World crumbles for once proud Shropshire bridge

In the end, it was no contest. Mind you, the 150-year-old canal bridge at Preston-on-the-Weald-Moors did put up quite an impressive fight.

It met its end in August 1985, despite an unsuccessful campaign by villagers to save it.

And if you've got to go, you might as well go out in a blaze of glory. The bridge was destroyed in engineering research prompted by national concern about the effects of the increasing weight of traffic on old arch bridges.

So it was destroyed in a controlled, scientific way, with the results being captured in a series of pictures.

The Preston bridge proved to be a tough old nut, and took just over 200 tonnes before failing.

A video and time lapse photographs were taken during the tests while engineers looked on. The idea was to analyse the results and produce a research paper.

Afterwards Shropshire County Council filled the hole and reinstated the road.

The test was conducted by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory, the research arm of the Department of Transport.

Speaking at the time, the county chief bridge engineer, John Fisher, said old arch bridges were complicated structures to analyse mathematically.

"You can't beat the real thing," he said.

The county had been approached by the laboratory for candidates for destructive load testing and the Preston bridge, which was redundant, was offered. The canal itself was long defunct and filled in.

In the testing, the bridge was pulled downwards by jacks against ground anchors.

Witnessing the test were engineers and scientists from the laboratory, engineers from the county council, and interested members of the profession.

Villagers had campaigned against the destruction of the bridge because they felt they would lose a bit of their heritage – and also because it was close to a school and they felt it helped slow down traffic.