‘Happy Birthday’ Thomas Telford
The 250th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Telford is being commemorated this year, but although he was associated with such important projects in Kent as improvements to Dover Harbour and Whitstable Harbour, a modest bridge over a tiny stream near Maidstone was the scene of the county’s only celebration in honour of the great – arguably, Britain’s greatest – civil engineer.
On June 21 Quentin Leiper, president of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), unveiled a plaque on Loose Viaduct, opened 177 years ago on what was then one of Kent’s first bypasses.
Previously the Maidstone to Cranbrook turnpike road had run up and down Old Loose Hill, through the heart of the village. This was a steep and dangerous road for heavily-laden horse drawn carts and wagons, and would have been even more hazardous for the steam-powered traction engines and road locomotives that would soon become a common sight on our roads.
In 1820 Henry Robinson Palmer, one of the founders of the ICE, surveyed the route for a new road through Loose, for the Maidstone-Cranbrook Turnpike Trust. He did this on behalf of Telford, who had recently become the institution’s first president.
Robinson’s plan comprised diverting the dangerous stretch of the turnpike road to a gentler gradient to the east of Old Loose Hill and crossing the Loose stream and Salts Lane with a simple, single-span bridge, which subsequently for no convincing reason became known as a ‘viaduct’.
Although the design of the structure is generally attributed to Telford, no detailed plans or drawings have survived to prove this. It is likely that the great man delegated what was, by his standards, a small job, to one of his assistants.
Loose Viaduct opened in 1830 – four years before Telford died – and today looks much as it did then, except for a footpath added to its west side in the 1930s. Thanks to Palmer, Telford and their clients, the noise, congestion and pollution created by constant traffic on the old turnpike – now the A229 – passes way above the heads of those who live in the quiet, picturesque heart of Loose.
Paul Tritton
BELOW: Loose Viaduct from the same viewpoint in 2007