Britain's Coastal Road Bridges by Mark Chatterton

Most people like bridges. Bridges are found everywhere around the world; mainly where a river needs to be crossed, or sometimes a railway, canal or road. They are also used to join an island to the mainland. They are a very useful form of structure which make our journeys easier. They connect separated communities and save countless extra miles of traveling round an estuary, a loch or a river. Bridges are some of the most photographed structures on the planet and are often seen on television in the form of a backdrop, or on adverts with car companies using them to show off their latest model. This book concentrates solely on road bridges that are used by road traffic on a daily basis and are found on or near the coast of Great Britain.

Britain’s Coastal Road Bridges takes you on a journey around the coast of Britain looking at the various road bridges that can be found on or near to the various seas which surround Great Britain. The book starts at the River Thames east of London with the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge (or Dartford Bridge as it is better known). We then go in a clockwise direction around the coastline of England, Wales and Scotland before coming down the east coast of England back to the River Thames and the final bridge in the book at Canvey Island. Obviously it has not been possible to include every bridge there is, but I have chosen 100 different road bridges which carry motor vehicles over them. They have been chosen for various reasons such as historical worth, strategic use, architectural beauty, or simply because they are iconic bridges known to the vast majority or the population.

In the majority of cases the bridge featured will be a road bridge over a river or its estuary on the coast. However, in some cases it might be a bridge connecting an island with the mainland. I also look at one or two bridges which are at entrances to the docks of a certain town. Finally, there is a section where some ‘alternative road bridges’ are looked at such as floating bridges and transporter bridges. When the bridge is crossing over a river I have usually looked at the bridge nearest to the sea, though in some cases such as at Totnes, Preston and Newcastle-upon-Tyne this has meant going inland several miles. In several cases I have included the two nearest road bridges to the sea, mainly because there has been a bridge crossing a river which has stood there for hundreds of years. Then in more recent years a new by-pass bridge has been built nearer the sea, which is included to fit in with the ethos of this book.

All sorts of bridges are covered, from the newest one at Great Yarmouth opened in 2024, through to some very old ones such as at Bideford for example, which dates back to the Middle Ages. There are iconic bridges like the Humber and Severn Bridges through to ones known only to local users such as at Shoreham-by-Sea and Workington. I have tried to include such details as the length and width of the bridge, its age and its type, such as suspension or arch. I have also included in some cases an interesting fact about a particular bridge. I have not included definitions of the various types of road bridges. This information can be found in my previous book on road bridges, British Road Bridges: An Introduction, which came out in 2017. I hope to write a companion book to this one in the near future which will look at some of the many road bridges found inland in Great Britain.

This book is a celebration of the best of British engineering that went into building and designing most of these bridges and overcoming the various obstacles to their construction. Also, let’s not forget the many people who built them and who have since upgraded them. All facts about the bridges are accurate as far as I know, though if you the reader does notice anything that is amiss please contact me via the publisher and it will be changed in a future edition.

Britain's Coastal Road Bridges by Mark Chatterton is available for purchase now.