After 10 months of work the refurbishment and renovation of the original 1889 cast iron bridge parapet is now complete.
The parapet sits on the grade II listed Cleggford Bridge in Dewsbury (West Yorkshire) - the stone bridge itself dates back to the 1700's and the parapet was added later.
The job was time consuming and at times tricky. Following long discussions and many meetings, the brief was to bring the parapet back into useable condition whilst maintaining as much of it's original structure as possible - and this includes retaining any erosion, weathering and past repairs, regardless of how badly these had been bodged!
The fact that ASF have our own metallurgist, pattern makers, casting engineers, fabricators, welders and a host of technical experts meant that this was a job we could manage (I actually don't thing that many companies could do this type of work nowadays). In order to meet the brief a modular system was developed for repair of major sections so that only the parts of the parapet that were absolutely beyond rescue needed to be replaced. In addition to this, various methods of invisible mending were developed so that the parapet could be strengthened whilst keeping it's weathered look.
This is easier said than done, the whole problem of minimal impact whilst completing a full scale renovation was made more difficult as each of the 100+ component parts of the parapet were subtly different at best and often dramatically different. The modular system developed therefore had to be flexible enough to be adaptable to this.
