Photographs taken by my father, Philip Southward of the A19 bridge being built over the River Tees.
Photographs and details courtesy of David Southward.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Photographs taken by my father, Philip Southward of the A19 bridge being built over the River Tees.
Photographs and details courtesy of David Southward.
Fantastic photos and great memories of my Grandad , Len Osmond, who was there to watch the crane barge Magnus 2 (?) lift in the central sections of the bridge. The bridge should never have been built on this site as according to my Dad, ICI built a tank farm on the north side in the 1940’s and it collapsed! The land is all reclaimed marsh lands so he always said they should have followed the planned route under the river at Tees Port apparently? I’m sure someone will be able to elaborate on my memories?
The Tees Bridge has required a great deal of strengthening and extra maintenance work over the years. I remember being told by an engineer that given that river traffic up stream effectively ceased soon after it was built it could and should have been constructed much more simply and cheaply with a lower height span. Whether this is true or not I cannot say.
Reading a history of the area circa 1700’s it describe Middlesbrough as a small fishing village on a marsh. My Father told me as a lad he would hunt rabbits on Billingham Marsh so they were very surprised when in 1917 they started to build a factory on what they knew as boggy land. It was to be a large plant producing chemicals for explosives for shells bombs etc. Many German Prisoners of war were used in the construction and the section of road alongside the Nitric Acid Plant was called German Road. The war ended and the factory was never completed until Bruna Mond took it over and started producing products from salt which was pumped up from the brine wells, this was followed by the Anhydrite mine and the production of Ammonia.
Huge buildings went up with deep founds, the Silo’s including the 100,000 ton silo were built on a floating raft as founds would have been impossible on the boggy land and the whole structure of Italian design was one unit with the ribs on the external walls shaped like a bee-hive, They were made so they sank when full then rose as they emptied, the only fixed section being the end brick walls so imagine the panic when the end walls started to buckle, my Heavy Fab section had to dash in and relieve the pressure by cutting the top steel work on the wall. We discovered that owing to a dry summer the water level under the silo had gone down so not enough pressure to lift it again.
Lessons were learnt and the tanks on the tank farm also stood on rafts with larger diameter and lower for balance.
The large building one hundred feet to the top also had problems, a crane driver reported he could not control his overhead crane from half way down WG2 building, I went up into his cab to see what he meant and wished I had not, the crane gathered speed and with brakes on power off rammed the buffers so hard the back wheels lifted. We dug down and found a twenty foot crater and the end Column standing on air. Ground water had flushed the founds away and a steel frame with heavy jacks used to hold it until repairs could be done.
Bridge trestles sank some towers leaned, the taller older ones having guy cable fixings, we quite often had pipe fractures not all from internal pressure. New building in my time at ICI had very deep piles and cement pumped to stabilise the ground.
Since 1975 the Bridge fly over has been repaired, strengthened, the road surface re aligned almost on a yearly basis, still probably cheaper than a tunnel which was first muted though.
It was R.B BRUNNEL not Magnus 2,my dad was the marine super on that job
and he worked for Rizdon Beazley Southampton after working for Smit-Tak Rotterdam
We lived in Thornaby until the late 60s. There are four generations of the Towl family in Norton churchyard. Does anyone remember any of the Towls?
I do, the one I remember most lived in Milnewr or Jameson Road. When I was a boy in the 40’s and maybe early 50’s when a window broke at home it was my job to go to his house for him to come and replace the broken glass. Then there was Bruce, very tall fair haired who was in a coiuple of years ahead of me at the Frederick Nattrass school. I believe he moved onto the Sec Grammer school in Stockton after passiong the scholarship.
brilliant photos
The bridge is not in the best condition for something which is just under 40 years old. Either the reinforcement was not buried deep enough or the cement was a poor mix, or both. The result is that the concrete is tending to spall away from the supports and beams
I remember when I was a guard on the railway at Tees Yard, while collecting trains from the East End, Down Departures, directly under the construction shown, and remember the sound of air impacted wrenches fitting sections together.
These are great pics. The bridge construction commenced in 1973 and finally opened in November 1975.
I believe it opened in 1975
According to Wikipedia, the bridge was built between 1973-75 official opened Nov 1975
I would say this bridge would have been built in the mid 1970’s.
An interesting picture. I visited the area quite regularly until the late 1960’s and I certainly don’t remember the bridge in place at the time. I then didn’t return much until the early 1980’s by which time the bridge and a lot of other road developments in the area had been completed. I quite often travel over the bridge now as I visit my grandparents memorial stone in Norton churchyard, and I have often wondered when the bridge was completed. I think you may have given me the answer, thanks Bob.