The Severn Bridge at 50: A High Wire Act

It is an iconic structure and every other bridge fades into

a little bit of insignificance compared to the size of it.

MUSIC: It's A Sign Of The Times by Petula Clark

They wanted to show that we were the best in the world.

It is really like a pencil line on the horizon.

It was far ahead of its time.

# You've changed a lot somehow

# From the one I used to know... #

It was magical. I don't think I'd ever been into Bristol

until after the Severn Bridge did open.

# And a year ago, I never could have seen it... #

Back in the day, that was a massive feat of engineering,

that was a huge deal.

# Just leave the past behind

# And maybe only think of how it is today... #

The Severn influenced almost everything long-span

that has happened since,

so the Severn Bridge is remarkable.

I don't say "was", it IS remarkable.

# It's a sign of the times

# It's a sign of the times... #

Hi, Luke, it's James, the team manager at South West RCC.

A south-westerly gale buffets the 50-year-old Severn Bridge.

We're seeing gusts now of about 48mph for the M48 bridge.

So we just wanted an updated forecast.

That's great, OK, thank you for that.

Yep, Dan, can we deploy the crews for the filtering?

At present, the wind speeds have got up above 46mph.

That's the point at which we filter high-sided vehicles

and motorcycles off of the motorway

as they're highly likely to get blown over.

If the winds happen to get up to 69mph,

then we'll close it completely.

He left that one right till the last second.

We'll keep an eye on that.

If that stays up at that kind of speeds for the next 10-15 minutes,

-then we'll probably need to close it.

-Yep.

It's perhaps only when it's closed

that we fully appreciate the Severn Bridge.

Winter gales apart, we zip over in minutes,

giving little thought to the slender span we're traversing,

or to how it was built or who maintains it.

Before 1966, though,

just as drivers are experiencing this stormy morning,

crossing between England and Wales was far from plain sailing.

The world may have been changing - Yuri Gagarin had orbited the Earth,

but closer to home, the frontier between Beachley near Chepstow

and Aust on the Bristol side was still a little ferry.

This film hasn't been shown in public for many years.

Very choppy. I'm glad I wasn't on board that day.

Before the bridge, to go to Bristol was really unheard of, wasn't it?

Because it just seemed so far away.

-It was out of bounds, really.

-It was.

Going over to Aust was, you know, our overseas holiday!

Of course, the ferry could only run when the tides were suitable

at Aust and at Beachley, so a ferry timetable was very important

when you were planning your trips over.

Everybody remembers these ferries.

In the last full year of service, 1965,

over half a million cars used those ferries.

They were a vital link between the southwest and South Wales.

The queue could go two, three miles away,

so they were really, really long queues.

This is where the queues for the ferry used to come,

all the way along here, do you remember?

-Oh.

-Right the way in front of us.

Before we went on holiday, Mike would take the car

with all the cases in and leave it

so we'd be first or second in the queue.

-That's what most of the locals actually did, wasn't it?

-Yep.

The non-locals would be stuck at the back.

This one, the Severn Princess, was the biggest.

Fully loaded she could carry 19 vehicles,

but to get 19 cars on, they had to park them so close together,

you couldn't open the car doors.

So they're sailing on the most dangerous river in Britain,

full of cars full of people who couldn't get out.

My grandfather was the founder of the ferry here at Beachley.

We used to come down here after school and I had the unenviable job

of counting the cars and after so many,

taking a sign to say this will be the last car tonight

and the look on the fellow's face behind

who now faced the daunting task of having to go around Gloucester,

it was... Yeah, it wasn't a pleasant job.

There's much, much more traffic on the road,

therefore more demand for the ferries,

therefore the bridge was inevitable, to be honest.

Overshadowed by the bridge, look at that.

This morning, with the help of my colleagues,

we're going to build a replica of the Severn crossing with you.

The planned new crossing wasn't going to be just any old bridge.

So this is Trish, John,

and my name is Paul.

I think the engineers and architects wanted to make a statement.

So one team's going to build from the one side

and the other team's going to build from the other

and we'll meet in the middle when we've finished, OK?

'In those days, they just didn't build something functional -

'they wanted to show that we were the best in the world.'

-OK.

-Right, nice and gentle.

'Certain things like the inclined suspenders

'and this aerodynamically designed deck box,

'they were pretty cutting-edge.'

The human instinct to build starts young.

Taking a hands-on role in the Severn Bridge's design

was one youthful civil engineer

fresh out of Bristol University.

I was in charge -

it's a job to imagine nowadays -

but I was in charge of writing the specification for the Severn Bridge

and I was the only one working on it.

The basic engineering tool was a slide rule.

I spent two years

doing hand calculations.

It will have two carriageways, two dual carriageways...

At just under a mile,

the proposed Severn Bridge was the longest yet designed in the UK.

So I knew the span and I knew it was going to be a suspension bridge.

The first port of call was American technology.

Mike's instinct was to copy specifications

from New York's George Washington Bridge.

The Severn Bridge's cable is a similar design.

However, American concrete road decks

resting on weighty girders are expensive to construct

and Mike was asked to look for economies.

The ultimate objective is to make something which is lighter

and ultimately cheaper.

To me, as an engineer,

being as economical as possible

with men and materials

is what it's all about.

With resources still scarce in post-war Britain,

and economic necessity being the mother of invention,

Mike proposed a lightweight, internally stiffened steel road deck

and as the design was tested,

so its shape evolved to offer less wind resistance too.

The huge leap was the fact that it was aerodynamic.

This was a huge innovation,

because it was going to be the first of its kind in the world

and it wasn't just that it was a small one -

it was a very big bridge.

Look at that, isn't that beautiful?

Back in the '60s, John Evans and Jerry Gurney were junior engineers.

And the view from here emphasises the beauty

of the suspended structure,

which is a shallow box deck, more slender, less wind resistance,

the cables are lighter,

the towers are lighter,

the anchorage is lighter, so it's a big benefit.

It really was a triumph of British engineering

and everyone is now saying, "We can build bridges like the Brits."

It was a bridge looking to the future,

but, typical of the times,

future traffic levels were woefully underestimated,

as was the need to actually maintain it.

Everybody had this idea that steel was good stuff

and it would last forever.

But, of course, the structures carry transient loads all the time.

I think very soon after the bridge was opened, people realised

that there were maintenance issues that were inherent in the design.

You tended to hand a bridge over

and it was deemed that it would carry on more or less forever.

So quite quickly, things were wearing out,

which they didn't anticipate in such a new design.

To put it in context, by the 1970s,

there were actually pieces dropping off the Golden Gate Bridge

in America, so maintenance of long-span bridges is

a very big part of the industry at the moment.

This crucial need is undertaken by a specialist in-house team.

We have to inspect this structure,

so it's not something you can do in a day

and therefore that's why we've got a team of 30 people,

inspectors and guys who will actually maintain the bridge

and keep it going on an ongoing basis.

Day-to-day inspections involve going out

and inspecting specific components of the bridge,

checking for cracks, corrosion,

paint loss, or anything that might affect the function of the bridge

and obviously we've got more critical inspections

that are set at other frequencies.

But it's not just the outside that needs regular check-ups.

One such critical inspection is of the steel stiffness

inside the bridge's revolutionary deck.

Traffic loadings have quadrupled and loadings have ballooned.

Back in 1966, the heaviest lorries weighed 20 tonnes.

Now, the slimline deck boxes are shouldering 44-tonners.

Inspector Adrian Friendship checks the wells beneath the carriageways.

There's over 60 miles of them to inspect.

OK, what I'm carrying out today is an annual inspection.

What you can probably hear above my head

is the sound of traffic, cos the deck plate is only 12mm thick.

I'm checking for any rusty lines which are an indication

that the well has cracked.

Now, this is just one bay.

Throughout this bridge, there's over 400 of these bays to inspect.

It's mainly a local workforce.

They've grown up around it, worked on it a long time.

It's just part of their lives in a certain way, you know?

When people generally come working here,

the majority generally stay.

The guys who work here are from both sides of the bridge,

it's probably a 50/50.

The Welsh ones are obviously a bit better than the English ones, but...

I think there's slightly more on the Welsh side,

so we are a minority here.

I've been here for 34 years and I'm not the senior guy

in terms of service by any stretch of imagination.

I've been here 18 months,

so I am very much the new girl.

I came here as a student.

I had a year out and I spent a year

with the consultants on the bridge at the time

and it was nice to come sort of like a full circle

from being a student and coming back here 25 or so years later

and some of the people still remember me as a student,

which is a bit scary!

Old-timers and newcomers alike,

there are many challenges for the team to overcome.

The challenges - the main one is the access.

We're a bridge, therefore we're above water,

so everything we do, we have to be mindful of that,

and we need to gain access to all parts of the bridge,

so it's not just walking along the deck -

we have to be able to walk up the cable.

We have to get underneath the deck as well,

so we've got gantries so we can inspect underneath the deck.

Areas where we can't get to with the gantry,

we will either use specialist access companies to come in,

or we'll use our own guys who can abseil and inspect it from there.

And on this section, where a temporary platform was needed,

the only way to dismantle it is by high-level rope access.

The problem is working above a marine environment,

you get a lot of salt in the air which causes corrosion.

As you can see, on these cross girders,

there is corrosion there and it was like that all the way across,

but if you look further out, you can see there is no corrosion,

cos all that's been painted.

Corrosion is the main enemy on a steel bridge.

Not only is it attacking the superstructure,

it's even invaded the main cable

from which the whole bridge hangs.

It's ironic that the feature which I copied,

what the Americans had done for their cables,

is in my view the only feature

which could lead to the ultimate destruction of these bridges...

..because corrosion is occurring in cables.

The main cable wasn't really designed to have to be maintained

and the biggest problem is water getting into that cable,

which is very, very difficult to prevent.

So we decided to put in a dehumidification system

and basically what happens is the dry air

is pumped into the main cable

and it takes out any of the dampness

which therefore gives it a nice, dry condition.

Moisture has been driven out of the cables this way

for the last eight years and it's a process that's closely monitored.

It's a very grey day here on the Severn Bridge.

You can hardly see the towers, in fact.

We've got a couple of jobs we've got to do today.

We'll go down into the anchorage,

we've got to go and do a few humidity checks down there.

HE RADIOS CONTROL ROOM

'Control receiving.'

Thanks, Chris. Two inspectors entering Aust anchorage.

'Thank you. Control standing by.'

The anchorages, where the cables plunge down

into massive concrete counterweights,

literally hold the bridge up.

A suspension bridge is basically like a washing line

with two props in it.

But you also have to anchor the ends back.

Junior site engineers John and Jerry experienced the difficulties

of building these vital anchors.

Of course, the river was such a barrier at that stage

to anything that we were doing.

I mean, they were the two distinct sites,

the Beachley side and the Aust side, and never the twain met.

The Beachley Anchorage, on the Welsh side, where John worked,

was constructed onshore.

However, Jerry worked on the English side,

where the Aust anchorage and tower were embedded in offshore rocks.

And it was fascinating building all these things in such

-a tidal river, with a very big rise and fall.

-Certainly.

Because the tower was built on a rock which only appeared

above the water at low springs.

And it was literally only about that far above water level,

so basically it was a question of nipping out there,

-taking off the seaweed and putting concrete down.

-Right.

And that was done in many, many stages because you could only

spare the time to do a little bit of it each time.

With over 165,000 tonnes of concrete to pour,

the anchorages took over two years to construct, such is their scale.

First time I went into the anchorage, I thought, wow,

it is vast. It is just like a massive huge cave.

You can hear the echoes, there's a large tent which encases the whole

of the main cable where it splays out.

OK, when you're ready with the readings.

We have temperature 14 degrees C,

and a humidity reading of 40%.

Anything under 40% is good.

Corrosion can't happen under 40%, so that is absolutely fine.

It's always amazing to think that this bridge is held up by

5mm-diameter strands.

There are over 8,000 of them but all the same it's still amazing.

Before these 8,322 wires on each side could be pulled over,

catwalks were constructed.

Like giant swinging rope bridges

tracing the future line of the main cables,

they provided work platforms for the cable spinning.

Over six months, day and night, the pulley wheels whirred.

And for the first time people could walk between Beachley and Aust.

We used to have to walk the cables on the catwalk

all the way across in the morning, all the way back at night.

If you get a bit of a breeze,

you'd have a job to get your breath,

because it would take your breath away,

as you're getting up to the top of the towers. And of course

when the wind was blowing that hard you had a job to walk.

Many a time I went over in the morning

and I had to go and fetch summat and walk all the way back

and then all the way back over

and then all the way back at night, like.

But you couldn't let everyone get in the same step on there,

else it starts going like this,

and if you miss your step, you're coming down as that is coming up

and your knees buckle up underneath you, yeah.

Yeah, we used to do it on purpose sometimes!

Meanwhile, in Chepstow, the novel deck boxes were being

constructed on the banks of the River Wye.

For over a year,

the 88 boxes were painstakingly launched,

then manoeuvred under the bridge,

hoisted to road level and attached to the hangers, one by one.

Commence winching on both, Mac. Over.

Roger, will do.

With the hoist of the final box, the bridge structure was complete, and

steel fixer Viv Rooke and his gang now turned their hands to painting.

-Stop winching.

-Winching stopped.

Well, they had a gang painting the hangers,

and it just happened to be in line with the ferry

and we were pulling the pot of paint up and it got caught,

and I said to the lads, get out of there and we'll give it a good pull,

and we ripped all the lining out the pot

and obviously the paint ran out and it went straight over the top of

the ferry and the cars. Painted the lot!

Oh, dear! Yeah...

I think it cost £3,000 to get the cars done, in them days.

Well, I had a phone call come up to me to say, "Stop all painting,

"stop all paint..." Oh, dear.

Like the rest of the bridge,

the hangers that support the deck need painting regularly.

A procedure that is now slightly more sophisticated

than in Viv's day.

Over the years we've refined our procedures here,

we've had bespoke platforms and cradles built.

Some of them you won't find anywhere else in the world.

Yeah, what we've got here is just a painting cable for painting the hangers, really.

This bespoke contraption moves up and down the hangers.

Well, it's a case of now...go up,

transfer the wires down to the next location, make sure there's

no twists and then we'll hang it straight back on there.

Right, we'd best get some harnesses on.

That's because moving the cradle pulley

means Nigel and Johnny walking the cable.

A mere 400 feet above the river.

Oh, you've got the top of the cable, yeah, you have got butterflies.

And I've been working round the construction game for a long time

and worked at heights and it's not bothered me one bit, you know,

but that does, when you've got to walk down a cable.

It is a bit nerve-racking.

Like you say, it's just the initial going off the top.

Here we go, then.

It's a great feeling walking along it.

I mean, basically the world opens up.

You just see the cars and the road

and, you know, the people are so small,

and you've just got...you feel like you're on top of the world.

Cradle wires relocated, it's mission accomplished for Nigel and Johnny.

Now Trevor's on a mission to get that hanger painted.

Back in 1966, the state opening of the freshly painted Severn Bridge

was broadcast live to the nation, such was its importance.

8th September, 1966, I was at school in Chepstow and they'd

said to us, "If you go and wave the flag for the Queen in the morning

"you can have the afternoon off school."

So it was rammed with schoolkids.

So I was in the line to shake hands with the Queen.

Royal car comes up and introduced to all the dignitaries.

Surprising how many dignitaries there are before they get to the engineers!

-NEWSREEL:

-And next to Her Majesty, Michael Parsons, the resident engineer.

We saw the Queen.

-It was a cavalcade, you know, you see them go past.

-SHE LAUGHS

"I've seen the Queen!" But we were there, that was what counted.

We were there on the day it opened.

It is with great pleasure that I now declare the Severn Bridge open.

There was a huge sense of achievement.

We went there in 1960 and all we had then was ideas in our minds,

and six years later you've got people travelling back and

forward daily without really considering what they're

doing now, they just go.

It's a bridge, it's done it.

# It's the pride of the Welsh and the west coast alike

# It's the Severn Bridge's broad and mighty span... #

Well, obviously the opening of the bridge was the demise of the ferries.

On September 8th, 1966 the three ferries pulled under the bridge,

sounded their hooters, company was wound up.

I was on the last ferry to come across.

Ah, it was a sad old day because there was

a lot of people who did use it were just coming over for the last time,

like, in their car, and it made you think of it like it was

something that was going that was a part of the community, really.

50 years on from that momentous September day and the bridge

is preparing to mark another milestone.

One anniversary event is the Severn Bridge Half Marathon,

top of the agenda at Trish and Paul's daily catch-up.

Erm, lane closures, we've got those booked in,

so that will be done in the next week or so.

OK, and tolls and operations are...

Tolls, I've got a meeting this week with Gareth.

Then there's the ongoing concern over corrosion.

To be sure that the dehumidification system is working

means opening up the cable.

Deterioration in its core could spell closure.

An internal inspection is a major undertaking, and the in-house team

is supplemented by cable specialists, led by Bev Urbans.

Right, we're inspecting at eight locations altogether

-and there's two high-level panel positions.

-Yep, OK.

So the high-level platform that's coming to site

needs to be lifted in in essentially two halves,

because one half has to sit on the far side of the cable

because obviously the hangers are in the way,

and then the second section fits on the inside.

-So it sort of joins...

-And then joined together.

-All signed off?

-Yeah, so we just want to get this one up and then we get going with the inspections.

That's the important bit, isn't it? See what's in there.

Yeah, it will give you all the information that you need.

So what our consultants and contractors will be doing

will be they will be wedging open the cable,

having a look at it to see if there's been any corrosion.

I hope that the inspection will show that the dehumidification system

is still working well and that the corrosion has been halted.

Fingers crossed.

Opening up the cable means closing a lane on the bridge

and that's 50% less capacity.

'OK, stop the traffic now, please.'

All lanes, hold your traffic, please, hold your traffic.

With the only open lane clogged, the traffic is held back

at the Aust tolls until the bottleneck has cleared.

My job is basically to deal with any complaints on the plaza

with the customers, deal with the breakdowns, deal with the incidents.

Because we've got this one lane restriction whilst the cables are being inspected,

I have to make sure that traffic goes through as safely and efficiently as we can.

I understand the frustrations of the passengers.

HORN BLARES

Someone's happy.

I will try and deal with it and get them on their way as quickly

and efficiently as we can.

And then hopefully it will get back to some kind of normality.

-'OK, let it go. Thanks, mate.'

-Thank you, let them go.

Right, and that's over and done with.

Present-day delays are of course in aid of the bridge's long-term future.

High above the Severn,

the cable's core is ready for inspection.

We're heading up to look at one of the grooves that's been opened.

There's, you know, a bit of trepidation.

Approaching 400 feet up, in the confines of the gantry,

the cable is unwrapped and wedged apart.

Well, that's not bad for 50 years.

These are the individual wires

that have carried over 300 million vehicles.

We're very encouraged.

You can see some corrosion on the outer wires,

whereas within the groove very little corrosion,

and it's good, it's very good.

The dehumidification has halted the corrosion.

We wanted to hope for the best and now the results coming in

show that the corrosion of the wires hasn't deteriorated any more,

so you feel sort of relieved, obviously, that the bridge is

standing strong and it will be here for many's a year to come.

Ten days shy of its 50th birthday

and there's a party atmosphere on the bridge.

STARTING PISTOL

I don't like to get too soppy,

and it's not my baby or anything like that, but as a structure

there's not many things in the country that come close to it,

and I'm proud to say to people that I work on it and that I've

helped to keep it tiptop.

Well done, keep it up!

The Severn Bridge is very special for me.

Over the years people have said, "When they build the second crossing they'll close the first one,"

but as far as I'm concerned there's no chance of that happening.

There are bridges all over the world and they're all...descendants,

shall I say, of the Severn Bridge.

A lot of it's down to the people who work here,

and I always say that they're not just guys who maintain the bridge,

they're sort of curators, and they absolutely love this structure,

and it's nice that I'm part of that family that look after it,

and I feel it really is a family.

# So raise a cheer, raise a cheer for the great Severn Bridge

# And the men who have raised her on high

# Many times, many times had we wondered at the tide

# Now its wild racing currents we defy. #