King Edward VII Bridge

During 1849, the High Level Bridge, an elaborate twin-deck railway and road bridge built near the centre of Newcastle upon Tyne to allow traffic to cross the River Tyne, was officially opened by Queen Victoria. Once the bridge was completed, trains could reach the recently built Newcastle railway station. However, this arrangement was not ideal in practice as, in order to depart the station back across the High Level Bridge, trains had to reverse out of the station, a relatively tedious process. During the following 50 years, Britain's railway network and the number of passengers had expanded greatly. In its original proposed form, the new bridge followed a functional design developed by…

On 13 February 1902, the contract for the bridge's construction was awarded to the Darlington-based Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company; the programme was internally financed entirely by the NER. Excluding land purchases, it cost roughly £500,000 to construct, which has been estimated as being around £55 million in 2016 prices. On 29 July 1902, work on digging out the foundations for the structure commenced at the Newcastle end. The foundations under the three large river piers were laid by divers working in caissons (large, watertight chambers) underwater in compressed air. This was known to be dangerous work even for the time; as such, no one under the age of 40 could be employed in…