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HOTSPUR BRIDGE

Location OVER CRAWFORD RIVER, PORTLAND-CASTERTON ROAD HOTSPUR, GLENELG SHIRE File Number HER/1999/000152 (1) Level Registered

[1/4] HOTSPUR BRIDGE SOHE 2008 [2/4] HOTSPUR BRIDGE SOHE 2008 [3/4] 1 hotspur bridge ntv [4/4] hotspur bridge plan

Statement of Significance

What is significant?
The old Hotspur Bridge, built in 1870, is a disused bridge on the Crawford River crossing of the Portland-Casterton Road at Hotspur township. It is a low single-span wrought-iron plate-girder road bridge, with two half-through main iron girders supporting seven iron cross-girders. It has substantial bluestone-masonry abutments and wing walls, and formerly possessed a timber deck (apparently proposed for reconstruction). The span length is 15.2 metres, and the width of deck is 6.1 metres. The bridge has a slightly arched profile, and the half-through main girders on either side are topped by ornamental iron side-rails to give a neatly finished appearance. These rails, which bear the inscription ‘Waterloo’, appear to be a later addition, but evidently of nineteenth-century origin. Its timber deck does not survive, but the iron main frame and its stone-masonry abutments are intact. It is set in open grasslands in a broad flat road reservation some distance from the current highway and bridge, but accessible to vehicles by the old road approaches.

How is it Significant?
The Hotspur Bridge is of scientific (technical) and historical significance to Victoria.

Why is it Significant?
It is of scientific (technical) significance as one of the oldest surviving iron road bridges in Victoria, and the oldest surviving example of a wrought-iron plate-girder road bridge in Victoria. It is the only known surviving Victorian example of a half-through wrought-iron plate-girder road bridge. It is also unusual for colonial iron road bridges with timber decks to have supporting cross-girders of iron, bracing the whole structure. When constructed early in 1870, it represented a futuristic design for a ‘permanent bridge’ in a municipal world that still thought in terms of ‘economical’ all-timber road bridges. The only older surviving wrought-iron road bridges known to survive in Victoria are the Bridge Road Hawthorn (1861) and Redesdale (1868) wrought-iron lattice-truss bridges, and the Keilor wrought-iron box-girder bridge of 1868. Those bridges are of different structural categories, and are considerably larger. Among Victoria’s several extant later colonial plate-girder bridges, this remains a modest and unusual early rural example with relatively primitive but distinctive wrought-iron technology. It retains a high degree of structural integrity. The slight convex bow of the iron girders is also unusual; it is probably a technical design feature, and may also have been intended to create a visual effect. Its span length and deck width are notable among Victoria’s extant steel and wrought iron riveted plate girder bridges. It is a very rare surviving example of early iron fabrication in Portland.

It is of historical significance as an extremely rare example of an iron road bridge which pre-dates the devastating state-wide floods of the Spring of 1870. Had this bridge not been unusually strong it would probably have gone the way of so many other rural Victorian river bridges in the 1870 floods. It is an early monument to a once-important overland pastoral route which dates from the pioneering period, and which connected much of western and north-western Victoria with the coastal port of Portland in the pre-rail era. It was also an expensive design option for a rural bridge, indicating both the significance of the route, and the substantial subsidies provided by the colonial government.