Projects
To ensure that the bridge is always available to our community and visitors takes constant monitoring and maintenance. A rigorous programme of inspection to identify and plan repairs as they are required is ongoing. Having said that the intervals can sometimes be quite long. After coming into community ownership, the bridge was repainted in 2000-1, before that it had last been painted in 1937!
In recent years the bridge was pressure washed to remove dirt and accumulations of lichen which would damage the paint structure. The bridge had to close for two weeks so the work could be done safely.
In 2018 Divers were sent down to inspect the middle pier in the river. We were concerned that the riverbed may have been washed away from the pier making it unstable. This is called scour fortunately there was none, demonstrating the skill of Victorian engineers in their design and construction, as well as the nature of the riverbed.
Not all the work is done by professionals! Over several years our community has turned out to help remove dirt and weeds from the bridge deck helping to prevent the wooden deck beginning to rot
Even during the pandemic, we have been working to preserve our bridge, some repainting was done, and we have been trying for some time to stabilise one of the towers. A sycamore tree had become established between two of the stone blocks forming the base and displacing one of them. In order to remove the tree, the block had to be removed too, but the cast iron tower is resting on it! Not only that but inside Not only that but inside any of the fixtures holding the iron work together had over the years fractured.
We have been able to employ expert contactors to both replace or refashion many of the fixtures and during the summer of 2022 are planning the work on the stones and we will at last see the back of the sycamore!
In June 2022 our most recent project was to install information boards beside the bridge telling the story of our bridge and how it came to be owned by our community
