Tonight: Paulton, Somerset: talk on the Severn Rail Bridge

[whole diary]

[Mark A]

Opened on this day 1879.

Hosted by the Somerset Coal Canal people.

7:30 - 9:30pm. Paulton Village Hall, BS39 7LW. Paulton's accessible by bus from both Bristol and Bath.

Mark

https://www.facebook.com/events/1382998125622222

[grahame]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severn_Railway_Bridge

The opening ceremony for the bridge took place on 17 October 1879; nearly 400 dignitaries travelled in twenty-three first class carriages across the bridge and back again, with fog detonators exploding on each of the spans during the return trip

In 1943, a flight of three Spitfire fighter aircraft was being delivered by ATA pilots, including one woman, Ann Wood, from their factory in Castle Bromwich to Whitchurch, Bristol. As it was low tide, the lead pilot Johnnie Jordan flew under the bridge. Some time later, Ann Wood repeated this underflying – without realising that this time it was high tide and there was 30 ft (9 m) less headroom but she just squeezed through. These were not the only instances of pilots buzzing the bridge, and on one occasion a Vickers Wellington bomber, a much larger aircraft, was seen to fly under it. The practice became so common that RAF^▸ (Royal Air Force) police were called in and tasked with the recording of serial numbers of offending aircraft. After a few courts-martial the incidents ceased

[Mark A]

The talk was from one Paul Bennett, the slides from it are to be found on the newspaper front page from the Friends of Purton web site's page on the following link. In his talk he lays a few myths to rest and I believe starts a few other hares running.

It was very useful of him to draw attention to the closeness in time of two events, the opening of the Severn Bridge and the fall of the Tay Bridge at the end of that year. Those with the care of the Severn Bridge on their plates, that event must have given them pause for thought, but the two structures had less in common than might be thought (or said for that matter).

Also useful to bring to mind was the unnervingly long catalogue of boats that collided with the Severn Bridge during its lifetime. Given the river conditions, it's difficult to see how that could have been completely addressed but something could certainly have been done, and the advent of radar will have mitigated this risk too.

Paul had a couple of really good 'Rescued from skips' tales to relate, one involving a set of 30 or so glass plate negatives (some of the images to be seen in the pdf of his presentation linked from that site...) These include the image of the engineer for the bridge posed in one of the column castings.

https://www.friendsofpurton.org.uk/severnb/

The talk left me with the impression that the story of the bridge as an achievement, no matter that it was a bit of an economic disaster, is not yet well explored and deserves to be rather better revealed than it is.

As for the travel, to Paulton from Bath is relatively straightforward as the bus routes run at least hourly until late evening. However, various roadworks, including Bath to Radstock in the dip at Dunkerton, and an evening and overnight road closure at Temple Cloud, had shredded the bus timetable. That didn't hurt the journey out from Bath, but on the return, the electronic display at the stop in Paulton was fiction, so a 1 hour + wait while reflecting that last time I checked the Radstock  - Midsomer Norton - Paulton area has a population of upwards of 40,000 and needs all the public transport that it can lay hands on.

Mark