Iris seeks to crack Buildwas bridge riddle
Here's an easy puzzle for readers to solve - where exactly is this bridge?
There is even an obvious clue as the company publicity describes it as: "Bridge over the River Severn at Buildwas."
The handiwork of E.C. & J. Keay Ltd engineers and ironfounders at their James Bridge Works, Darlaston, it is 135ft in span and 28ft in width, and the steelwork weighs in at 146 tons.
So many readers will have no trouble in identifying it as the bridge over the River Severn to the original 1930s Ironbridge Power Station.
The only trouble with that is that it isn't.
The picture was brought in by Mrs Iris Norwood, of Doseley, Telford, who has been trying to solve the riddle on behalf of a colleague from the history group in Cheslyn Hay. Mrs Norwood is from Hollybush, Cheslyn Hay, originally, and moved to Shropshire in 1971.
"I just know him as Ken, and he comes to the history group at Cheslyn Hay, of which I am a member. He lived in Darlaston and had this photograph and asked me if I knew where it was, saying that I lived up that area now.
"So I went to the power station and asked the man on the gate and asked if he knew where it is. He said 'It's probably the old bridge up the road.' But you can't get to it, there is big iron fencing, and you can't see it very well.
"My son took a photograph of it, and it doesn't look like that at all. I don't think it looks like the same bridge.
"I would love to be able to find out. It says it's at Buildwas, so it's got to be somewhere down there."
However, with a bit of digging, we're pretty sure we can now solve the mystery. The company literature is somewhat visually misleading, because it seems to have "squeezed" the photograph to give a false perspective, making the bridge in question look smaller in span than it actually is, or rather was.
Because the bridge is no longer there in its current form. It is the Buildwas bridge which was built in 1905 and 1906 to replace a previous iron bridge built by Thomas Telford in the 1790s.
That replacement was in turn replaced in 1992, incorporating the stone abutments from Telford's bridge.
