ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL
1806-1859
WINDSOR RAILWAY BRIDGE, opened to rail traffic in 1849
designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel for the Great Western Railway line.
It’s the oldest surviving wrought iron bridge still in use.
Brunel’s French father Marc fled France for the USA during the Revolution and was appointed Chief
Engineer of New York City. He moved to London in 1799, married Sophia Kingdom, and was Knighted
for the difficult and dangerous building of the Thames Tunnel (now connects Rotherhithe and Wapping
Overground stations).

His son Isambard was born in 1806 and picked up his father’s aptitude for mechanics. His education
included a boarding school in Hove and the University of Caen, France and later in Paris. He assisted his
father on the Thames Tunnel and was severely injured as a consequence. During a six month recuperation
he worked on four designs for a competition to create a bridge across the river Avon in Bristol. His winning
design would become the Clifton Suspension Bridge – though its construction wasn’t completed in his
lifetime, and the designs had been somewhat altered by other engineers.

Other projects of his include the first transatlantic steamship ‘The Great Western’ as well as tunnels, viaducts
and bridges most notably for the Great Western Railway such as the brick arched Maidenhead Railway
Bridge (1839) and the wrought iron Windsor Railway Bridge. This was opened in 1849, the branch line
having been delayed following objections by the Provost of Eton. He demanded no station be built within
3 miles of the college, fearing the College would be ruined because “London would pour forth the most
abandoned of its inhabitants to come down by the railway and pollute the minds of the scholars, whilst the
boys themselves would take advantage of the short interval of their play hours to run up to town, mix in all
the dissipation of London life, and return before their absence could be discovered.”

Brunel’s iron bridge is a bowstring-arch-truss construction, 61m in length, in the middle of a brick-built
1500m long viaduct, described in the press at the time as “of novel design”.
It’s the world’s oldest surviving wrought iron bridge (incidentally, the oldest cast iron bridge is Abraham
Darby’s across the Severn gorge dating from 1781 at what is now the village of Ironbridge).