Abbey St. Bathans Bridge
This entry refers to a footbridge spanning the Whiteadder Water east of Abbey St Bathans village, north of Duns in north Berwickshire.
Also known as the Gurkha Bridge. Geograph entry here.
The current cable-stayed bridge was built in 1987.
J. G. James described and earlier bridge at this site, designed by Robert Stevenson and built in 1840-1[1].
The National Library of Scotland has an excellent online copy of an original drawing of the 1840-1 bridge, here[2]. This shows two main spans, each of 60 ft, and one span of 27 ft, with masonry abutments and piers. The deck beams each comprised a pair of wooden boards bolted together, each board being 3" wide and 11" deep. The longer beams were trussed, each having four vertical cast iron posts bolted to the underside, the bottom ends of which engaged with tensioned tie bars. These tie bars were made of wrought iron, threaded at each end and tensioned by elongated nuts bearing on cast iron 'shoes', one shoe at each end of the deck embracing the end of the pair of laminated beams. The drawing shows neatly-tapered piers with a rounded nose on the upstream side, but a different arrangement of piers has been lightly superimposed in outline. The piers of the present bridge are of rectangular section, made of random-sized stone blocks capped with concrete.
Replaced by a suspension bridge c.1930?