Dryburgh Abbey Bridge

About

Dryburgh Abbey Bridge was a cable-stayed footbridge of significant historical interest near Dryburgh Abbey, in the Borders of Scotland. It connected the villages of Dryburgh and St. Boswells (part of a ribbon of settlements, including Newtown St.

Boswells) across the River Tweed. A crossing had existed here for centuries, originally with a ferry service. The bridge had been commissioned by David Stewart Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan, an eccentric Scottish aristocrat who died in Dryburgh.

It was 79 metres (259 ft) long. At the time, the cable-stayed type of bridge was rapidly becoming more popular. The Earl opened the completed bridge on 1 August 1817, but in January 1818 it collapsed.

One of the designers, Thomas Smith, said of the collapse that due to "high wind increasing to [a] perfect hurricane, it carried off [the] chain bridge, leaving only the fastenings and supports, the work of half a year, demolished in an hour...." After a redesign, a replacement was built, but this too collapsed in 1838, by which time the Earl had been dead for several years. The 1818 collapse, together with that of a slightly shorter bridge across the Saale River in Germany in 1824, caused the reputation...