Bridgewater Canal Pickering's Bridge

Canal Bridge (accommodation), 1770, by James Brindley, for the Duke of Bridgewater's Canal.

MATERIALS: red brick in English Garden Wall bond, with ashlar sandstone dressings.

PLAN: rectangular-plan, single-span accommodation bridge with curved splayed abutments and wing walls.

DESCRIPTION: single-span, segmental arch with brick soffit and voussoirs, beneath a projecting ashlar sandstone band that springs from ashlar skew back stones, set within the splayed abutments. The bridge has a secondary humped concrete road surface over the arch, with steep macadamised gravel approaches. The parapet walls have flush sandstone coping stones, which step down over the curved wing walls. The coping stones exhibit mason's marks and their upper surfaces have incised graffiti. The canal banks beneath the bridge have sandstone block retaining walls that are inclined and canted back to either side of the abutments, and the tow path under the arch on the northern side is laid with stone sets. There are patches of repair to the brickwork, including some hard orange-coloured bull nose bricks, which have been used in alternate bands to infill the former timber roller recesses in the corners of the north abutment; these bricks exhibit damage and grooves caused by repeated rubbing by barge tow ropes. There is a small carved stone head on the outer face of the south-east wing wall, with a legend beneath incised into wet cement that reads: FRANK. Some of the coping stones have been replaced in brick and concrete, particularly in the west parapet wall; otherwise the bridge remains largely unaltered. A late-C20 aluminium rectangular name plate is attached to the ashlar band of the west arch, which reads: PICKERINGS BRIDGE in green raised lettering, on a white ground.