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The Worcester Riverside Engineering Trails The Worcester Riverside Engineering Trails EXPLORE ENGINEERING The Worcester Riverside Engineering Trails This leaflet describes two walking trails, along the banks of the River Severn in Worcester, to see some of the many works that engineers have built that have transformed medieval Worcester into the busy but pleasant place we now live in. Both trails start from the Newport Street carpark, but you can join them at any point along the river bank. Marked on the trail map are some of the many works of engineers. The NORTH TRAIL is a short and gentle walk of about an hour around Worcester Bridge and Sabrina Bridge, over a distance of about 1 mile. From the car park carefully cross the road to the riverside walkway. Turning right, the walk takes you to Sabrina Bridge where you can cross the river and walk back along the opposite riverbank to Worcester Bridge to re-cross the river. The SOUTH TRAIL is longer and takes in Diglis, the canal basin, the river lock and the new footbridge at Lower Wick. Distance 2¼ miles. From the car park turn left and walk along the riverside past the river bridge, towards the cathedral. Carry on, until you come to the sign post at the junction of the canal and river. Here you can leave the river and view the Diglis basin and the many moored craft. Returning to the river you can either turn to the right, back up the river to your start point, or turn left to carry on to Diglis Lock and weir, and the splendid new foot and cycle bridge beyond, returning via the west bank. We hope that you will enjoy these walks, and will keep this leaflet to remind you of some of the benefits that engineering has given us all. Before the Engineers Try to imagine what life in Worcester would have been like in the middle of the 18th century. A medieval bridge spanned the river, but very few people travelled far as the roads were poor and few could afford a horse. There were no cars, no trains, no electricity, and no gas. A lucky few would have had clean water, but sewage would have gone straight into the river, the same river that the water may have come from! Education was basic and and not many could read, even if they could have afforded books. Phones and the internet were still far in the future. NORTH TRAIL ST JOHNS HEREFORD RIVER SEVERN THE MALVERNS CRIPPLEGATE PITCHCROFT PARK RACE COURSE NEW ROAD CRICKET GROUND WORCESTER CITY CENTRE WORCESTER FOREGATE STREET RIVER SEVERN CATHEDRAL KEY: SUGGESTED WALKING ROUTE RAILWAY RAILWAY ON VIADUCT 1 Worcester New Bridge Originally built in 1781 at a cost of £30,000 Worcester New Bridge replaced a bridge just to the north. The 1781 bridge was designed by John Gwynne who was generally accepted as second only to Thomas Telford as a designer of Severn Bridges. Worcester wanted a traditional bridge so it has five semi-circular arches in its overall length of 82 metres (270 feet). The bridge was reconstructed and widened in 1932 to give northbound and southbound lanes, so it is in effect two bridges side by side, which can be clearly seen if you pass underneath in a boat. It had previously been widened in 1841 with elegant cantilever cast iron footways. The bridge is traditional and elegant, but is very restrictive in terms of flooding. To ease the traffic in Worcester, a bypass was built in the 1980s which included the Carrington Bridge across the Severn. Now some of the bypass has been widened to dual carriageway, with a new railway bridge being installed in 2018. In the next few years engineers will build a new bridge, next to the Carrington Bridge, to extend the dual carriageway section on to Powick. 2 Site of Worcester Old Bridge There was certainly a bridge here in 1088, but there may have also been one much earlier than that. The bridge at this site linked Tybridge St to Newport St and was the only Severn crossing between Bridgnorth and Gloucester. The bridge would have been responsible in no small part for the prosperity of Worcester at that time. It was rebuilt several times and in 1781, when the new bridge was built, there was even a plan to widen the old bridge. Even until the end of the 1970’s this was proposed as the site of a second road crossing over the river. The planned bridge would have crossed over to link up to Angel Place, which is why the multi-storey cark park over the bus depot is built in an arch shape so the road could pass underneath! Source: The Changing Face of Worcester 3 Worcester & Hereford Railway The Worcester and Hereford Railway Act was passed in 1853, which authorised the construction of the line. Construction work started in 1856 on the route that would link Worcester to Malvern, via a new station at Foregate Street, over a viaduct and bridge to Malvern on to Ledbury through two tunnels, and from Ledbury to Hereford via another viaduct. It would have gone by a more direct route, north of the Malvern Hills but for the citizens of Malvern and Ledbury, who insisted the main line go through their towns. The Worcester and Hereford Railway links to the North Cotswold Line at Norton Junction, just outside Worcester, where the new Worcester Parkway station is being built. This new station will allow more people to use the railway, which will enable a two trains an hour peak service to London in a few years’ time. Source: The Changing Face of Worcester 4 Worcester Railway Bridge and Viaduct The Railway Bridge is the centre piece of a mile and a half long curved embankment and viaduct, linking Henwick on the west bank across to Shrub Hill station. The 68 arch viaduct is 855m (2085 feet) long and really quite impressive. If you walk through the arch at Croft Road the size and curvature are more obvious. The Croft Road arch is not square to the line of the main viaduct and would be a difficult structure to build even today. It is called a skewed arch and is believed to be the first of its type in the country. When it was built, in 1860, the bridge for the river crossing had two arched cast iron spans, but these were too weak and were replaced 44 years later in 1904 by the simple stronger girders we see today. If you look carefully towards the east end of the viaduct you can see the remains of the arches of The Butts branch line, a short single track railway that left the main line on a viaduct that descended steeply to the level of the river by the racecourse. From here it went south, through a gap in the main road bridge to terminate a hundred yards or so further along the river front. It was intended to go to Diglis but never got permission to pass the Catherdral. 5 Sabrina Footbridge The footbridge was built in 1992 at a cost of £617,000. It spans 69 metres (203 feet), weighs about 120 tons and the A-frame has a height of about 20 metres (66 feet). It has a similar appearance to a suspension bridge but actually it is a cable-stayed bridge. On a suspension bridge the deck hangs from the cables which are in huge tension so they need very strong anchors, but on a cable-stayed bridge the tower takes most of the load straight down into the foundations. The foundations for the tower are easier to construct than those for anchors, particularly in poor ground conditions, which makes this kind of bridge easier and cheaper to build. 6 Site of Worcester Power Station Worcester City Council and their engineers were pioneers in the production of electricity for general use. The city’s original electricity works were at Powick. The combined water and steam plant, one of the first - some say the first - in the world, provided power for electric street lights and homes. Powick power station was the victim of its own success and with the increased demands to provide more electricity, a new coal fired power station was built in 1902 beside the river in the centre of Worcester. The huge chimney at this site gave the site the nickname of “The Queen Mary”. As we look back, it is difficult to imagine now that it would be acceptable to build a coal-fired power station in the city. The Worcester power station was extended in 1944 but demolished in 1975 when power came from the national grid - another huge civil engineering undertaking. The site is now the playground in an extended Cripplegate Park, and all that remains of the power station is the cooling water intake structure on the river bank. Source: The Changing Face of Worcester 7 The Hive Worcester’s stunning post-modern library houses over a quarter of a million books, including substantial academic and children’s libraries, with over 12 miles (19 km) of secure storage shelving. The Hive was the first library in Europe to house both a university book collection and a public lending library. It was officially opened by HM Queen Elizabeth II in her Diamond Jubilee year, 2012. The award-winning engineering of the building uses advanced environmental technology to improve sustainability, including computer controlled ventilation & river water cooling to avoid the need for the use of a traditional air conditioning system.
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