Plymouth, Laira Bridge

PLYMOUTH
DATA

The Encyclopaedia of Plymouth History

LAIRA BRIDGE

Preparatory work for the first Laira Bridge was started in 1824. It was to replace a very unreliable ferry crossing. The Bridge was privately built, by John, 1st Earl of Morley, and thus subject to a toll.

The first stone was laid on March 16th 1825. It was engineered by James Meadows Rendel in cast iron with foundations of granite, limestone and a water-resistant mortar.

The original Laira Bridge just before the new one was built.

It consisted of five elliptical arches of iron on stone pillars and abutments and cost £27,126. The roadway was 500ft long, with a central arch span of 100ft, and was 24ft wide. The height above high water was 14½ feet.

The Duchess of Clarence, later Queen Adelaide, opened the bridge on July 14th 1827. Seventy years later, Plymouth obtained an Act of Parliament that enabled them to purchase the bridge from the Earl of Morley for £43,500. They got a bit of a bargain because that price was agreed on the basis that the tolls levied on travellers would not earn more than £1,500 per year. As it turned out, the revenue averaged £2,000 in the succeeding years. A similar situation occurred with the Embankment Company.

The acquisition of the Bridge was part of a general scheme for freeing the approaches to Plymouth on the eastern side, and the Act contained a provision that the tolls should be abolished on or before March 31st 1904. It was hoped that this would reduce the burden upon milk, farm produce and merchandise generally that was brought into the Town from the South Hams. Although the Corporation would lose an income of around £1,800 per year, it was felt that the rate increase of just three-farthings in the pound was well justified.

Up until the evening of that memorable Thursday, March 31st 1904, there had been no plan to celebrate this event in any formal way, partly because the Mayor, Mr Henry Hurrell, and the chairman of the responsible committee, Mr R J Bazley, were both absent from the Town. However, it was such an historic occasion that in the end the Deputy Mayor, Alderman C H Radford, along with the Town Clerk, Mr J H Ellis, the Borough Treasurer, Mr J R Martyr, and the Chief Constable, Mr J D Sowerby, did go to the Bridge at just before Midnight to join the twenty or so people waiting there to mark the freeing of the Bridge.

At a minute or two before Midnight, the gates were closed by the toll-keeper and when the clock of St Andrew's Church was heard striking the hour, they were re-opened and Alderman Radford declared Laira Bridge free from tolls. It would remain free, he said, for all future time, day and night, to every kind of traffic and he hoped it would result in such an increase of receipts from the adjoining toll-gate connected with the property acquired by the Corporation from the Embankment Company as to go far towards meeting the annual charges on the purchase of both undertakings.

As it was a fine night, the Deputy Mayor led the party and spectators across the Bridge before returning to the Town. During the hour that followed, several people came to take advantage of the newly bestowed privilege, including two women who 'were particularly jubilant at being the first of their sex to pass over the bridge without payment of a toll', as the Western Daily Mercury put it. The women were presumably intoxicated!

The adjoining toll-gate formerly owned by the Embankment Company was not freed for another twenty years.

In November 1959, Messrs Marples, Ridgway & Partners Ltd started work on the replacement and present bridge and dual-carriageway. The work cost £680,000. It was opened on Friday June 1st 1962 by Lord Chesham, Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Transport.