LANDORE: The timbers are coming out at the Bascule Bridge, with the span due back next year

The timber supports standing in the River Tawe under the Bascule Bridge are being pulled out.

Specialist contractors working with Swansea Council‘s highways and engineering team have begun removing some of the remaining timbers to make way for replacements, the council says.

It has also put a date on the finish for the first time. The restoration is due to be completed next year.

What is left is the heavy end of the job: repairing the timber trestles that stand in the river, replacing some parts of the bridge, and lifting the steel span back over the water with a crane.

The span weighs 70 tonnes. It has been sitting in a holding position near the Swansea.com Stadium since it was moved through the city overnight in April.

South Wales contractor Ian Davies Plant is delivering the phase, having been appointed in July.

When it is done the bridge reopens as a public footpath and cycle track, which the council says will improve access along the river corridor.

The bridge was built in 1909 and is designated a Scheduled Monument, which the council describes as making it a rare and significant part of Swansea’s historic landscape.

It was built to link the Morfa and Upper Bank copperworks on opposite banks, carrying a rail connection between them and taking waste from the Morfa side over to the east of the river.

The lifting worked without an engine. A water tank under the western end filled up, and the weight of it swung the deck clear of its timber supports, which is what a bascule bridge does. Cadw’s regional inspector of ancient monuments, Louise Mees, has described it as pivotal to the years when this was the copper capital of the world, and said the deck lifted to let high-masted ships pass up and down the Tawe.

Those ships stopped coming and the copperworks were abandoned in the 1980s. The bridge has stood unused since, and at some point was converted to carry pipes.

Six schemes on one stretch of river

The bridge is going back into the middle of a building site. At the copperworks itself, contractors Andrew Scott have been on site since April and the landmark chimneys are scaffolded to their summits while the Vivian and Musgrave Engine Houses are restored.

The Vivian dates from 1860 and is getting a mezzanine floor. The Musgrave, built around 1910, still holds the only Musgrave engine in the UK sitting where it was installed.

Next door, floors have gone back into the Laboratory Building for the first time in decades, in a scheme that could end with a restaurant seating more than a hundred.

Penderyn’s distillery is already open on the site.

Along the river, an £8.25m walking and cycling path is due to run a mile from the city centre to the copperworks, taking three years to build, with some sections constructed from barges because of access.

At Landore Park and Ride, diggers moved in during June to build the base station for the £49m Skyline gondola, the bottom end of the cable car line up Kilvey Hill, with parking spaces cut while the work goes on.

Across the road, planners have accepted the principle of Swansea City’s 1,700-capacity fan zone behind the South Stand, with conditions attached on trees, disabled access, noise and Martyn’s Law.

And for anyone who wants the history rather than the hoardings, the council’s free Tawe Trails app now carries seven routes, including one on the copperworks and an audio trail for the river cruise.

When the span goes back over the water, it will connect two sides of a valley being rebuilt at the same time.

Author

Kit Peters

Kit Peters is a journalist and the editor of Swansea Bay News, covering Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Carmarthenshire since 2020.