater, between Gainford and Barnard Castle, and the bridge was constructed as part of the Staindrop to Greta Bridge turnpike – a private road built for the public to use when they paid a toll. The expectation was that it would carry coal.
At first, it was to be a conventional bridge with a pillar in the middle.
Work started on June 9, 1829, when Miss Headlam, the daughter of the rector of nearby Wycliffe, laid the foundation stone 'amidst great rejoicings'.
However, four months later, a flood washed the stones away and the builder went bankrupt.
The investors, who were largely local landowners, realised they needed a different kind of bridge where the pillars weren't so vulnerable to floods: a bridge where the deck was suspended above the water.
The first suspension bridge in Britain had stood up-stream of Whorlton near Middleton-in-Teesdale. The Wynch Bridge at Low Force had been erected around 1704 for leadminers. However, this footbridge showed the perils of suspension bridges: in August 1802, one of its chains had snapped, plunging three haymakers 60ft into the Tees below. Amazingly, two survived – but a fellow called Bainbridge was dashed to bits on the rocks.
Suspension bridges were then shunned until Captain Sir Samuel Brown came on the scene. He had served with distinction in the navy during the Napoleonic Wars where he had pioneered the manufacture and use of iron chains. Then he began dangling bridges off his chains, which he made in a foundry in London.
The Union Bridge, near Berwick, reopens in 2013 (Image: Jeff J Mitchell)
His first bridge was over the Tweed near Berwick in 1820. It worked well, connecting England and Scotland.
He built another at Montrose before receiving a commission from the Stockton & Darlington Railway for the world's first railway suspension bridge over the Tees between Stockton and Port Darlington (now Middlesbrough).
The Stockton and Darlington Railway Suspension Bridge was a failure (Image: Tom Banks)
30th January 1826: The first major suspension bridge in the world, built in 1819-1826 by Scottish civil engineer Thomas Telford across the Menai Strait. The bridge spans 176 metres between the island of Anglesey and Bangor in Wales. Telford, a shepherd's son from Westerkirk near Langholm, was apprenticed to a stonemason at the age of 14 and worked in Edinburgh and London before being appointed the Surveyor of Public Works in Shropshire. In 1802 he was commissioned by the government to assess Scotland's transport requirements which led to the construction of the Caledonian Canal in 1803 and the building of 1,000 miles of road and over 1,200 bridges. He also developed a smoother road surface which was used until the end of the century. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) (Image: Getty Images)
Other chain bridges were springing up: Thomas Telford's famous one over the Menai straits, connecting Anglesey to Wales, opened in 1826; in Newcastle, the noted architect John Green was building one over the Tyne at Scotswood, and in North Yorkshire, Joseph Aloysius Hansom, from York, and his partner Edward Welch had hung one over the Ure at Middleham.
So the people of Whorlton engaged Mr Green, and his son Benjamin, to build them a new-fangled bridge. Construction began.
Almost immediately, the bottom fell out of the suspension bridge world. 1830 was a year of disasters.
On March 19, Sir Samuel's bridge in Montrose collapsed when 700 people were on it watching a regatta in the Esk below. Three were killed.
In October, the Middleham bridge collapsed when a herd of cows were stomping across – it is alleged that the cattle somehow fell in lockstep, causing massive vibrations that snapped a chain. Two cows drowned.
And then on December 27, Sir Samuel's railway bridge at Stockton performed dreadfully on its opening day: as the first train went over, the deck rose up like a tidal wave in front of it, and the pillar on the Yorkshire side cracked.
The railwaymen had to chain batches of four wagons nine feet apart to distribute the weight more evenly and get their cargoes across.
The Whorlton suspension bridge in the 1960s (Image: Unknown)
The people of Whorlton were undeterred by these disasters, perhaps because they had faith in their architects, the Greens who are best known for their Newcastle works like Grey's Monument, the Theatre Royal, the city station and the Penshaw Monument. Closer to home, they designed Blackwell Bridge in Darlington and the Witham Hall in Barnard Castle.
On April 1, 1831, the Greens attached the chains to the Durham pillar of Whorlton bridge. Bridge experts say these chains are remarkably similar to Sir Samuel's chain patent.
On April 16, the Greens' 670ft long Scotswood bridge opened without incident, and on July 7, the 180ft-long 'elegant structure' at Whorlton opened with a long procession.
The Whorlton bridge toll house being repaired in the 1960s (Image: Unknown)
The Barnard Castle Subscription Band and John Green led the way, followed by the bridge committee on horseback, led by the Venerable Archdeacon Headlam, followed by 27 carriages and sundry pedestrians.
They paraded down from the village green, around the sharp Snake Bend, past the toll cottage nestled at the foot of the Durham cliffs, and then they stomped across and climbed up the Yorkshire side to Col Cradock's Thorpe Hall.
So delighted were they with their new bridge that they turned around and stomped back over it and up the hairpin for a celebratory gala on the green.
Repairing the bank beneath Snake Bend at Whorlton in the mid-1960s (Image: Unknown)
In the evening, members of the committee crossed their bridge for a third time as they went to the Morritt Arms at Greta Bridge, where they dined long into the night.
Although Sir Samuel's 449ft Union Bridge and Telford's 579ft Menai Bridge survive, nearly all of the other early suspension bridges in the North-East have gone.
The railway bridge at Stockton continued to perform disastrously and was replaced in 1844.
Middleham's suspension bridge was restored after its cow-related collapse, but in 1865, girders of Stockton iron converted it into a conventional crossing, although its castellated towers still stand to make it a Yorkshire landmark.
In Newcastle, the Greens' Scotswood Bridge was demolished in 1967.
The Whorlton suspension bridge with the falls beneath it: there used to be a popular lido in this stretch of the Tees (Image: Richard Laidler)
Whorlton has wobbled in its time, too. It entered the ownership of Durham County Council at the start of the 20th Century, when tolls were removed and remedial work stayed some of its swaying.
But still the Whorlton vicar wrote in 1934: 'To cross it in a hurricane was a trying ordeal. The bridge heaved up and down in a peculiar manner, resembling somewhat a ship at sea.'
Still, it was safe enough in December 1942 for Winston Churchill to stand on it and watch men training down below, wading through the water and tackling the steep Durham cliffs in their preparations for D-Day.
At the start of the 21st Century, it had a £90,000 overhaul, but it closed to vehicles on July 24, 2019. Repairs were due to be completed in March 2022 until its condition was found to be worse than first imagined.
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There were concerns that the money would never be found but now the wonder of Whorlton has triumphed in time for its bicentenary.
It is a pioneering piece of engineering that still thrills travellers today and shows the brave ingenuity of the region in finding way to cross the Tees.
Perhaps it will act as an inspiration for those about 50 miles downstream who, even with Middlesbrough's bicentenary fast approaching, don't seem to have the wherewithal to project their thrilling and pioneering piece of engineering – the Transporter Bridge – into the future.