Cantlop Bridge is a single span cast-iron road bridge over Cound Brook

Cound Brook

Cound Brook is a tributary of the River Severn in Shropshire, England, running to south of the county town Shrewsbury. The Cound Brook rises in the Stretton Hills and discharges into the River Severn at Eyton on Severn after winding its way for across the southern Shropshire-Severn plains.The flow...

 in the parish of Berrington

Berrington, Shropshire

Berrington is a small village and civil parish in Shropshire, England. According to the 2001 census the village had a population of 30, though the parish, which also includes the larger villages of Cross Houses and Cantlop, had a population of 805 in total....

, Shropshire

Shropshire

Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...

. It was constructed in 1818 to a design possibly by Thomas Telford

Thomas Telford

Thomas Telford FRS, FRSE was a Scottish civil engineer, architect and stonemason, and a noted road, bridge and canal builder.-Early career:...

, being at least having been approved by him, and replaced an unsuccessful cast iron coach bridge constructed in 1812. The design of the bridge was innovative for the period, using a light-weight design of cast-iron lattice ribs to support the road deck in a single span, and appears to be a scaled-down version of a Thomas Telford bridge at Meole Brace

Meole Brace

Meole Brace is a suburb of Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England.The Rea Brook flows through the area, a tributary of the River Severn. The brook was in the past known as the "Meole Brook". The name Meole Brace comes from the old Saxon manor house, which no longer stands, owned by the Brace family...

, Shropshire. The bridge is the only surviving Telford-approved cast-iron bridge in Shropshire, and is a Grade II listed building and scheduled monument.

History and Description

Thomas Telford worked as the County Surveyor of Shropshire between 1787 to 1834, and the bridge is reported to have once held a cast iron plate above the centre of the arch inscribed with "Thomas Telford Esqr - Engineer - 1818", which is apparently visible in historic photographs, but has not been in place since at least 1985. The bridge design incorporates dressed red and grey sandstone abutment

Abutment

An abutment is, generally, the point where two structures or objects meet. This word comes from the verb abut, which means adjoin or having common boundary. An abutment is an engineering term that describes a structure located at the ends of a bridge, where the bridge slab adjoins the approaching...

s with ashlar

Ashlar

Ashlar is prepared stone work of any type of stone. Masonry using such stones laid in parallel courses is known as ashlar masonry, whereas masonry using irregularly shaped stones is known as rubble masonry. Ashlar blocks are rectangular cuboid blocks that are masonry sculpted to have square edges...

 dressings, these are slightly curved and ramped, with chamfered ashlar quoins, string courses, and moulded cornices. The structural cast-iron comprises of a single segmental span with four arched lattice ribs, braced by five transverse cast-ironmembers. The road deck is formed from cast-iron metal deck plates, tarmacked over, and now finished with gravel. The original parapets have at some point been replaced with painted cast-iron railings with dograils, dogbars and shaped end balusters.

The bridge today remains as a monument only, being closed to normal traffic. It was bypassed by a more modern adjacent concrete bridge built in the 1970's. It is in the care of English Heritage

English Heritage

English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...

and is freely accessible from a nearby layby.