This is a bridge that wasn’t on my original list when I started this project. Actually it isn’t a bridge now – just the remains of one – but I have decided to include it because it may soon be lost as part of the Jackfield stabilisation project (the abutments are identified to be demolished on the detailed plans).
The bridge passed under the Great Western Railway and is located in-between Bridges of the Ironbridge Gorge #9 and Bridges of the Ironbridge Gorge #10 (if you are travelling eastwards down Salthouse road it is on the left as you come to the end of the wooden trackway). You can barely see it through the undergrowth but the surface sewerage pipes now sit on top of it (you can just make them out from my shot taken deep in the woods).
The bridge was built in 1862 when the railway crossed the access lane to Wallace Colliery (south of the line) – a fairly small red-clay mine at that time. Later, in 1889, the Wallace Tileries opened on the same site and became quite a large concern – employing 25 men and with its own incline plane to move the clay to the tile works and a tramway to connect it to the railway sidings that were in front of the Craven Dunhill encaustic tile works.
You can see that this bridge had huge abutments to support the weight of the earthern railway banks and I suspect it was very similar in design as the one over the access lane to Bowers Yard (as shown in Bridges of the Ironbridge Gorge #14).
Sadly, the tileries closed in the 1940′s although the buildings remained until the 1960′s when they were demolished. There is no trace of any of this industrial site today.
