Iron Bridge, Lucknow

About

The Iron Bridge over the Gomti River in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, was one of the earliest iron bridges in India, erected in 1845. Originally designed by British civil engineer John Rennie, the cast-iron sections were manufactured by Butterley Company of Derbyshire, England, between 1812 and 1814, and shipped to Calcutta, finally arriving in Lucknow in 1816. By then, Saadat Ali Khan, the nawab of Awadh who had commissioned the bridge, had died, and the project was put on hold. Work on the project resumed in the 1840s, and by 1844, engineers working with the British East India Company had developed a revised plan for laying the foundations and constructing the bridge, altering its site and height and incorporating knowledge gained from other engineering works in the intervening decades. The plan was executed by Colonel Fraser of the Bengal Engineers between 1844 and 1845, during the reign of king Amjad Ali Shah. In 1857 and 1858, the iron bridge was the site of armed conflict during the Indian Rebellion. Severely damaged by floods in 1960, it was dismantled and eventually replaced by a masonry bridge at Daliganj.

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