Brynderwen bridge, which carries an access road over the River Severn into the village of Abermule from the A483, was built to replace a timber bridge swept away in the floods of February 1852. The bridge has a single arch of 110ft (33.5 metres), springing from stone abutments, with a complicated lattice of five arch rings, struts, tie-bars and parapet balustrading, clearly constructed to withstand another, even more severe, flood. As the cast-iron lettering proudly proclaims, it was the ‘second iron bridge in the County of Montgomery’ and ‘was erected in the year 1852’, though the name of the supplier of the ironwork – Brymbo (a company based near Penson’s home in Gwersyllt, Denbighshire) – is cast into a plate which gives a date of 1853. The words ‘Thomas Penson County Surveyor’ are cast into a plate above the centre of the arch.

Text: David Ward