Coronation Bridge

About

The Coronation Bridge, also known as the Sevoke Roadway Bridge, is a bridge across the Teesta River at Sevoke in the Indian state of West Bengal. The bridge is a part of the National Highway 17 (previously National Highway 31), and connects the districts of Darjeeling and Kalimpong. It runs parallel to Sevoke Railway Bridge which is around 2 km (1.2 mi) away from coronation bridge in River Teesta. It was named to commemorate the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1937 and was completed in 1941 at a cost of INR 600,000. The foundation stone of the bridge was laid by John Anderson, the-then Governor of Bengal in 1937. Locals call the bridge Baghpool, meaning tiger bridge, because of the two tiger statues (bagh actually means tiger) at one entrance of the bridge. John Chambers, the last British executive Engineer of the Darjeeling Division Public works department (PWD), carried out the design, drawing and planning of the bridge. Messrs J.C. Gammon, from Bombay, was the contractor. The bridge was built on the Reinforced Concrete system. Since it was not possible to obtain support from the Teesta river bed due to the depth and current of water, the entire bridge was supported by a fixed arch, which had its two ends fixed on rock layers on either side of the river. The Coronation Bridge was constructed by the British to establish a road link from Siliguri to Darjeeling, a key hill station and summer capital of India during colonial rule. The Teesta River’s turbulent flow and the Eastern Himalayan rocky terrain posed significant challenges, making a suspension bridge unfeasible due to monsoon flooding. Three Bengali architects, A.C. Dutt, S.K. Ghosh, and K.P. Roy designed the bridge under John Chambers, the last British executive engineer of the Darjeeling PWD. Construction began in 1937 and took four years, with Messrs J.C. Gammon from Bombay as the contractor. The bridge cost approximately Rs ₹6 lakh (equivalent to ₹19 crore or US$2.0 million in 2023). It was built using a reinforced concrete system. Its fixed arch, anchored in rock layers on both riverbanks, was a novel solution to avoid relying on the riverbed’s unstable depth. Two

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.