Bridges over the River Hodder, Part One; The Bowland Main

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The Aqueduct carrying the Bowland Main was designed by the civil engineer William Booth Bryan for the Blackburn corporation and opened in 1882. It carries water from the Brennand and Whitendale rivers to Fishmoor reservoir above Blackburn in Lancashire.

A section of the aqueduct is visible near Dunsop Bridge where it crosses the river Hodder, it is built from 1.6m diameter, 32mm thick, cast-iron tubes filled with concrete made with gravel from the river below and the spans are cast-iron and bolted together.

Transverse brackets linking the spans carry the pipe and a walkway which also functions as a public footbridge. When the bridge was built the land was owned by the Towneley family who requested that the bridge be ‘elegant in appearance’.

(All images by author)

A B-H

Published by Northwest nature and history

Hi, my name is Alexander Burton-Hargreaves, I live in the Northwest of England and have over two decades of experience working in and studying the fields of land management and conservation. As well as ecology and conservation, in particular upland ecology, I am also interested in photography, classical natural history books, architecture, archaeology, cooking and gardening, amongst many other things. These are all subjects I cover in my articles here and on other sites and I plan to eventually publish a series of books on the history and wildlife of Northern England.

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