Jinkabout Bridge

Looking across the old bridge

Jinkabout Bridge crosses the River Avon to the south east of the A905 crossing on Wholeflats Road. It formerly carried the B904, but that route was downgraded when the A905 was extended east in the 1970s. The current bridge was installed in spring 2019 and consists of a single span girder bridge carrying a single track roadway, with similar dimensions to its predecessor. The bridge is just over 20m long and 4.5m wide, and was built off site and then craned into position to minimise the closure time of the road. The parapets are metal barriers as before, while the wing walls on the approaches have been rebuilt in brown brick with concrete tops.

Old Bridge

The old bridge was a surprisingly lightweight structure for a former classified road and carries a 3 Tonne weight limit at the end of its life. The main structure is formed from two shallow bowed trusses either side of the deck, tied underneath and constructed from thin section steel members. It was a little more permanent looking than a bailey type bridge, but obviously not intended to be carrying heavy traffic. The bridge was built in the 1900s and appeared to reuse the stone abutments of an earlier structure, presumably a stone arch bridge, although no evidence of what this bridge was like has been found. The unusual name comes from the mill which formerly stood on the north side of the bridge, but was demolished in the early 20th Century. Mapping evidence suggests that the mill lade also passed under the bridge, although this was probably a second arch on the stone bridge.

Links

Story in Falkirk Herald including video of bridge replacement