ABSTRACT
Isambard Brunei (1870) devotes chapter seven of his biography of Isambard Kingdom Brunei to his father’s railway bridges and viaducts. He deals first with those bridges built of brick and masonry— the arch bridges which form the subject of this chapter. The first of these which he mentions is that over the River Brent at Hanwell (Fig. 21), later called the Wharncliffe Viaduct. He describes it as “the first of Mr Brunei’s important railway works ... a handsome brickwork structure” (as indeed it still is, particularly when viewed, over green fields, from the main road just west of the Viaduct Inn, Hanwell) “65 feet high, with eight semi-elliptical arches, each 70 feet span and 17 feet 6 inches rise”. Brunei’s general calculation book (CB, 1837), which forms part of the manuscript collection of Bristol University, also contains under the heading “Brent Viaduct” several pages of drawings and calculations relating to these arches. These calculations are discussed later.
