The 

Galton Bridge is a cast-iron bridge in Smethwick, near Birmingham, in central 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 70 ft (21 m) above the canal, making it reputedly the highest
single-span arch bridge in the world when it was built, 26 ft (7.9 m) wide, and 150 ft (46 m) 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
grade I 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. One of the major
obstacles on the route was a patch of high ground at Smethwick, roughly 4 mi (6.4 km) 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.[1][2]

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. The canal
proprietors consulted Thomas Telford, the most eminent canal engineer of the day, and he designed
a new, straighter route (known as the New Main Line, the original canal becoming the Old Main Line)
which significantly reduced the length of the canal.[1][3] This scheme involved the excavation of an
artificial valley through the high ground in Smethwick. The bridge was named after Samuel Tertius
Galton, a local businessman and major investor in the Birmingham Canal Company.[4][5]

Three local roads were severed by the work, two of which were replaced with traditional masonry
bridges, but Roebuck Lane was to cross the cutting at its widest and deepest point. Like all the
bridges on the new route, it needed to span the canal without obstructing the waterway or
the towpaths. Hence, Telford considered a lighter structure was necessary.[1][6] Telford was a pioneer
in the use of cast iron and became famed for his bridges and aqueducts using the material, which he
discovered could be used to create wider spans than had previously been possible using brick or
stone.[4][7] Cast iron is brittle under tension but strong under compression; in bridge construction, it
tended to be used in arch form. The world's first iron bridge opened in Shropshire fifty years before
the Galton Bridge. Engineers including Telford spent the rest of the 18th century and much of the
19th refining the construction methods.[8]

Design
Telford's drawing for the Galton Bridge

The bridge is a single span of 150 ft (46 m), 26 ft (8 m) wide and 70 ft (20 m) above the canal. It
consists of six cast-iron ribs, each made of seven segments, bolted together. The bridge is supported
by tall brick abutments built into the valley sides. The deck plate is supported by X-shaped bracing in
the spandrels. Telford added a decorative parapet and lamp-posts, also in cast iron. When built, it
was believed to be the longest bridge over a canal and the highest single-span arch bridge in the
world; Telford wrote in his memoirs "At the place of greatest excavation is erected the largest canal
bridge in the world; it is made of iron."[4][9][10] All the ironwork was cast by Horseley Ironworks at its
canal-side factory in nearby Tipton.[4] The name "Galton Bridge" is cast into the centre of the
structure, below the parapet, on both sides and "Horseley Iron Works 1829" is cast below both
spandrels on both sides.[11]

In his memoirs, published posthumously, Telford described the Galton Bridge as an "extraordinary
span". He explained that his decision to build such a high bridge and to build it in cast iron, then still
a novel material, was one of "safety, combined with economy". A masonry bridge tall enough to
reach the top of the banks of the cutting would require substantial abutments which risked the
stonework becoming waterlogged and bulging during heavy rain, whereas an iron span was lighter
and required smaller abutments. Telford wrote that "the proportion of masonry is small, and
produces variety by its appearance of lightness, which agreeably strikes every spectator."[12]

The Galton Bridge is the last of a series of six cast-iron arch bridges built by Telford to a similar
design. The first was at Bonar Bridge in the Scottish Highlands, built in 1810, which became the
prototype. Others include the Mythe Bridge at Tewkesbury, built three years before the Galton
Bridge, and the Holt Fleet Bridge in Worcestershire, completed in 1828.[4][13] The Galton Bridge is the
only one of the six surviving without later modification; Bonar Bridge was washed away in a flood
and Mythe and Holt Fleet bridges were both strengthened with modern materials in the 20th
century. The others are Craigellachie Bridge (1814) in north-eastern Scotland, and Waterloo
Bridge (1816) in Betws-y-Coed, North Wales, both also strengthened in the 20th century.[14][15][16]

The Galton Bridge originally held commanding views of the valley on either side, but these are now
obstructed. The bridge is hemmed in between the Smethwick Station Bridge, a railway bridge built in
the 1860s, on the west (Wolverhampton) side, and a partial infill of the cutting where a 1970s road
scheme crosses the canal on the east (Birmingham) side.[4][17]