Restore Robert Stephenson's 1834 Lift Bridge

The Mountsorrel and Rothley Community Heritage Centre are extremely excited to announce a project to restore Victorian engineer Robert Stephenson’s historic Leicester Lift Bridge!

In 1830 George Stephenson won the contract to build the Leicester and Swannington Railway, which was built primarily to allow the easier movement of coal from the west Leicestershire coal fields. George was still working on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway at the time so sent his son Robert to Leicestershire to oversee the project.

Robert Stephenson went on to become one of the greatest engineers of the Victorian era, building over a third of the entire UK rail network and solving many breathtaking engineering challenges, such as his tubular bridge over the Menai Straits in North Wales. In 1830 he was still a young engineer, having just designed and built the legendary locomotive Rocket.

One of his early challenges when building the Leicester and Swannington Railway was to design and build a timber lifting bridge, which would carry the railway over the Grand Union Canal, but still be able to rise to allow the passage of barges underneath.

Although small by the standards of his later engineering marvels, the bridge is an historically important example of his early work. So much so that when the railway closed at the West Bridge site in Leicester in the 1960s, the bridge was moved and rebuilt as a part of the Riverside Walk adjacent to the Leicester Museum of Technology (now Abbey Pumping Station). In 1992 the bridge was moved again and rebuilt for display at the new Snibston Discovery Park at Coalville.

When Snibston closed in 2016 the extensive cast and wrought iron works of the bridge were placed into storage by Leicester City Museum Services. Sadly the timber structure of the bridge couldn’t be saved.

After lengthy discussions surrounding the bridge’s future, Leicester City Council agreed to donate the bridge to the Mountsorrel And Rothley Community Heritage Centre, who, working with the Leicester Industrial History Society, will undertake the ambitious project to restore the bridge to working order.

Heritage Centre volunteers will undertake the work to restore and rebuild the bridge, but replacement materials, most notably the extensive new timbers required, specialist repair of the original iron work, reassembly and visitor interpretation, mean that the restoration will cost in excess of £60,000.

Thanks to grants from the Edith Murphy Foundation, Helen Jean Cope Charity, Association for Industrial Archeology and a donation from a project supporter, only £15,000 still remains to be raised.

Work is already underway! The bridge remains have been moved to the Heritage Centre and the metal components are being restored, new foundations for the bridge have been built and the very large timbers have been purchased, have arrived on site and are being reassembled. Please support this ambitious project to breathe new life into this very important piece of our industrial heritage. Thank you!