Rutherglen Bridge

Rutherglen Bridge

Rutherglen Bridge carries the A728 across the River Clyde. It is a three span stone arch bridge where the central span is marginally wider than the two flanking arches. The two piers are founded in the riverbed with curved cut waters. The upper portions of the bridge are all faced in Granite ashlar, with pronounced courses. Shallow piers rise from the piers across the spandrels, with slightly larger piers on the Abutments. A cornice level crosses the bridge above the arches, with solid parapets rising above. Unusually, these are very plain on the internal faces against the pavements, which would often feature some decoration. The bridge carries a wide S2 carriageway between wide pavements, with railings and bollards separating them just behind the kerb line.

When the roads were first classified in 1922, the short A731 crossed Rutherglen Bridge. As part of a wider renumbering project, this was then downgraded to become the B763 in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Following the completion of the Clyde Gateway route in advance of the Commonwealth Games in 2014, the bridge was once more elevated to be an A road in 2012, and is now the A728. However, for a brief period some maps in the early 2010s, showed the route changing number halfway across the bridge (from B763 to A728) at the authority boundary - this was quickly remedied if it wasn't a simple mapping error in the first place.

History

The first bridge on this site was built by James Watt in 1775-6 and consisted of 5 stone arches. There seems to have been some concerns over the founding of the piers in the riverbed, as the design was made to be as light as possible, with vaulted chambers beneath the roadway in preference to the more usual rubble infill. The bridge had a humped profile, the central arch being somewhat larger than the flanking arches, and carried a narrow roadway. Nevertheless, it survived until 1890 when the removal of a weir upstream hastened its demise. A temporary bridge, costing more than Watt's bridge, was hastily built while designs for the current structure were progressed.