Vauxhall Bridge, Great Yarmouth
Posted: May 31st, 2010 | Author: bridget | Filed under: Transitions | Tags: Great Yarmouth Heritage, Vauxhall Bridge | 1 Comment »
2010
Mrs. Kiki, who has run the famous Seafood Restaurant on North Quay with her husband Chris for 30 years, has managed a brave campaign for the last nine years to save Vauxhall Bridge, a Grade II Listed Building of Architectural and Historic Interest. Her property looks over the bridge and she is acutely aware of its heritage and potential aesthetic value. She believes it should be preserved and smartened up as a proud testament to Great Yarmouth’s industrial past and a unique historical welcome to visitors on their arrival at the station.
Yarmouth Vauxhall Station, now Great Yarmouth Station, served the line to Norwich through Reedham opened up by the Norfolk Railway in 1844, one of the first railways in the county to open. The station was separated from the two other stations in the town by the River Bure. Vauxhall Bridge was opened in 1852, seven years after the fatal collapse of a former suspension bridge across the River Bure, when 79 people, mostly children, drowned.
The new iron bridge was a Fairbairn-type box girder construction. The box girder is the structure at body level as you walk across the footbridge. Fairbairn was involved with Robert Stephenson, son of the locomotive pioneer George Stephenson, and Eaton Hodgkinson in the design of the Britannia Railway Bridge over the Menai Straits. His innovative work on that bridge led to the introduction of the box girder for railway bridges, most from that period now demolished as loadings have increased or lines been closed. The Vauxhall Bridge in Great Yarmouth is a rare survivor. It was built in two sections, one side for the tramway run by Yarmouth Union Railway as a one mile long connecting line to the other stations and the fish wharfs on South Quay, and the other for foot passengers and horse drawn traffic.
1985
A further claim to fame is that it is one of only two such bridges to be strengthened by alteration to its structural form in the 19th Century. Arched ribs were added in 1886 rising above the box girders for added strength, with vertical iron rods supporting the girders from the arches. These elegant bows strengthened the bridge for locomotives run by the Great Eastern Railway in the 1880s. The design and erection of the new structure around the old one would have been very innovative and challenging at the time. The other strengthened bridge was a suspension bridge in Erith in Cambridgeshire, which was converted to a lenticular truss but has since been demolished.
As Vauxhall Bridge is the only one of its kind now existing in this country, it is of real historical importance as an outstanding piece of industrial architecture. It is Grade II listed and registered at the Institute of Civil Engineers as historical engineering work 0391. Peter Cross-Rudkin, author and civil engineer, who is writing a book on Civil Engineering Heritage in East Anglia, has described it as a monument of the 1st rank.
In 1976 the railway line from the station to North and South Quays was closed but people could still drive over until 22nd February 1988, when it was closed to vehicle access. It has since been used as a footbridge only to Great Yarmouth station from North Quay.
The bridge is now owned by Railway Paths, a sister charity to Sustrans, the sustainable transport charity (www.sustrans.org.uk). Sustrans were asked to produce structural survey when the Civic Trust, Great Yarmouth Town Centre Strategy Report “Station Gateway” was being compiled in 2001. There is no mention of the bridge in its East of England Strategic Plan for 2009-13, however Sustrans says it is keen to support redevelopment of the area, though “there is still much to be done”.
The Station Gateway proposal warned against failure to attend to the structural instability of the current bridge. It was foreseen that there was a risk of the station becoming isolated from the town centre. By the time that the GYBC Runham Vauxhall Regeneration Project reported on the station gateway the bridge was seen to pose a low level hazard to sailing vessels as well as pedestrians (an eight berth boat became wedged under the Grade II listed structure close to Yarmouth yacht station at 11am after trying to negotiate it during high tides on the 13th May 2010). Another factor mitigating against preservation of the bridge is that Box girder structures are difficult to maintain, because of the need for access to a confined space inside the box. A workman in 1910 working inside the box was overcome by fumes and had to be cut out.
However, Philip Watkins, Chief Executive of 1st East, pledged his support for the restoration of the bridge, describing it as a “little gem that needs polishing”. The bridge now forms an important part of the plans to link the station with a regenerated North Quay and town centre. Regarding improvements to the area around the station in the Great Yarmouth URC Area Action Plan, Preferred Option, 2007, it states “Pedestrian and cycle linkages need to be upgraded, to provide new, enhanced links to the Conge and the Market Place, ideally through the restoration of the old railway bridge.”
See http://www.1steast.co.uk/downloads/GreatYarmouthAAPJan.pdf
Thanks to Mrs. Kiki, David Wardale, Norfolk County Council Project Engineer, was introduced to the plight of the bridge and he has secured £300,000 funding from the Lottery Fair Share Trust, ringfenced until this year. There is yet much work to do however to secure the bridge for the future and to improve the landscape around the site.
Living Streets, a charity which represents pedestrians, is now also backing the campaign: see http://www.eastcoastlive.co.uk/news/info.php?refnum=2234
Anybody able or willing to offer support for this campaign to save the bridge, please email here. Comments very welcome (click on “comments” in title bar and comments box will open).
References
EDP Wed 2.12.09
EDP Thur 3.9.10
EDP Frid 30.10.09
EDP 25.01.10
Great Yarmouth Mercury 07.05.10
http://www.berneyarms.co.uk/html/yarmouth/rail/quay/quay.htm
