It was sad to hear the Brigg County Bridge improvement scheme has been rejected for lottery funding. The long-standing plan is to remove the cordoned-off walkway area and to replace the ugly, decaying metal railings with stone so the bridge regains the look familiar to townsfolk down the decades when the balustrades were such a feature of this prominent structure.
Some folk may well wonder why the early 19th century bridge is not being sorted by the Environment Agency (responsible for our river system) and/or the highway authority. Maybe even central government. And that's a fair point. After all, the others along the Ancholme seem to be attended to, notably the listed Rennie suspension bridge at Horkstow. No disrespect intended, but most of them are in the middle of nowhere, serving only farm tracks and being used by a few walkers/ramblers.
Ours is in the centre of a town and crossed by hundreds of pedestrians every day. Plus some vans and cars, but that's another story entirely. It's also a secondary route into the town centre for emergency services vehicles.
Coun Tom Glossop has been leading a group called The Friends of the County Bridge, pressing for improvements to be carried out in Brigg. The lack of progress has proved very frustrating to him and his fellow supporters of the project.
I took the picture (reproduced below) last year at the request of Keith Nutting and Ian Smith, who were officials of Brigg Civic Society until it halted operations. Some cosmetic work has been carried out since then to the railings, we think. But the image certainly highlights one of the problems.
So where do the campaigners go from here? Do they give up? Do they make another lottery application? Will the authorities finally get the message and carry out the work themselves?
Hopefully 2010 will become The Year of the Bridge. And not A Bridge Too Far...again!
3 comments:
Looking at that photo, surely the state of the handrail constitutes a H&S issue (risk of cuts to hands). If we had a handrail like that at work, it would be cordonned off, and replaced as soon as feasably possible.
Perhaps Andrew ,Karl and Nigel could use some polyfiller and a pot of green paint to improve the look of the railings .
That would make a nice picture for the Cons newsletter .
Maybe even have a festive colour edition to show off the bright green railings freshly painted .
Or I might just watch the paint dry.:-)
One problem that keeps recurring in Brigg is that projects are developed in isolation without much consideration given to the bigger picture.
It would be very nice to have the bridge refurbished and the Milly Garden to be a centre of attraction, but no-one seems able to perceive these aspects in the wider framework of developing Brigg's river-front as a majoR feature of the town.
Lidl's occupies, perhaps, one of the most attractive sites in the town, but it's essentially a concrete car-park, surrounded by buildings and structures that are falling into premature decay.
Since Adrian, the part-time postie, ceased his boat trips, no-one has bothered to exploit this potential gold-mine of a void.
Go to any town with a river, or nearby lake, and you'll find someone hiring out rowing boats, punts and family canoes and in next to no-time, a leisure, waterside development emerges. Apart from the rather delapidated EA mooring for visiting power craft near the new road bridge(and accepting the Brigg Rowing Club) Brigg has no suitable jetty to launch a boat.
How about building a jetty near the Milly Garden and then acquire some decent rowing boats for hire?
Within the season, somebody else will be seeking permission to keep his trip boat near the same mooring.
With the increased interest in riverside activities, the EA will be compelled to keep the river navigable and there will be more people demanding that attractive features be improved and maintained.
But how many Jobworths will worry about insurance and litigation and will try to put a spanner in the works? My answer to them is that Brigg has a much under-exploited facility: other town's exploit their river and lakes for leisure purposes, so why is not Brigg? The knock-on affect will stimulate interest and development in other areas.
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