Of bridges the British built

"Industrial archaeology" is still very new to Sri Lanka. But in Britain, the birthplace of the industrial revolution, it is an established field of study with many enthusiasts tracing and describing early works of engineering and technology. British Industrial archaeologist, Peter J. English who has made a particular study of 19th Century engineering work in India and Sri Lanka, visited Sri Lanka in October 1997 and wrote this account of some of the works he discovered.

When the York- shireman William Frederick Faviell (1822 - 1902) commenced construction of the 73-mile route from Colombo through the lush hills to Kandy in 1863, he recorded in his diary that “if Paradise exists on earth, it can only be found in Ceylon.” No doubt a shrewd judge for his time, perhaps this belief contributed to his long life of eighty years, when the majority of his railway-engineering contemporaries were buried before the age of fifty.

As Archivist for Sandwell Community Library and Archives Services I arrived in Sri Lanka October 1997 to examine the fruits of Faviell’s labours, along with other extant British contributions to the Jewel in Victoria’s Crown.

The initial task at hand for a project book on the industrial development and archaeology of Ceylon, was to commence in the capital itself. It was with the renowned firm of T.W. Camm, stained-glass-window makers, that our researches commenced.

Thomas William Camm founded his firm in the 1860s in Smethwick, a large town some three miles north of Birmingham. The business was carried on by his children after his death in 1912. The firm’s products can be found worldwide in many churches, and occasionally in private houses, from England to New Zealand, including Ethiopia. It is known that the firm made a stained-glass window for a church in “Pettah, Ceylon” as a photograph exists amongst the company’s archives. Although undated, the style of the window suggests a date around the1920s or 1930s. During our stay in Colombo we made what we thought was an exhaustive search of every church in in Pettah, but without success.

It would not be an understatement to describe Ceylon as a veritable working museum. For its size of 25,332 sq. miles, the country must certainly contain more working artifacts from the Victorian and Edwardian eras than any other. It is indeed an industrial archaeologist’s hunting ground, including lighthouse, steam-roller and railway engineering, municipal buildings, steam-powered cranes and locomotives, to highlight the principal testimonies to surviving and functional British engineering. It is to bridges that this article is chiefly devoted.

In 1850 the Chippenham foundry and engineering workshop of Rowland Brotherhood, who lived between 1812 and 1869, was successful in winning orders to fabricate numerous wrought iron bridges between 1855 and 1955 for Ceylon. Although Colombo possessed its own bridge fabrication shop, it was then totally reliant upon sections that arrived from England in pieces of up to 4.5 tons weight.

Twenty complete structures were exported to Ceylon by Brotherhood. One of the first contracts to receive his girders was for the construction of a bridge over the Mahaweli River at Gampola. It was the most important engineering task so far undertaken in Ceylon.

Perhaps the most beautiful and impressive of all bridges known to the authors is the three-arched high bridge on the outskirts of Kandy across the Mahaweli River. Originally erected in 1860, strengthening took place around 1929. A visitor cannot fail to be impressed by this superb testimony to aesthetic British engineering at its best. Regrettably there is no plaque to identify the fabricator of this magnificent structure.

There was keen competition to bridge all rivers crossed by the pioneering lines. Firms from the Black Country vied with those in Glasgow, Teesside, Manchester and London in the expectation of lucrative contracts. A large London-based shipbuilder Westwood, Baillie & Co. was successful in bridging the route from Colombo to Kandy, the line being opened in August 1867. Many of those structures are in service today, supporting trains far in excess of what was envisaged by the designers. The largest bridge Westwood, Baillie & Co. fabricated was the Victoria Bridge in the outskirts of Colombo. He was also responsible for both railway crossings of the Mahaweli River near Kandy. That these structures are at least one hundred years old is proved by the fact that this renowned firm - who once supplied over six hundred spans to Bombay in 1866 - called in the receiver in 1893.

The West Bromwich-based fabricator Braithwaite & Kirk commenced business in 1884 with a series of small orders for India. Within a decade it was supplying water-storage tanks to Ceylon. In 1897 the firm delivered two small wrought-iron bridges for the Ceylon P.W.D. By 1900, with Ceylon benefiting from the British Government’s Crown Agency (established I April 1833), this arm of Whitehall favoured Braithwaite & Kirk with an order for four railway bridges each of 75ft. spans which were delivered in the winter of 1901. It is highly likely these bridges are in service today between Galle and Colombo as many small rivers are crossed by structures of this dimension.

The last - but not least - of Britain’s bridge builders noted in Ceylon is the West Midlands based fabricator and engineering workshop Patent Shaft and Axletree Co.. Founded in 1838 the firm, similar in its engineering products to Lloyds, Fosters, was based in Wednesbury, and only some four miles from Braithwaite & Kirk. It managed to survive until 1980. Its products can be seen extensively in India, Burma, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Australia, South America and Ceylon. No finer, nor more idyllically sited, tribute to this premium bridge builder can be found than the single 75ft-span near Ottakade erected 1893. That year was, no doubt, a busy period for both British business and the Ceylon Government Railways. The firm also supplied two small spans to cross the Pussalla River about five miles from Padukka, a large water tower for Homagama Station in 1901, and the six huge spans which carry a road bridge over the Kalladi River at Batticaloa in 1924.

It is worth pointing out that many of the bridges mentioned built in the West Midlands were once photographed being subjected to heavy test loads in their respective factories. These original photographs are preserved in both the Sandwell Community History & Archive Services in Smethwick Library, and the Black Country Museum in Tipton, about four miles distant from Smethwick. Visitors from Ceylon shall find a warm reception greets them should they wish to inspect their industrial history at both locations.

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