Volunteer, Tony Price, remembers visiting Buildwas and how he found our more about the bridges in his subsequent research:

“As a child I was taken to Buildwas by my parents. My father was visiting his boss. I however was more interested in the railway level crossing, always hoping that the crossing keeper would come out and close the gate, which was not too often.  The other thing that stayed in my mind was the large bridge over the river, also the remains of an old bridge.

Looking at the Shropshire Archives web site I was surprised to see that there appear to have been 5 bridges over river not 4 as is generally recorded. The first bridge was a stone one, which was washed away in the late 1700’s.

Thomas Telford was consulted about a replacement and he was commissioned to arrange a replacement.  In the meantime he seems to have commissioned a temporary replacement.”

“The Telford bridge was built by the Coalbrookdale Company.  This lasted until the start of the 20^th century. The Archives have extensive records of this bridge.

The next bridge was a steel lattice girder bridge, which lasted 95 years, and was replaced with the present concrete one.”

There aren’t any pictures of the latest bridge at Shropshire Archives, so if you’ve taken any recently we’d be pleased to add these to our collection.