Galton Bridge

The Galton Bridge is a cast-iron bridge in Smethwick, near Birmingham, in the West Midlands of England. Opened in 1829 as a road bridge, the structure has been pedestrianised since the 1970s. It was built by Thomas Telford to carry a road across the new main line of the Birmingham Canal, which was built in a deep cutting. The bridge is above the canal, making it reputedly the highest single-span arch bridge in the world when it was built, wide, and long. The iron components were fabricated at the nearby Horseley Ironworks and assembled atop the masonry abutments. The design includes decorative lamp-posts and X-shaped bracing in the spandrels. In the 1840s, a railway bridge was built from one of the abutments, with a parapet in keeping with the original. The Galton Bridge carried traffic for over 140 years until it was bypassed by a new road, named Telford Way, in the 1970s, and now carries only pedestrians and cyclists. The bridge is one of six built by Telford that share common design features and the only one still standing without modification. It underwent minor repair work in the 1980s, after which it was repainted from its original black into a colour scheme intended to enhance its features. It is maintained by the Canal and River Trust and lends its name to the nearby Smethwick Galton Bridge railway station. It is a gradeI listed building. Background The original Birmingham Canal was built from the late 1760s along a meandering route, connecting Birmingham to Wolverhampton via the Black Country coalfields in the modern-day West Midlands. One of the major obstacles on the route was a patch of high ground at Smethwick, roughly west of Birmingham. The engineers had originally planned to tunnel through, but discovered that the ground conditions were not suitable. Thus, the canal was carried over the hill by a flight of locks. By the 1820s canal traffic had grown enormously and its narrowness was causing congestion. The summit at Smethwick was short and bordered by locks at each end; as a result, it was common for long queues of boats to form at either end and fights often broke out among boat crews. Improvements had been mooted for years, though the immediate catalyst for investment was a proposal for a railway connecting Birmingham to Liverpool via Wolverhampton.