“Iron Bridges.” Floridian and Advocate, vol. III, no. 45, 26 June 1832, p. [3]. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers. Accessed 18 Aug. 2026.
The credit of having first suggested the practicability of constructing the bridges of iron has been claimed for the notorious Thomas Paine, who is said to have conceived the idea from contemplating the fabrication of a spider’s web in America. Whatever may be thought of this assertion, it is certain that, in 1787, Paine presented to the Academy of Sciences at Paris the model of a bridge which he had invented; and it is equally a fact, that during a greater part of the year following he resided at Rotherham, in Yorkshire, where a bridge chiefly of wrought iron, was constructed under his direction, by the Messrs. Walker.
Whatever may have been the precise principle of this pattern bridge, it was taken to London; exhibited there for a time; returned again to Rotherham, and there broken up. Pieces of this fabric were not long since to be seen on the premises of Messrs. Walker; some of which were occasionally carried away as curiosities, by persons preferring a fragment of the handiwork to a relic of the osseous system of the famous author of the “Rights of Man!”
It appears however, from designs now or lately in the possession of Mr. White, of Devonshire Place, that Mr. Pritchard, an architect of Eyton Turret, Shropshire, so early as the year 1773, suggested the practicability of constructing wide iron arches, capable of admitting the passage of the water of such a river as the Severn; and, in fact, the first practical exhibition of the plan, on a large scale, was the construction of the bridge at Colebrook Dale, chiefly in accordance with Mr. Pritchard’s plans.