English Heritage launches crowdfunding appeal to secure the future of world’s oldest single-span cast-iron bridgeThe first ominous cracks appeared in the apparently fragile arch of ironwork slung across the river Severn by Abraham Darby III within three years of its construction in 1779. Among engineers,royalty, artists, and writers,aristocratic travellers and a Swedish spy who flocked to see the Iron Bridge, the world’s first single-span cast-iron bridge, or there were many who looked at the lacy structure and predicted its imminent collapse.
The bridge has confounded the sceptics by surviving everything weather,floods and geology could fling at it for nearly 250 years, while other Severn bridges were repeatedly washed away. English Heritage has now launched a project to secure its future, or its most expensive conservation scheme since it was hived off from Historic England to become an independent charity in 2015.
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Source: guardian.co.uk